Hello, my name is Nikolina and I have a Social anxiety problem.
As far as I can remember, I was always shy and quiet. I was afraid of communication and conversation, I would get terrified of any kind of public speech/events and any kind of situation where the attention was on me. As a kid and a teenager, I had absolutely no idea was social anxiety was. Looking at other people being confident and communicative, a lot of times I felt like something was wrong with me, like I was dumb and awkward.
I would get so nervous when I had to speak in front of my class, not to mention how I felt when I meet someone, I didn't know what to talk about and the more I got aware of my awkwardness, the more I thought about it and the worse I felt.
Sometimes I would pay attention at other's people behaviors, I wanted to copy them but when the moment comes, I would just block. Even a simple phone call would make me panic.
Thanks to the internet, I found out about the term Social anxiety. Finally I felt like I wasn't alone.
Reading other stories I could relate to, gave me a little bit of piece and confidence. Over the years, some of the problems I was dealing with got smaller and some completely disappeared. When I was a teenager, I could not imagine going shopping alone, I always had to bring a friend or my mom with me. Now I always go shopping by myself. Most of the phone calls nowadays doesn't give me any anxiety. I still struggle with public speech and communication with people I meet.
This is one of the reasons why I like blogging. I feel like I can be myself and feel comfortable with it (same reason I cannot vlog). So if I ever meet some of you guys, I would probably be weird, at least until I relax. :)
