I was invited to go to a baby shower over the weekend. It was for a lady from my small group at church, but I ended up not going. Originally, it was due to the fact that my son had a Boy Scout meeting that conflicted with the time of the baby shower, so my husband and I wanted to be there for that, since it was his last meeting of the year and they were planning a rank-up ceremony where my son would receive his hat and book and the other things he would need for Boy Scouts next year. However, my son ended up getting some kind of illness the night before which caused him to feel very lethargic and he had a high fever and an upset stomach. My husband told me I should go to the baby shower since we couldn’t attend the ceremony with a sick Boy Scout. He would stay home with the kids and I could go to the event.

But I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to, I actually did really want to go. My social anxiety held me back. Again. Though the group is small enough that we can get to know each other better than we would be able to in the larger church setting, I have not gotten to the point of familiarity with most of the other women that were invited and therefore opted to not go over attaching myself to one of the two or three women that I was more comfortable with talking to for any extended length of time.

This really got me thinking, though. Most, if not all, of the people who know me very well would tell you that I am an introvert. In fact, for most of my life, I believed, too, that I was an introvert until I really stopped to consider how I feel when I am away from people in comparison to how I feel when I am around them. In a group setting where I am unfamiliar with more than fifty percent of the people in attendance, I do come across quite like an introvert, and it has been a great source of stress and frustration for me, as my social anxiety has forced me into this role. However, I am not an introvert. I am an extrovert with social anxiety, so while I have become okay with being alone for great lengths of time and often tell people I am happy this way, it isn’t entirely true. Get me in a group where I am quite familiar with everyone and you will see quite a difference. I am talkative, I laugh and tell jokes.

I used to do theater– mostly musicals. And people seemed quite impressed that I, a girl who was so quiet and shy, could get on stage and perform or sing a solo and have no problems with that. I was told by people– even very confident people– that they could never get up on stage in front of an audience. And I started to wonder if maybe my desire to perform on stage had something to do with my social-anxiety-that-wasn’t-introversion. I started looking into other celebrities that had social anxiety or similar issues and yet were seen as great performers: Ryan Reynolds, Kirk Cameron, Kim Basinger, Barbra Streisand… the list goes on. This is just speculation, but what if we are driven to preform on stage or screen because our need for social interaction cannot be met by normal means due to the limitations our social anxiety places on us? It’s food for thought, at least.

I understand myself a lot better now, having realized that a social anxiety disorder is not the same as introversion. I am not alone by choice in the way an introvert is, but rather by necessity because I can’t fathom a world where I can just strike up a conversation with a stranger or even a person I don’t know terribly well without the expectation that the other person carry the majority of the conversation. But I would like to. Being alone for an introvert can be a quiet, relaxing experience. For me, most of the time, it just feels rather isolating. I have a need to be around other people in order to thrive. On the other hand, I have found that the number of people I can be around and still be myself is rather limited, so it creates this dilemma, which is how I got forced into the introvert role, whether I like it or not. And so far, all the self-help books and the advice in the world have done very little to change that. But I am still a work in progress and I learned long ago that you can’t just wish away anxiety. So here I am, dealing with it. I’ll let you know how it goes.