I cured my social anxiety in my 30s. I only wish I had tried harder in my 20s

If you met me at some point in my twenties, you would probably have thought I was quite sociable – excluded, even. I spent most weekends going out under the lilac lights of clubs like or otherwise in a park with between two and 20 people. At my 25th birthday, I went to New York alone on a whim and I found myself at a party at Halloween house with dozens of foreigners. To my 26, I did the same thing and I spent all the time with various Tinder matches on different roofs. I have never been the stereotypical solitary, which is weird, because I always felt one inside.

It is not that I did not like to spend time with others – it’s more than it made me incredibly anxious. Above all, I would count on alcohol to relax in large social contexts. And if I was sober, I would spend the majority of interactions waiting for him to be polite to go home. I hated the idea that I could say the bad thing, which made me stop in large groups, which meant that I was never really present with others. For a while, I considered the idea that I could be autistic, but those around me said that this could not be the case. “But you are So sociable, “ they would say. “An autistic person would never stay in as many random airbnbs,” said someone once. I often wondered how I had managed to fooled all these people.

Then, about 30 years, a few years after Pandemic, something changed. I would like to be able to determine what it was. It is not that I no longer felt socially anxious, it is more that I could no longer be disturbed to feel socially anxious. It was exhausting, and for what? Therefore, over time, little by little, the sensation has moved away.

I also started using this strange mental exercise whenever I was with people. I remember that they were Also Bragas around their own mind, and therefore what I did or really said – it’s like a video game! I often remember the famous adage of Jemima Kirke, “I think you might think too much about yourself.” At the heart of my social anxiety, I realized, the hypothesis that others studied me in detail, which is absurd, obviously and quite self-involved. But also, even if they were, why is it important? Essentially, I trained to worry about it less – and it worked.