[Discussion] Have you ever experienced social anxiety?

[Uverdore9]

I've a friend who is apparently victim to this debilitating disorder. People who have this type of anxiety are literally filled with fear as it pertains to going school, shopping, picnics, parties and any such socially intensive atmospheres or activities. The highly disturbing factor of this issue is that people who are naturally confident and popular with peers utilize this and make the optimal usage of this opportunity to ostracize and bully the anxiety diagnosed patient instead of seeing there standpoint and often adults criticize this crippling anxiety disorder, making it sound like the patient in question is mentally inferior or weak or is faking it to elude significantly complex and taxing intrinsically linked activities (like attaining good grades, participating in school/university sports or other such energy taxing activities.) and are quite often baffled by the significance of this matter and treat it like some type of illusory manifestation or a hallucinogenic drug based symptom. Thoughts?

 

[Pizza]

Well uhh, you basically summed up the stigma around social anxiety and how others mistakenly perceive it. It is a serious issue and individuals that experience this do struggle tremendously because it involves other factors like not being able to hang out with friends, not being able to explain to others what's really going on, resulting in losing connections which eventually damages self esteem and confidence and yea it can really have a negative effect on someone if they don't seek professional help.

 

[Troi]

Not quite.