Okay, I'll share a story with you that I've never told anyone before. A long time ago I thought I was losing my mind. I had no idea what was wrong with me or why I seemed to be different. I didn't want to tell anyone what I was going through, because I thought that would mean I wasn't a good enough human being. The term social anxiety disorder hadn't even been coined yet. All I had was a basic idea of what anxiety was, and stress, and depression, and I felt disconnected from the world. I took it upon myself to go to a psychologist on my own. The first thing she did was have me take some tests. Eventually, I had to get my parents involved because of our family insurance. Obviously, I was pretty young. Then something very strange happened, the insurance company made a mistake and accidentally sent the results of the test to our house instead of to the psychologist. When I opened it up I was shocked. The test results were calling me borderline schizophrenic. Can you imagine how I felt? Of course, now I know that psychologists have to actually look at test results and compare them with their interviews with you and other factors before they can even begin to make a firm diagnoses. I am not schizophrenic. What's more, with my family's insurance being somewhat limited, the psychologist's ultimate recommendation was basically that I pull myself up by my own bootstraps and just force myself to be involved with the world and other people, which I proceeded to do the best I could. Now all these years later I find out that they know a lot more about social anxiety than they did then, and I'm actually glad to have a more accurate diagnosis. I'm glad to have a more accurate label and to be able to find other people like me to relate to. You might not get everything you want from this new therapist, you might have to go to an even different therapist later, I don't know, I hope not; but don't be afraid to let these people who want to help, who have been trained to help, try to do what they can for you. And please don't give up.
