# My Success Story



## Brandon805 (May 12, 2010)

This is my first post. I've come here in a somewhat selfish manner... to tell my story of dealing with social anxiety and the three main lessons I've learned.

Let's start from when I was 12 years old. It was around this time that I started becoming less social. I would get headaches very frequently (about every other day) and the doctor said they were stress headaches. So I consider this the very beginning of my problems with SA. When I was 14 and about to start high school I was forced to move cities/schools and make new friends. I was pretty bad at this, to say the least. I wouldn't talk very much to anyone. Nevertheless, I found people to hang out with at breaks during school; but they were really crappy friends.

At 16, my social anxiety sort of started taking off. I got my first job and my anxiety became really evident to myself and other people because of how much I would blush. In fact, my blushing was so bad sometimes that people would make a huge deal out of it and everyone would stare at me.. and I was so concerned with people seeing me blush, that it would make it even worse and I would blush even more.

My SA got worse until I was about 18. At that point, I decided to move to my grandma's house in my old city and start going to a community college. I started hanging out with my old friends again despite my social problem. The thing was, I didn't think I had a problem; I thought I was normal -- just really shy and socially inexperienced. So I decided I would be fine if I just kept up my social activity. But looking back, this helped tremendously in the long-run. _Lesson #1: Don't let social anxiety scare you away from being around people. Maintain perseverance!_

Let's fast-forward another 3 years, when I was 21. At this point I still had pretty severe social anxiety. I knew I had a problem, but I still had hope that I could beat it without having to deal with getting help from a doctor. In hindsight, during the 3 years prior, I had felt more depressed and disliked myself more than at any other time in my life. The reason for this was the combination of my addiction with playing World of Warcraft and my social anxiety. I had made no progress with helping my SA because I played so much WoW; I never thought about how I would improve it. This went on for a total of about 4 years and was a huge problem that I had to overcome. _Lesson #2: Keep focus on your recovery._

Now I'm 24 (well, in a month). Within the past year I believe I've overcome my social anxiety more than the past 10 years combined. I've finally realized what helps the most, not just for social anxiety, but for happiness in general. It's something that I think can cure a lot of mental disorders -- and that is _positive thinking_. If you're having problems that are causing you to dislike yourself, other people, or your life, then take a pencil and paper and, preferably as a daily routine, write down 3-5 things that you're grateful for. This helps tremendously and helps you realize how things are not so bad, especially when compared to other people who are worse off. Be grateful for your home, family, friends, job, nature's beauty, your town, a tasty meal, a generous person, a good song, a feeling, a specific moment. Let thinking positively be your goal and focus on the things that really matter and make you happy. Eventually, your overall outlook will change. Life is truly great and the way it looks to you is 100% dependent on the way you look at it. _Lesson #3: Think positively -- life is great!_


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## Madison_Rose (Feb 27, 2009)

That's cool, thanks for sharing


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## Franky (Nov 15, 2008)

That's really awesome and thank you for sharing all that. Thinking positively is something I'm going to try and work on because I quite often get really depressed and have lots of negative thoughts running through me. But yeah it's good to know that it actually works.


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## tierra88 (Apr 20, 2010)

dude i cant agree more, when i was addicted to wow for like 4-5 years i was super depressed and my SA was really bad. i think quitting wow and going outside got rid of the majority of my SA


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