Social anxiety ruined my life - until I found the one place I felt at home

Any human interaction was tortuous to me. I felt suicidal, but then I got a job in the City and my life started to change

Social anxiety disorder seems to be rooted, s Sartre plausibly pointed out, in the fact that most of what we are is a projection of what others think of us. We should all be afraid of "the look" of another person because it's an unfathomable abyss into our very essence. And yet, despite its roots in our imagination, social anxiety is an unremittingly "physical" disease. You can have long-term therapy, or read as much philosophy on the subject as you like, but your body won't care. The next time you interact with another human being on the bus, at the checkout, or on the phone, waves of adrenaline flood your body all the same, resulting in a racing heart, faltering voice and glowing red cheeks. 

Current scientific opinion attributes all this to serotonin imbalances and overactive amygdalae. There are also genetic factors at work which try to explain why social anxiety tends to run in families. Whatever the ultimate cause, the stubbornly physical basis of social anxiety suggests that there is no immediate cure. One doctor informed me that it's just something that has to be lived with. A harsh conclusion indeed, and one that I and other social anxiety sufferers have found to be made much harsher by the nature of the modern world.

In the past I imagine it would have been quite easy for a socially anxious individual to make a life for themselves doing some form of manual labor that wouldn't require the cultivation of "people skills". But in today's world, where selling one's attributes is of the utmost importance, such skills are an absolute necessity. Whether it's in a corporate environment (meetings, group presentations, conferences, the importance of "leadership") or an ordinary retail job, there is a clear correlation between success and one's ability to produce confident spiel. Not the best state of affairs for the social anxiety sufferer who finds just eye contact with another human being a nerve-racking experience.

This was all painfully driven home to me after I graduated from university. Many graduate schemes bring in prospective hires by making out that everything "will be exactly like your first year at uni". Cue induction weeks in swanky hotels, team-building exercises, group nights out - all designed to relax us and coax out the productive happy loquacious people we all are. For me though, a person who spent the whole of his first year at university locked in his dorm, venturing out only to attend seminars and avoid starvation, it took no time at all for this set up to become a maelstrom of torturous discomfort. I tried to focus o the "job" aspects of the exercise, but I could not avoid that which an social anxiety sufferer fears the most: the conversational banalities that make the world go round, the simple stuff like "what are you doing this weekend?" Inevitably I got asked a lot of these questions, and rather then freeze up and, god forbid, have people think I was weird, I simply walked away.

It was at this point in my life that I became suicidal. If I couldn't do small talk, then what chance was there of me ever becoming a functioning member of society? But then I discovered that there exists a place where all manner of oddballs and misfits of the world can be happily accommodated. The City.

There was a firm looking for a trainee broker with enough smarts to manage a bank of clients but not enough gumption to ask uncomfortable questions. They thought I would fit right in. And they were right.

No one cared about who I was or what I was doing that weekend, just as long as I made money, which (hidden behind a phone and computer) I did pretty well. Ironically, shallowness and anomie - an anathema for most right-thinking people - became my nirvana. Dialing phones all day, working long hours, not distracting myself in horseplay. For the first time, it didn't mean I was weird; it meant I was super-focused.

By no means was any of this a redemptive experience or a model of overcoming adversity, but it did confirm that survival is possible for someone who does not do well in social situations. It also made me wonder how many people there are out there who are perfectly capable of doing all sorts of jobs, but are passed over by employers and overzealous human resources departments worried that anxious dispositions mean smaller profit margins, or imagine social awkwardness means having Norman Bates running amok in their organization.

I think that all of society, and not only social anxiety sufferers, could benefit from a new outlook; one that does not make being the life and soul of the party the ultimate imperative. I felt great relief the moment I decided to stop apologizing for being a quiet person who likes doing quiet person things. Such is the nature of social anxiety, that once I accepted who I was, and crucially, let other people know, the weight and shame of the condition evaporated leaving me feeling less, well, anxious. There are still down days, but being truly comfortable with my quietness has at last got me to the stage where the reaction of most people who I tell about my condition is to exclaim: "What? You're not shy!" - which is as humorous as it is gratifying.