My First Experience With Social Anxiety

This is a bit embarrassing to share.

Hi friend,

The fortnightly newsletter seems to be working a bit better for me than the weekly newsletter.

I have to tell you something that shocked me.

I’ve studied Psychology for 5 years, but even I couldn’t think something like this could happen.

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On April 13, I had to go to a LinkedIn Creator Mixer event.

I was excited for nearly 2 weeks because my friend was organising this and he kept me in the loop with everything. On the event day, I wore my pink dress that isn’t formal but not too casual either, perfect for the vibe.

Though they clicked terrible photos of me, like the one below:

The event flow was:

• a bit of talking to people for about 30 minutes

• coffee-making workshop

• more networking

After that, there was an influx of people.

Maybe from 30 to over 60 people in a room. This was a closed space that started overflowing.

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There was a moment when I spoke to 6 people at once, all asking questions or talking about my work. Suddenly, I felt my blood pressure drop (I have low BP in general but it dropped lower). I then picked my coffee and chugged it because it shoots your BP.

In the middle of talking, I could feel my scalp beginning to sweat.

Which was strange, as I’m usually someone who needs a lot of effort to sweat.

I began to get slightly nauseous and grabbed my friend Dhairya to accompany me. She said she noticed me getting overwhelmed because there were sweat beads on my forehead.

We went out for some air.

When we entered the venue, a few people asked me for photos for which I smiled. And then I rushed out because I again felt sudden nausea and headache. Dhairya and I went to the pharmacy to get my ultra-strong migraine med.

When I got back, some people suggested I drink a lemonade but I refused and asked them to carry on because the last thing I wanted was people knowing I was not okay. And to give me any sort of attention - I’m awkward about that.

I called my mom to take me as she was 10 min away because I couldn’t drive my car so I needed someone to drive me. Meanwhile, my husband Jai got home from a flight an hour ago and was on his way to my mom’s.

While waiting for the lift with my mom to go to the basement to my car, I felt nauseous. I ran (literally) to the washroom, and started puking 🤮

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This was so weird!

That 15-minute-long car journey felt like half an hour. I rolled down the window and took long breaths but each time we stopped at the traffic signal I felt nauseous again.

After we got home I had 2 glasses of lemonade. My BP stabilised and then I ate dinner with my family.

But this whole incident left me shocked.

I just didn’t know what happened, and why.

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Fast forward to April 22 on a call with my coach, she told me this was clear social anxiety. In fact, before writing this I messaged my friend who’s a clinical psychologist and she too said these are clear symptoms.

I thought anxiety was breathlessness.

I never knew there was a range of physiological consequences.

I’m now working with my coach to release and ease this, and we’ve found roots in my childhood for which the first step that we are doing is inner child healing. And then we’ll take it from there.

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I honestly feel a bit lame sharing this, but I thought I should.

Also because in case you experience something like this, it’s common to mistake this for an illness like food infection as my mum then said.

So it’s worth working on the right things because you deserve well-being :)

Love,

N