I came to realise late in life how much my social anxiety had seeped into every little corner of me.

Maybe it's because of the narrative it has which limits it only to social situations. But the truth is that it shows up anytime you feel judged or evaluated … and if that jury is in your head that means all of the time.

Social anxiety is not just fearing parties, the embarrassment of wandering around aimlessly at non-seated events, the desire of being invisible because "it doesn't matter if I'm not there as long as others don't notice me".

It's not just the constant anxiety of being in people's way and thus positioning yourself always at the corners of the room, the hyper-attention of every little action that makes it impossible to truly focus while doing it. It’s not just repeating sentences in your head 1000 times before reciting them - so much that I might be able to put down on paper all the sentences I thought but did not say at that dinner three years ago.

Social anxiety is the bodily fear of humiliation. When I think about being rejected I often don't even get anxiety. Unless I perceive that rejection as humiliation. Being able to accept rejection is part of life while humiliation is an inhumane act that should not be part of it. But I have a lower threshold of tolerance for embarrassment, so what for you could be a small discomfort for me is a humiliation.

Social anxiety pushes you to be neutral. Because everyone knows that too much is never good - so if being too nice is a problem and being too mean is a problem too I’d rather not speak at all, not make any gesture, not ask anything at all.

Social anxiety makes you feel as if you never need anything because the needs of others are always more important than your own and because asserting your needs means running the risk of not being liked. So you forget your needs over time, you don't know what they are or what you want.

Social anxiety is obsessing over all the possible ways a person could humiliate you or negatively appraise you.

It's always stepping out of your body to observe yourself through the eyes of others. It is hating the fact that you don't know how others see you.

Social anxiety seeps into body image and what it needs to look like for you to feel accepted and part of something.

It’s having a constant inner critic that takes on the tone of voice of those around you in any given moment making you believe that they think of you what only you think of yourself.

Social anxiety is giving up before even starting, pretending you're incapable of doing anything so not to risk making mistakes … and then ending up actually believing you are incapable.

It's adopting a certain stiffness and rigidity that is hard to shake off even in your own intimacy and even in moments when all that matters is just letting yourself go.

Social anxiety is part of me but it's not me. It is what I become when I forget to be me. That's not to say it can't be defeated or mitigated at the very least. Growing up in age helps. And courage is key. Because if it's true that socially anxious people take fewer risks, you have to take into account that everything is scarier for us. I have to work up all the courage I have in my body to not only tolerate discomfort but to seek it so to prove to myself that the threat is only in my head. I had to surround myself with people who are better than me, less critical and more compassionate of themselves and others. Less judgmental. I learnt to trust my gut instinct on people because if there's one thing I've gained from observing others so closely over the years is an ability to understand and select the right people for me. The ones who convey genuineness to me. And then I needed to foster my self-compassion and self-love, to need to constantly remind myself to gently tease my inner critic and make it become a background noise and not the soundtrack of my life.

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