Best 70 quotes in «social anxiety quotes» category

I realised I really was shy. And once I was in it, I couldn't escape. I'd go to talk and find my face was made of cement. Nothing would come out. On winter days, I'd feel myself turning grey at the edges and fading into the walls. Was this defensive strategy? It was paralysing. And it went on for years.

I swear that I will never cause trouble for anybody, as long as I live!! So please! Nobody cause any trouble for me, either!!

I think the most important thing I’ve learned, however, is that being social is supposed to be fun. I tend to forget this when I’m curled up in a ball, alone in my room, avoiding everything

It is human, to want to feel connected with others, to strive for a sense of belonging. Yet the ultimate hack is is to belong with yourself. Once you belong within, You belong with all.

It's as if all the tears I cried were there for a reason, slowly watering my mind to allow for something beautiful to grow in place of the pain.

It’s weird how we have to get a little older to realize that people are just people. It should be obvious, but it’s not.

It's just that I know exactly how that conversation would have gone," I say. "I would've told her I'm too afraid to enter. She would've asked what I'm afraid of. I would've had to bring up the whole social anxiety thing, and she would've either encouraged me to enter anyway, completely disregarding my terror, or she would've nodded and excused herself

It was torture to be starving and not being able to eat. All I could think about was my face and my chewing and how much food was on my fork when I brought it to my mouth. Eating in front of people was like stripping and standing there naked for everyone to judge. My mind was in a constant state of panic wondering if I looked like a pig when I was eating, or if I was chewing too loud. Or worse, what if I ate too much and everyone saw what my mom always saw: a fat sob that could do with losing a few meals? The thought always left me in cold chills.

It was hard for me to come up with something on the fly, which is why I preferred, if at all possible, not to say anything at all for fear it wasn't the right thing.

I wanted to just sink into my media downloads for a while and pretend I didn't exist.

I've found out that I may be more awkward than I thought I was, but then I never saw anyone because I was in my room a lot. It's fine not to speak when you're on your own and to stammer and to not have eye contact but, outside, it's frowned upon.

I want to say, Don't bother asking me anything. I want to say, There is nothing underneath.

I was so nervous about the airport, going through security and doing all that gives me some serious fucking anxiety. ... Everyone seemed so chill.

Maybe my time's running out, but at least I'm living. And if that's what it is for you, being here inside where nothing ever happens, where you think you're safe, then stay. Stay right here and you let me know how that works for you. Bacause I'm gessing it'll never be enough.

Like when you see a celebrity in a cafe and instinctively burst out, "Oh, hi there!" before you realize that your brain has had time to tell you, "Hey, that's probably someone you know, say hi!" but not, "No wait, it's just that guy from the TV!" Because your brain likes to make you look like an idiot.

She didn't understand how other people did it, how they just strolled right up to strangers and started conversations -- how they made themselves into people strangers would ever want to meet. She wasn't shy, not exactly. She was afraid.

My face is like some sort of bashful chameleon, flashing red at any sign of social interaction. Stupid face.

Never ignore the elephant in the room. That’s rude; play with it and introduce it.

Never hate social hierarchies

Patriotism, currently, is nothing but the deadly evolution of narrow minded politics which has distorted language.

Rumors travel faster then the speed of light

She untied her ropes, her frazzled oily grimy ropes that held her down into the littered marshlands of a life too long lived in fear and dread of the unknown, and took a big step out of bounds.

Show me what you've written," I said, although I wanted desperately to avoid looking at it.

That the military have the power to manipulate personal liberties while cocking a snook at justice and freedom in Balochistan is a fact.

Sometimes I see people at the supermarket or somewhere else, smiling and cheerfully making small talk with strangers and not looking tense or uncomfortable at all, and i just want to go up and ask them how they do it. How did they manage to do everything they need to do and go out in the world and be human without feeling the weight of it all questioning them into oblivion

Social systems are neither a consumer product that we can buy or rent from the market nor a material that we can import from another country. It is not a creation of the almighty gifted from the heavens. A social system is a creation of mankind. That is a reflection of our responsibilities. In other words, the social system is the result of our behavior and the decisions we take in our way of life.

Steffy risked a glance at her fellow neighbors and townspeople. She often looked for kindred spirits in the crowd. None were ever found. Just once, she wished to see someone trying to hide a smile, a snicker, or plain sighing at the absurdity. The rowdy outcasts among the community were not welcome in the church. They knew better than to show their faces.

That nervousness that makes your palms sweat and your heart race before you get up and make a speech in front of an audience? That's what I feel in a normal conversation at the dinner table. Or just thinking about having a conversation at the dinner table.

The situation got worse when they came back to her apartment after and someone put on music. An advert interrupted during a moment when I was the person nearest the laptop, and so somebody said to me—quite threateningly, I felt—Put something else on. Obviously I forgot every song I have ever heard in my entire life. In one swift tug, like the tablecloth trick where everything is supposed to remain on the table gone wrong, every name of every artist disappeared too. The only keywords I could think of were the ones on a toy keyboard-and-tape-recorder combo I'd been given as a child, and I hadn't known their meaning even then. Bossa nova, for example. I said I couldn't think of anything, any music, except silence, and retreated to the corner of the room, pretending to busy myself by scouring the bookcase there, which held little gatherings of figurines as well as Mizuko's many books.

The government of Pakistan is yet to understand that the insurgency is not the disease but the symptoms of the disease. If the government really needs to cure the crisis in the area, then it must engage in genuine treatment procedure rather than engage in ad hoc solutions that go under the motto: picked up, killed, and dumped. Kidnapping the target and dumping his or her bullet riddled and tortured corpse in a public place to scare the people in the area is a military strategy which aims to provide a lesson to those who still retain seeds of resistance. If this is the only solution that the government is capable of then it will have to commit genocide against the people of Balochistan so that it can continue to steal their natural resources and have total control of the province.

The last time I went out at night in the city was almost a year ago. It began with anxiety, then I was pleasantly pissed for a couple of hours, and finally, around the point at which people started taking to the dance floor, I sobered and saddened and the old chant returned: I want to go home.

The Rajapaksa regime in Sri Lanka, knows exactly how the political bluff works and uses it to spread lies among the people. What he has done to this country is assassinate the dignity and respect of good citizens while centralising everything into himself and his family members. His ego may lead him to think that it will last forever so to keep his dream alive he will not hesitate to eliminate the person who questions this.

The dark girl's gaze lights on me again, and something passes over her face, something I've seen before. Her face is speaking: you can't kid me. I know what you're like, I know who you are. I know her too. She and the blonde are the same kind. They belong to the same tribe. The better and smarter tribe. They're the ones who push aside the duds, the dupes, the dopes like me. They're the ones who know what to do, how to do it. They know what they want. How do they get that way? Are they born with that knowledge? Do they learn it somewhere? I've always felt like a stranger everywhere, unsure what to do, how to act, waiting for someone to tell me the rules. What are they? Would somebody please tell me? The dark girl knows. The blonde knows. What are they, six, maybe seven years old? -- and already they know things I don't know. And they hate me and scorn me for it.

The happiness of being envied is glamour.

The thing about hiding out like this was that it did get boring, every once in a while. It occurred to Gabby to wonder if possibly she was missing something great. For all her bravado, it bothered her sometimes, that she couldn't make herself do what seemed to come so naturally to everyone else.

True, the US Government does not have moral authority to ask for an independent investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity that occurred in final stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka. This is so not just because of what they have done in Sri Lanka, but what they do all around the world. Certainly, the US enhanced their assistance in many ways during last decades to fight against the Tamil Tiger rebels. But does the Government of Sri Lanka have moral authority to deny an international investigation? The answer is no.

Though I am naturally curious about people, I'm also naturally uneasy when they are right in front of me; when I am right in front of them.

We are citizens who love to fake life than dig deep into our reality to discover the truth and make amends and correct our own wrongdoings, because we are reluctant to learn from our past.

When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he’d sprinted twenty yards. As the beating slowly normalized he’d think of how his heart, unlike him, was safely contained, away from the world, behind bone and inside skin, held by muscles and arteries in its place, carefully off-center, as if to artfully assert itself as source and creator, having grown the chest to hide in and to muffle and absorb—and, later, after innovating the brain and face and limbs, to convert into productive behavior—its uncontrollable, indefensible, unexplainable, embarrassing squeezing of itself.

We do not have to dig deep into history to understand the reality. The examples of Saddam Hussain, who was executed after a sham trial and the case of Muammar Gaddafi, who killed after surrendering in broad daylight, have given enough factual reality to understand the painful truth.

What unified the Balochis in their quest to regain self-determination, which resulted in the ‘existing state’? On the one hand, authoritarianism, militarization, and conquest has robbed them of their history and put them into the do or die situation. On the other hand, natural resources which would allow the citizens at large to achieve a respectable existence have been controlled by the military or political elites, well connected to feudal political elites in Pakistan.

When someone isn't talking, my brain tends to fill in the blanks with how I feel about myself.

You are not weak. People like us, we're brave. We're the ones who get up and face our worst fears every day. We keep fighting.

For most of my life, I was a worrier and an over-thinker. I had pretty bad social anxiety.

All it takes is common sense to understand that the Rajapaksa administration has vandalised every layer of the country’s resources to get rid of political obstacles while minimising the space available to facilitate the sharing of authentic political dissent. At the same time the opposition appears to be caged.

Aloneness – that is what SM feels like to me. Isolated, alone, separated, left out as I silently stand by watching others experience life while the words freeze inside me, afraid to speak up or join in a conversation. Actually feeling the anxiety shaking inside my chest as I try to get up the courage to speak to someone or call or text a friend. SM feels like the child standing alone behind the door watching the other kids in the playground – afraid to ask, 'may I play?' It feels like the teenager standing silently against the wall, listening to classmates laugh and chat, invisible to everyone and wondering what it would be like to have a friend. It feels like the 50-year-old office worker, alone in her cube while others chat and laugh in the aisle, still left out. I live inside a shell, a mask that looks like me, but isn't me. I am in here, but it is really hard to let others see. I'm so grateful for the few dear friends I have now. Most people, though, only see the shell and assume I'm aloof and uncaring because I am quiet. I feel very deeply. I feel others' joy and pain intensely, yet they rarely know. I'm not quiet because I am uncaring. I'm silent because I'm afraid.

A networking event is a farmer event, not a hunter event. You’re there to plant seeds and cultivate your garden, not bag prey.

A recent invention, vocal language may date back only ca. 200,000 years. As human primates, we have not fully come to grips with the prolonged, face-to-face closeness required for speech. Speaking to a stranger, e.g., stresses our autonomic nervous system's sympathetic (i.e., fight-or-flight) division, which a. speeds our heartbeat, b. dilates our pupils, and c. cools and moistens our hands. The limbic brain's hypothalamus instructs the pituitary gland to release hormones into the circulatory system, arousing our blood, sweat, and fears.

Annabelle is rarely relaxed anymore, not even in her own house. So here, her panic is rising. It's a tsunami of dread and obligation and the knowledge of bathroom use in small places.

Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy.