Your personal experiences of feeling socially anxious, shy and not good enough and how this has affected your lives. Sharing your stories about how you have been stretching your comfort zones and growing confidence to move through anxious feelings to live a life aligned with who you really are.
Feelings of social anxiety seem to have happened gradually for me; they kind of crept up on me into adulthood. So I started thinking about how the development of society may have subconsciously affected me, such as the “big brother” phenomena, the rise of public CCTV placement instilling the idea of being continually watched, without […]
Have you ever thought about joining a community gardening group, but lacked the confidence to do so? If yes, you are like me a few years ago before I discovered my hidden garden guru. I wanted to find out more about gardening and wasn’t sure what to do next. So I signed up for an […]
An Introspective Analysis Looking back, I never used to feel “socially anxious” whilst growing up. I remember feeling shy as a kid when meeting relatives or strangers, but even when I first started working I felt okay. Anxious feelings kind of crept up on me into adulthood and, I think for me personally, feelings of […]
Writing creatively can be very therapeutic. Research has shown that oral and written storytelling can enrich our spiritual and cultural lives and help us heal from past traumas and abuse. Sometimes people write their own life narrative and their writing is autobiographical in nature. Writing about daily experiences, that is, writing rooted in one’s own […]
In the early budding stage of our relationship, my boyfriend’s sister invited me to her wedding. Upon receiving this news, I mentally responded in two ways. Firstly I was filled with elation, after all, she was betting on us being together a whole year into the future, a potentially risky move for a bride. Who […]
Wherever there is sadness, there is also so much more… It can be easy to zoom in on what feels painful or uncomfortable for us and to colour our world as if that’s all there is. But what else would we notice if we took a step back, open to seeing the bigger picture? […]
Living in a culture that can feel like it values extroversion over introversion, there are times when many of us wish we could swap our quiet nature for that of someone more outgoing. Those of us who let that longing go have found ways to focus on all the positives that come with introversion and […]
Since I was young, I have always taken the backseat in social environments, at school and elsewhere. Even now I am never the life of the party, preferring to sit back and let others do the talking, too afraid to draw attention to myself. This is fine for me and as I’ve gotten older I’ve […]
Finding meaning in words I find a lot of solace and constance in words and the English language. It’s something I’ve always loved, and English was always my favourite subject at school, so much so that I’m studying it at university. I find it so liberating that we have the power to express ourselves in […]
Today, I can stand up and say with confidence that I’m ‘a bit of a self-confessed oddball’. But, just over ten years ago, things were not so clear to me. I didn’t know much about anxiety and I definitely had not found a real way to express myself. I didn’t know who I was or […]
Creative self-expression can be a positive emotional outlet for feelings of anxiousness. When we do not know how to explain what we are feeling, we can express ourselves through creating. This could take the form of writing, painting, crocheting, sculpting, cooking or anything else -it doesn’t have to be perfect or even make sense! What’s […]
I liken the feeling of loneliness to feeling like an elderly Eskimo. You may be wondering what I mean by that. Well you see, folklore has it that the Eskimos when one of their elders seemed to be near death’s door, they would put them on an ice floe and give it a good ol’ shove […]