[Skyline]

It may seem strange that I'm so happy knowing that I have social anxiety, but honestly it's such a relief to know that it's a diagnosable mental issue and not just me having an over-dramatic, self-pitying personality. It feels more tangible now and I feel less insane.
As long as I can remember I've always been shy, and these past 3 years as I've matured and changed environments I've noticed my issues with socialising more and more, and for a while I've suspected that something was off and that I was just a bit too extreme in that sense, as none of my close friends could relate to my feelings.
To summarise it, what happens is that in any social situation where I'm in a group of more than 5 people, I feel completely apart from the conversation, all of my insecurities surface and I draw into myself and wallow in this feeling that I'm dumb, that I'm boring, that I'm dull, that I'm not wanted, etc. and it ususally culminates into a big outburst of sadness and anger and despair, and I'll either cry or binge on candy or (sometimes, but much rarely these days) harm myself. Usually I just cry for the whole evening and feel shit. This happens even when all of the people I'm with are good friends of mine, say, at a birthday party.

Anyways yesterday was the graduation ceremony, meaning there were lots of people and noise and commotion and heat and from the get go it all felt very chaotic, so I knew I was going to be affected by it in some way. When the ceremony ended and all of the parents, siblings and graduates went to the buffet I saw my friends go from person to person, chatting and joking around and I went into that spiral of thoughts poking at my insecurities and making me feel "less than"; I went to the room where all our bags were being kept and cried for a while (and one of my closest friends and my bf comforted me, which i'm so grateful for. often what happens is that my reaction is to draw away from people and I'll say I want to be left alone when really what I need is just one or two people who I trust to sit with me and comfort me, try to cheer me up. It helped a lot.)
After that I spoke to my mum about it, going into detail about exactly how these social situations made me feel for the 1st time; before then I would just tell her I was feeling "peopled-out" or "emotional". I've know for a while that my mother has social anxiety and takes medication for it, so i've always wondered if it's possible that I may have that predisposition to have mental instability, but I always told myself that what I was experiencing wasn't serious enough to be a medically diagnosable issue and that I was just overreacting and being self-pitiful. Turns out, once I explained in detail everything that I felt, my mum told me that that's exactly what she experiences and that it's all due to social anxiety...

And thus we've concluded that I have social anxiety. I don't have much more to say on the matter; I don't want to go on any medication, so for now I'm going to try to deal with my own means. For now just knowing that I have Social Anxiety is extremely relieving, because instead of the problem being me, I know that it's simply that it's in me but ultimately it's apart from me.