Notice me, senpai!

I started going to group sessions in September 2011 and stopped last summer. You can already tell that I've been to a few of them as there's one every week. Throughout my years in the group I think I was the most conscientious about meeting. Many men joined later than me and quit earlier than me. How long you want to participate is all up to you, but as I said in the previous post, you need to participate for a while to have any effect of the meetings. 

Something I noticed were a few common characteristics about us. The group is for "young men" and no restrictions as to which diagnoses people have. Many of us who were there during my time had problems with how to socialize and act in public. I don't know how the connection with starts; do you get social anxiety because you're just extremely shy or do you become shy because of the social anxiety?

I've always had problems with speaking up, for several reasons: I've felt I don't deserve it, don't want to make a fuzz, think it's common politeness, feeling stupid and so on. Being at a party, for example, when being depressed is a lot more exhausting than what it sounds like. The reason for that is that you need to use energy to keep up with the conversations and everything else around you. What I tend to do is zoning out to my own world. You feel, or I do at least, lonely despite there's a lot of people around you. 

So what are the options? The last thing I want is people to reluctantly include me out of pity. That doesn't make me feel any better at all. Or maybe I should rephrase that. I don't mind as long as it's not obviously done out of pity. Listening to a conversation doesn't mind me at all. It's just the way I am. And a final thing, listen when a friend with social anxiety talks. You don't know how much effort it really takes. If you interrupt, it's more likely that the person will become less social. So I'm just ending this post with a short summary: Notice me, senpai!