Month: May 2018

(The Start of) An Impassioned Defense of Fan Fiction

Posted on by Kai Raine

**This blog post is cross-posted from my review blog, The Storybooker.**

As a general rule, I don’t post reviews of fanfics on my review blog.

Certainly, there was one notable exception—an instance in which said fanfic was eventually published as a book for sale, incidentally.

Lately, I’ve begun to ask myself: Why is that?

This is my “dirty” secret: I read a lotof fanfic. As a matter of fact, even when I’m too depressed to do anything else, when I can’t stand up or go outside or even pick up a book—even then, I read fanfics.

It would be accurate to say that fan fiction is my comfort genre of choice. Back in the days when I had bookcases’ worth of books at my fingertips, sometimes my comfort reads would be familiar, beloved books. Alas, those days are gone, and I don’t have the means to keep many books anymore. As such, most of the books that I do still have are books I haven’t yet read or books of particular sentimental or intellectual significance to me—none of them are comfort reads. Thus, I resort almost exclusively to fanfics for comfort.

Despite having reviewed that one work fanfic on this site, I now note that I never made a tag. I still vividly remember defending my choice to review it at the start, as if it was a shameful thing to be reviewing a fanfic alongside “legitimate” books.

But this year, since I published my own book and started reviewing the works of other self-published authors, I’ve experienced first-hand that the world of self-published novels is not that dissimilar to the fanfic world. In the world of self-published books, it’s easy to wind up with a work that, especially compared to a traditionally published book, is badly in need of an editor. Choices in these stories can be reflective of the fact that the author had no one to put a foot down and tell them no—in other words, they can be self-indulgent, lacking in sensitivity, bewildering or confusing to readers, and all manner of other things not generally found in traditionally published books.

Now, this could be—and usually is—viewed as a huge mark against self-published books. I used to see it that way too. But when I read Amidst Honeysuckle, Promises and Forbidden Things, something strange happened. By all ordinary metrics of an original novel, it should have been a complete disaster: grammar, punctuation and capitalization are almost comically freestyled, the plot depicts choices and circumstances with little to no regard for the real-world psychological and societal ramifications of those things except as serves the plot, and each and every character’s physical description is listed with hair color, eye color and physique—even when said characters have little to no part to play in the story. And for about a third to half of the book, I did think it was a disaster—until something clicked and I realized, I just have to think of this as a fanfic. And next thing I knew, I’d finished it—not particularly irritated or worse for the wear. I could even see the appeal it might hold to some, even if that appeal is no longer something I can appreciate myself.

This shift got me thinking. Why did that one thought make such a difference? If I can read fanfics of a quality that I wouldn’t accept from a book, then surely the problem was never really with the quality, but something to do with my perception. Why is it that we tend to separate original fiction from fan fiction so starkly? Fifty Shades of Gray and the way it was originally published—rife with errors, barely edited from its original fanfic form except for the requisite name changes—and that patently appealed to a very wide audience nonetheless.

Could it be that hang-ups on things like grammar, story structure and psychological ramifications are an elitist way of looking at stories? At the end of the day, the thing that matters most is appealing to an audience. Are there people with whom a story resonates? Are there people who want to spend their time reading it? If a story that fails at grammar, structure and psychology nevertheless gains people who want to read it, with whom it resonates—that story is still a success.

I became a fan of the YouTuber Jenny Nicholson after I watched her read and make fun of the fanfic Trapped in a Island with Josh Hutcherson (and yes, that is the title: grammatical errors and all). This story, she exposited, had 48300 hits on Wattpad (as of the day that I’m writing this, the number has risen to 70100 hits). The fanfic is abysmal, by regular story metrics. And yet, clearly it does resonate with a lot of people—even if we assume that all readers since Jenny’s video are reading it ironically, and that before Jenny’s video, about half the readers were reading it ironically, that would still be 24 thousand sincere readers—and personally, I think that a whole 20 thousand people independently reading a story ironically seems a little unlikely.

In story critique, perhaps we spend too much time paying attention to what stories shouldbe, at the expense of seeing what is.

True that neither of the aforementioned Amidst Honeysuckle…Forbidden Things nor Trapped in…Josh Hutcherson were stories that appealed to me. Yet there are other fanfics out there that I read and genuinely enjoy. Not only do I enjoy them—I learn from them. There are fanfics that I regularly cite as being a shining example of some storytelling technique that I admire—except, up until now, I’ve always shied away from calling it a fanfic when I cite it. “This book I read once,” I’ll say instead, deliberately vague and misleading whomever I’m speaking to.

For some reason, it can seem like a shameful thing to admit, enjoying fan fiction as sincerely as I often do. I didn’t even realize how ashamed I was behaving about this hobby of mine until I started thinking about it.

The thing is, quality isn’t even that difficult a problem to get around in the fanfic world anymore. With the advent of AO3 and the filters on FF.net, looking for a high-quality fanfic is no longer the disorganized bog of senselessness that it was when I discovered the world in the ’90s. It’s easy to do a sort of crowd-sourced quality control by sorting stories by popularity. Generally speaking, if you go to a fandom or pairing you like (assuming that the number of works in that fandom or pairing are fairly substantial) and sort it by popularity—meaning by number of kudos on AO3 or favorites on FF.net—you can find at least a few stories that are well worth your time on the first page of results.

And there are quite a few fanfics out there that I adore, at a level not dissimilar to my favorite original novels.

So, I’m making a change: I’m going to be posting reviews of some fanfics. Make no mistake—these will be some of my favorites, so things that I highly recommend. I won’t waste your time talking about the mediocre (for now). I want to showcase the wonderful pieces that the fan fiction genre can produce—especially the beautiful stories I love that can onlyexist as fanfic. By which I mean, they can have no Fifty Shades of Gray style novel adaptation. Many of these stories are too intrinsically linked to their fandom to make sense if removed from that.

And that, for me, is part of the appeal.

In addition to the reviews, I’m also planning a few essays, and maybe a vlog or two on the subject of fanfic: its worth for readers, its value for writers, as well as an analysis of the positive aspects of stories that can almost exclusively come out of fan fiction.

Whether you love fan fiction or are skeptical of this notion, I invite you to join me.

Of Vulnerability, Molehills and Mountains

Posted on by Kai Raine

As you may be aware if we are friends on Facebook, I am currently in a depressive episode.

This makes this a first for me: publicly talking about my depression while I’m still in the depths of it, dark and cold and frightened and exhausted.

Of Vulnerability

As I talked about in my post about social anxiety, this segment was not originally intended to be a self-help column. It was meant to promote understanding among those who want to better help their loved ones, and to provide encouragement for those in a similar state.

I like to present myself as together, responsible, strong, and reliable. But the truth is that there are times when I am none of those things. The truth is that virtually none of us are all those things all the time.

Depression means that there are times when it’s impossible for me to completely hide my soft underbelly from anyone. This leaves me, at those times, extremely vulnerable—to friends, family, colleagues and strangers alike.

It’s not even necessarily that anyone has to say something “wrong.” The thing that sends me falling further and further into the dark can be well-intentioned, and compassionate. Yet my mind, consumed by shadows whispering of self-loathing and hopelessness, might interpret that as an insult, or a slight—and there’s very little I can do to correct that, in the moment.

Conversations about depression are something of a taboo, or at least a very sensitive topic, in most societies. One of the reasons, in my belief, is because depression by its nature is a difficult thing to talk about for those of us who suffer from it. All it takes is one dismissal we can’t help but take to heart, one careless word from someone whose opinion shouldn’t even matter, and we’re sent careening out of orbit and further into the depths where everything becomes pointless and hopeless.

I was 17 or 18 when I was first able to admit to myself that this thing in my head was called depression. I mentioned it explicitly twice to two people over the next five years. Their responses horrified me and made me ashamed, and I clammed up again, slipping back into only vague references to the hopelessness in the presence of very close friends.

What did they do wrong, these two people in whom I confided?

Honestly? Nothing. On an objective level, there was nothing wrong with what they said.

The first was my father, who expressed relief and agreement with my self-assessment. I brought it up. I told him. He never told me, “Hey, I think you’re depressed.” He only agreed with my own assessment that I had experienced a severe depressive episode.

Bear in mind, this was not a subtle episode I’d experienced. I spent months increasingly unstable, and there was a stretch of a full 2 weeks spent literally hiding under my bed in my dorm room. I missed all my finals and tanked my GPA that semester, only managing to salvage those classes that allowed me to retake the final later. I was lucky to have a parent like my father, I know. Other parents might not have been able to see it for what it was, and blame me for my failure, nitpicking my lifestyle to find causation, and therefore fault in me. This is not a hypothetical: my mother did this. Her shame in me was palpable, and she blamed my eating habits (I’d gained quite a bit of weight during my freshman year of college).

By all accounts, my father’s understanding, his agreement with my assessment, should have been a haven. Instead, I behaved as if something grievously offensive had been said, and tried my hardest to keep our conversations away from that corner for years afterwards.

The second was a roommate of mine in grad school. I announced my “depressive tendencies” to her on our first day of meeting. I don’t know why I decided to do that: perhaps it was my way of turning over a new leaf. This roommate and I did not get along as a general rule, but with regards to this, she did the best that could be expected of anyone in such a situation. She accepted my statement; and weeks later, when I was explaining that I didn’t like exercising, she tried to delicately tell me that it might help my depression.

I hated being told what to do; I still do. It’s sheer arrogance, and it is more often a hinderance than not. This was no exception to that rule. I backtracked, informing her that I wasn’t really that depressive, I was just telling her the worst of myself early on so she wasn’t surprised. She called me weird and shrugged it off. I was left feeling shaken and small.

So, to reiterate: neither of these people did anything wrong. Yet I reacted as if they had. Why? What was I reacting to? What should they have done?

It was nothing about them, actually. It was that the admission aired one of my deepest vulnerabilities, and I was uncomfortable placing such trust in…anyone.

And yet I did nothing to help myself, for a long time.

Why? What was I waiting for?

Nothing. I was in denial, hoping it would go away. And at moments when I was forced to admit it to myself, I suppose I was waiting to be saved. I supposedly had all these friends and family who loved me—they’d save me, right? No. This is why one of my earliest posts was about saving yourself. No one knows your mind. My father tried to help. My roommate tried to help. I turned them both away, because their words weren’t the exact precise ones that I wanted to hear. Well, no one ever came up with that exact, precise combination. I learned to reach out and save myself.

Aside: A Day in the Life of a Depressive Episode

Now, I can talk about these things openly to the world not because I am less vulnerable, or because it will hurt me less when people deny parts of my mind that I know to be true, but because I have created a sense of self-worth and self-trust that I can believe in even when I can’t see it. Even when I feel like the stupidest, most worthless human to ever walk the earth, I can reach out past the noise to the stillness somewhere in me that assures me that, No. No, you know that this is the depression talking. We’ve been here before. It’s okay.

To be clear, it doesn’t feel like it does much. I could absolutely convince myself that this is accomplishing nothing, and a waste of precious energy.

The tiniest thing will still send me careening. Yesterday, I woke up at 6:30 as planned—and then stayed in bed until past 10, when I dragged myself up to start a load of laundry and get food. (Laundry was necessary because I had a flight the next day and no clean clothes.) My roommate and her SO emerged from the other room—they talked at me, and their words slid over me like I was underwater. I gave random responses and waited for it to end. Then I went back to my room and folded up my futon…and immediately lay back down on the floor and continued not to move. I forced myself up once more later to grab food, and periodically went into the kitchen for tea and water (but not nearly as often as I would have in normal circumstances).

It was near evening before I managed to get around to hanging the laundry—pointless anyway, I figured, since it was raining outside—a task I combined with grabbing dinner. All day, I was trying to tell myself that I really, absolutely, totally had to go to the lab while my brain kept up a buzz of, no no no no no people no no no no no they’ll hate me no no no no no.

As I’ve explained before, I don’t fight it. Fighting it, generally, makes it worse. I waited it out.

I waited all day. It was past 7pm that I felt a break in the panic in my mind. I seized it and went to the lab. I did the bare minimum I needed to do—the bare minimum, and I missed one little thing I was supposed to do.

By ordinary standards, this is abysmal. What a way to live, I would have berated myself in the past, pushing me further and further away from recovery.

I went to the lab, and ran a few other errands as well. I did the things I needed to do before I left (for the most part).

When I got home, I saw a text waiting. It was from an author whose book I’d promised to review a month ago, angry at me for having taken longer than promised (the promise was 3 weeks).

I did my best to be measured and calm in my response. I believe I succeeded.

It didn’t matter. I didn’t sleep until I passed out near 5am for a scant hour and 45 minutes, and the issue bugged me until it was resolved this morning.

Of Molehills and Mountains

As you will no doubt have noticed, nothing in my day was that big a deal. It was simply all in my head, looking at every anthill and molehill and seeing mountains the size of the Himalayas.

If you’ve never experienced this, perhaps it sounds trite. Perhaps it sounds like something that I should be able to correct. Perhaps it sounds more like a “way of thinking” than a “medical condition.”

Since I’ve started becoming more open about these aspects of my life, and perhaps even before that, I am often told the same thing: “You’re making life more difficult for yourself.”

The only thing less helpful than that is the dismissal, “You know, there are probably billions of people in the world who have it worse than you do.”

In the past, all either of these statements would do was compound the guilt, the self-loathing, the inability to accept myself. Now, I’ve so far been able to say, even from a depressed state, “Stop it, that’s not helping!” In a non-depressed state, I can usually smile and dismiss it.

The thing is, the molehills may still be molehills, but the lack of energy that makes them feel like mountains is very, very real. My parents used to encourage me to go exercise when they thought I was depressed. I think they thought it would be one of those things where you move, and you break through the energy-sucking thing and break out the other side. But it doesn’t work like that—at least, not for me.

The difference in my energy levels when I’m depressed and when I’m not is impossible to miss, for me.

In the past, exercising in a depressive phase felt like having an anxiety attack, which would trigger an actual anxiety attack, making everything that much worse. Now that I exercise regularly when not having an episode, that sort of occurrence has diminished; instead, I just feel weak and useless and exhausted. I’ve had to learn to forgive myself for making my workouts that much easier when I’m in a depressive episode. Moving is harder. Stamina is almost non-existent. If I lose focus, I just stop. There’s no such thing as a relaxing, easy exercise in a depressive episode. Every second is a struggle.

It can help. But mostly in the long run.

My point is this: the molehills don’t just look like mountains. They feel like mountains.

What Was Your Point in All This?

Depression tends to foster a sense of overwhelming shame of the self in me.

Society as a whole tends to shame depression, and the depressed.

These two tendency feed into each other in a disgusting, destructive fashion that’s not good for anyone. It’s a bad combo.

The only way to break this cycle, to even start making a difference, is to talk about it openly and say, This is how it is. There’s nothing to be ashamed of here.

Depression is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s okay. It can be treated. It can be lived with.

Great, So What are You Doing About That Depression Thing?

The moment I realized that I was in a depressive episode, I told the people around me—in detailed or vaguer terms, depending on their roles in my life—and they were all wonderful.

But I’ve learned that there are perils in relying too much on other people when you desperately need it. I ask for help here and there in little things, but the main things I take care of myself.

I’m stocked up with St John’s Wort tea. I’ve got pills in the mail. I found a psychiatrist that I’ll visit as soon as I have my insurance card. (I’m traveling in the meantime anyway, so it’s not the procrastination that might seem like.)

The bottom line is this: I have this core of self-trust, and an understanding of what the depression does to my mind. I know how past-me characterized myself, and I trust that she is a better judge than present-me. Using that, I can try to look at things a little more objectively, accepting that my current perspective is very skewed towards shame and self-blame. I can lean on that trust of past-me, and slowly, but surely pull myself out.

An Anatomy of a Social Anxiety Discussion

Posted on by Kai Raine

Today, I’m going to write about social anxiety for both the socially anxious, and those whose loved ones may have social anxiety.

Prelude

When I first started this Keeping Ahead of the Shadows blog series, I had several areas in mind to write about, each tackling a different major aspect of life that is both difficult and that I have found ways to improve as a person with chronic depression and anxiety.

Unfortunately, the series rapidly became rather more preachy than my initial vision. It mostly consists of blog posts on things I do to combat depression. On one occasion, I’ve used it to complain about the way people define me. I’d only been doing it for a month or two before a friend of mine first called it my “self-help blog.”

But I never set out to create a self-help blog. I’m not here to tell anyone what to do. Yes, I’m a cognitive scientist—I understand neuroscience and basic heuristics. I probably have a slightly better understanding than the average person about how our minds work on a day-to-day basis. I am not a psychologist, or a psychiatrist. I’m just a person with depression and a slightly-above-average understanding of the human mind, trying to feel my way into a life that I can handle.

When I first conceived of this blog series, I had numerous subsections that I even outlined in the introductory post. In the year and few months that this blog series has existed, I’ve never addressed one of those categories at all.

So, let’s do that now. This is what I called it:

“A Social Life That Helps”

What does that even mean?

I could tell you what I meant at the time, and outline the things I planned to write about and never did.

I could—and yet I don’t see the point. Because there’s a reason I never talked about this.

Instead, I now articulate the undercurrent that made me want to talk about this in some way, shape or form: Social life is my heaven, and it is my hell.

Interactions with others is where I feel the effects of my broken, tired mind most acutely. It is where I feel the greatest despair, sorrow and hopelessness.

Yet interactions with others is also where I find my strength, and can see the beauty all around even in the darkest, coldest tunnel. It is where I can feel the greatest joy and happiness.

I can’t tell you if this is correlative rather than causal: if socialization is simply the medium through which I can feel what my mind currently holds, rather than the cause of these emotional ups and downs.

What I can tell you is that within the confines of my mind, the negative usually outweighs the positives.

From an objective standpoint, I’m pretty sure that most of the time, I enjoy people’s company, and enjoy talking and getting to know people in the moment. Yet that isn’t generally how it feels after it’s over. The moment a social interaction is over, I almost invariably sigh in relief and relax. The moment that I am in my own little world, my mind gets on its hamster wheel and clatters away. Sometimes, I focus on all the worst case scenarios and all the moments when I said the wrong things—until I’m convinced that I’m disliked, or that it may be fine for now, but everything is bound to go south eventually. Other times, I can distract myself, and prevent myself from dwelling on anything in particular…but it’s no use. Still I am left with a vague sense of doom at having to interact with these people again—I simply can no longer articulate why.

But that mostly applies to acquaintances. Interactions with close friends are a different beastie, with different hurdles and different ups and downs. These tend to be easier starting out, and are less likely to directly result in a roller coaster—but when the roller coasters hit, they can be far, far worse. Though the things I focus on may differ and the patterns may be less predictable, there is still a pattern of ups and downs. The highs from these interactions are more likely to last. Sometimes, there’s no noticeable drop from these interactions at all.

The intensity of these roller coasters varies. Sometimes, it can be subtle, a feeling so vague and undefined that I only see it upon reflection in hindsight. Other times, it can be intense, leaving me literally trembling and nauseous with terror at the notion of having to interact with people.

I have ways to mitigate these roller coasters in the interest of keeping up appearances, not going insane and just generally being able to function in society. And that was going to be the subject of this section.

Discussing a Discussion of Social Anxiety

Because social interactions seem to carry the greatest probability of destabilizing my mental state, it also feels the most frightening to talk about.

Certainly, as I mentioned earlier, there’s a discussion to be had about the cause and effect here. Is it really the social interaction that destabilizes me, or is the social interaction simply where I first become aware of the symptoms of my already destabilized mental state? If I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably a bit of both.

However, I’m not here to diagnose, or analyze cause and effect. I’m here to talk about my experiences.

Which brings me to the core of the difficulty of discussing this here. How do I discuss social anxiety, a subject that can so deeply affect me, in a way that will not lead to more difficult and anxiety-inducing social interactions? How do I discuss something that feels so inherently self-destructive in a way that is somehow constructive?

The answer to the first question, it would appear, is “carefully, and wordily.” The answer to the second is harder. My answer at this point is to ask myself another question: Whom am I looking to address with this section? The fellow socially anxious, members of the general public looking to learn more about social anxiety, or the loved ones of the socially anxious looking for a map?

I find that I’m only interested in deliberately attempting the first and the third. If there are people who fall into the second category who end up reading this and find it helpful or informative or interesting…well, of course, that would be a pleasant surprise. Emphasis on the surprise. Not because I don’t want to engage those who have no experience with this subject, but because I feel I’m too close to it to be able to give an explanation that would be truly meaningful to those who have no experience with the subject themselves.

However, let that be your judgement to make.

A Brief Overview of How I Deal With Social Anxiety

Social anxiety, to me, is a matter of mindset. I don’t mean it’s easy, or that it’s under my control. I can’t control it, and I don’t try to—much as I have discussed previously with regards to depression, trying to wrestle these tendencies and bend them to my will can only make them worse. Instead, I accept them—but try to keep them from completely taking over.

I liken it to there being two components of thought in my head: the cool-headed and rational part, and the emotional part that can get overwhelmed by anything intense—self-consciousness, guilt, fear and even love. Both of these components are necessary for me to lead a healthy life. This isn’t about cutting out the emotional part, but rather about balancing it with the rational part.

On occasions when I need to do something or go somewhere and social anxiety is the thing holding me back, I try to ask myself, “What am I afraid of?” Most of the time, I don’t have a clear answer. But that act of asking the question helps the rational brain gain just a little bit of foothold.

Am I afraid of people judging me and disliking me? If so, why? Usually, if there is an answer to these questions, the answer is not as damning as it initially feels, when inspected more closely (but not so closely that I overthink it and send myself down another anxiety spiral).

Am I afraid of repeating past failures? Guilt and fear combined can become a crippling force. Here, I must forgive myself—repeatedly. I try to remind myself of what I have learned through my past failures, and trust that I will not repeat them.

Isolation is very comfortable, to me—at times it can become too comfortable, so that leaving my comfortable isolation becomes an increasingly daunting prospect. As a general rule, I try to gauge my own needs against my wants. Do I need isolation, or do I just want it because I’m anxious of people?

There’s nothing wrong with isolation, but it must not become a self-imposed fear-enclosed cage. It’s a tightrope walk between the exhaustion that is socialization and the fear that comes with too much isolation.

Most crucial of all, when I feel it is necessary (or even just helpful), I ask friends to help me by telling me to go wherever or do whatever it is that I’m anxious about. I’m selective about who I ask to help with this: if a friend refuses, or takes this as an invitation to push me unprompted at other times, it can backfire and end up shoving me further into my shell instead. But with the right friend, a push where I needed it can make that crucial difference.

Crossing the Line Out of Anxiety

Walking through anxiety can be like pushing through molasses, with the thought “I could just turn back and find an excuse not to do this” never far from my mind. The physical distance that I have to push through this anxiety can be very short. At present, it’s never more than ten meters.

There’s usually an invisible line somewhere, in a physical location: a line where, if I cross it, the anxiety snaps away and leaves me clear-headed and alright. Usually, for me at present, this line is just outside my room or my front door—sometimes even just inside the front door. This hasn’t always been the case. In high school, the line was at the entrance to my classroom. My ride to school was always torturous: a solid half hour to an hour spent begging the universe and providence and any deity who might be listening to please spare me from this coming day with a riot or a strike or anything at all.

Yet regardless of how long or short the distance is, the struggle is no less difficult.

So, sometimes I focus only on that release. Sometimes I don’t think past that front door—I just tell myself that I’m moving one step at a time—and then I can do it. It’s astonishingly easy. I pass the line, and I can leave as if there was never any difficulty at all.

And then the fear is gone—for a time.

Helping a Loved One With Social Anxiety

Now, most everything I’ve talked about so far has been about how isolation must not last and how the fear of socialization should not take over—but this is how I would speak to a person who has or understands social anxiety. If you are not familiar with it, perhaps you wonder why I don’t simply keep myself around people until I am free of the fear.

This is because to me, socialization is inherently exhausting. There are too many stimuli: the noise, the people, the verbal and nonverbal cues, the expected actions and reactions…it wears me down. I feel exhausted after a few hours of dealing with people, but due to the nature of our society, I cannot simply slink back home. I must keep going, keep pushing, keep it up until whatever I am doing is done.

Personally, I have a lot of ways that I help myself deal with this. I usually carry a book on my person to be sure that I have a world to sink into, just in case I cannot leave but I need to pull my brain out of the fray for a moment. I live with a friend that I love and trust implicitly, who can understand this sort of difficulty in me and respect my boundaries as I set them, because I know that this keeps me from sinking as completely into isolation as I might if I were on my own—not a thing that I need all the time, but a thing that I believe is extremely helpful to me for the time being.

So, as you can see, for my own part, if I need something to help me, I can ask for it. I can ask a friend to argue with me to get me to go to a place where I don’t want to go. I can ask my flatmate to leave me alone for a few days. I can guiltlessly send a text to say that I will be late to a social gathering, allowing myself the time to collect my mind and pull myself together if I’m not able to do so in as timely a fashion as I would wish. At times—desperate times—I can even lock myself in a bathroom or some such thing to gain isolation if I really feel I need it.

This is why, if you have a loved one with social anxiety, the biggest piece of advice I can give you is to listen. Just because we have social anxiety, just because there are shadows and ghosts in our minds that do not exist in reality, does not mean that we don’t understand what we need.

To many who cannot see the shadows and ghosts, there appears to be a simple solution: just do it. Just go there. Just pull yourself together. But just because the shadows and ghosts are not real does not mean that we can simply act as though we do not see them. They feel real, and that’s all that matters, sometimes.

Depending on the person, depending on your relationship, perhaps there are instances where your loved one might thank you for pushing them when they didn’t ask you to, or pulling them out to do something against their protests.

All I can tell you is that for me, those measures are entirely counter productive. For me, the ghosts and shadows only are dispelled when I take that step out the door of my own volition. If I’m dragged, or feel forced or pressured into going somewhere, my shadows and ghosts come with me. I curl up tighter in my mind, hugging the ghosts ever closer. It becomes that much harder to break free.

But this was also not always the case. As a young child, I hated going out to social events; but my parents knew well that they only had to persuade me out the door, and however sullen I might start out, I would likely end up having fun. As I grew older, however, this ceased to be the case. Enjoyment was slow and rare to come to me if I felt forced to go somewhere, even if the intentions of the family member were good.

So, this is why I say—please listen to your loved one. And continue to listen. Just because you’ve found a formula that does work, that has worked for awhile, don’t stop listening when it no longer does.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to say on the topic of social anxiety—as a person with it, as a person used to talking to people with it.

This barely scratches the surface, but it touches a topic that is desperately difficult for me to discuss in a way that I hope was somewhat rounded, and hopefully helpful to someone, somewhere.

And now—I shake off my shadows and ghosts, and go out my door.