Day 1 on the Quest to Quit Smoking

Today is the day that I quit smoking.  I know there are at least a few others joining me on this adventure so I figured I would share my experiences, and maybe some of you may want to share yours as well. 

I smoked my last cigarette last night, and put on a patch before going to bed because I was craving more before I went to bed, and the booklet said that wearing them overnight can help avoid cravings first thing in the morning.  That seemed to work.  I was awake for over an hour before I even thought about smoking.  That’s when the strangeness started setting in.  I started catching myself unconsciously searching in my pockets for a pack of cigarettes.  My lighter was there, my spare, but no cigarettes. 

Having realized that I am doing this concerns me a little bit because buying them has  also become habit.  Occasionally I’ll walk into a store to get something and ask for a pack just out of habit.  I’m afraid to go to the store now because I’m afraid I’ll do this.

So far other than the habitual issues, I’m not having any problems.  The patch seems to be doing its job and I don’t have any cravings.  I didn’t have any strange dreams last night, and the patch isn’t bothering me.  Hopefully this will be it!

Good luck to all of you!

What Other Social Anxiety Sites do You Visit?

Over the past few months, I have been searching for more social anxiety blogs, and I have only found a few that actively post content.  I know that others must exist.  What sites do you visit, and which have helped you the most?

The Therapeutic Qualities of Social Networks

Since it was released, I have been hearing quite a bit about this new social network called “Plurk.”  Initially I put off joining as I didn’t want to have to interact with people to build another network of friends.  Finally yesterday I decided to join and see what all of the hype was about.  Initially I started out with the one person I could find that I in my friends list on nearly every social network.  From there it began to expand.  I was reading plurks, commenting and having a blast. Before long, the anxiety I had experienced that had previously kept me from participating in other social networks had disappeared.  I soon realized, that if designed right, social networks could contribute to my quest of reducing my social anxiety.

The Downfalls

Before I get into how social networking can help your social anxiety I want to make it very clear that if you don’t use caution, it could actually slow your progress.  While social networking can help build communication and social skills, it may be very easy for some people to allow it to become their social life.  If you rely on the anonymity of talking to people online to avoid dealing with your real world problem, you problem will likely become worse.  That isn’t why you’re here, so don’t let it happen.

Getting Started 

The first thing you need to do is decide which site you wish to network on.  I would recommend Plurk because it seems to be the most social site of all of the networks I belong to.  I invite you all to join, and friend me (SociallyDistressed) as that will give you a starting point.  Once you have joined, if you didn’t friend me, you’re first task will be to find people you know to network with.  If you friend me (click here), you already have a decent starting point.  From there you can either post your own plurks, find more people to friend or fan, and start networking.

How Can This Help?

There are many reasons this can help.  It provides a great medium for working on your social skills.  There are always conversations that you can jump in on, and you can start your own.  Depending on how much anxiety you experience while talking to people online, this will may also provide some useful systematic desensitization. 

Come, join me, and let’s have a blast!

May’s Progress

Here’s a quick overview of the progress I made during May.  The weather is finally getting warmer here in the north-east US, so I have been starting to get more exercise.  I spent quite a bit of time researching and learning.  I continued my research into NLP techniques, and started to look at the world of hypnotic language patterns.  On top of all of this I have managed to make quite a bit of progress with my social anxiety.

After identifying a few events that had contributed to my anxiety and applying the NLP techniques I had learned, I began to experience much less anxiety with old friends from school.  My Facebook network went from 5 friends to 72 friends in the matter of a week.  I have also become more social at work, and find it much easier to Joke around with my co-workers, where before I found it difficult to participate.

Moving into June I have been very excited.  I went out this past Friday and purchased a new mountain bike. I am planning on getting more socially involved in that sport.  My daughter’s soccer league starts tonight, and I hope to be more involved with that as well.  In addition to those, I plan on continuing to learn about hypnosis and NLP, and experiment around with different techniques so that I can continue to provide new stuff for all of my readers to try as well.

Learning to be more Social : My Goal

Right now I am at what will most likely be the longest part of my process of becoming more socially experienced. I am learning to communicate with people who's interests are different from mine. For me this has always been a huge sticking point because, while I find the topics that most other people talk about interesting, I never have much to contribute to the conversation becuase I am more interested in scientific and technical things.

To put my problem in perspective, I'll use movies as an example. I love to watch all type of movies, and do so with great regularity. As a result of talking with friends and coworkers, however I have discovered that my movie watching habits differ in a subtle way from theirs. When they watch a movie, even once, they pay attention to details. They can repeat specific lines, and remember the story in great detail. I, on the other hand, can normally remember only wether I liked it or not, and sometimes a few specific details as to why. Many times I'll be asked if I remember a specific part of the movie, and I don't until hearing the plot repeated, after which it all comes back.

The point I am attempting to make is that because I don't reguard these details important to myself, I don't remember them. Because I don't remember them, I am not able to utilize them in conversation. This leads me to my current goal which is to start paying more attention to seemingly unimportant details that I may be able to work into social conversation.

Since movies are one thing that most people have in common, I am starting there. My favorite genre is comedy, so I intend to watch at least 1 comedy a day for the next week. While watching I will pay particular attention to the jokes and attempt to commit them to memory. If I have to I might even start writing things down in order to express upon my mind that this stuff is important to commit to memory. Not only have I chosen comedy because I suspect that doing so may reap other benefits.

I am hoping that committing details about comedies to memory will allow me to do more than just recite the jokes that I learn from the movies. I am not inept when it comes to making jokes, but this process is easiest for me when I have a wealth of information to draw on. Thus the information I learn from the movies should improve my creational skills to some extent. In addition, my delivery skills may also be enhanced.

In about a week, I will write another post detailing my experiences with this. I will describe the techniques I have used, the observations I have made, and the perceived effects that I have noticed in myself.

Before Now

For most of my life I have struggled with my social anxieties. I first remember experiencing this when I was around 10 years old. Separated from my best friends in school, I was mortified and pretty much unable to make new friends.

I was paralyzed by my fear until my junior year in high school when I started playing in a band, and became essentially an overnight celebrity with my 15 minutes of localized fame. Unfortunately this did absolutely nothing to help my anxiety.

During my 15 minutes of fame, I met my ex-wife. We were together for 9 years during which we had a daughter, were married, and finally divorced. Throughout that time I was happy not being very social other than at work and with my close friends. For that reason I didn't really battle much with my social anxiety at that time.

After my divorce, I spent 6 months try to find a girlfriend. It was so hard for me to approach women and talk to them that when I finally did meet someone I was too anxious to jump into a serious relationship. She moved in with me very quickly, and within a few weeks, I knew that it wasn't going to work out, but I was afraid to end it because I was afraid to have to face people again.

Near the end of that relationship, I started to learn about social anxieties, and was finally able to put a name to the problems I had dealing with people. For once in my life, I finally had the opportunity to help myself with this problem that had always plagued me.

About 5 months ago, I finally broke up with her, and I have been consistently studying, and alleviating my social anxieties ever since. I learn something new every day, and am constantly noticing changes in myself. For instance, just last weekend, I noticed some huge changes.

Ordinarily when I go out with my brother and/or friends, I'm quiet, an pretty much only talk with them. If their friends come over I don't say much other than hi. Last weekend ended up being very different. My brother saw a friend of his that he hadn't seen since he graduated high school. He introduced us all, and we talked for a few minutes. Before long I was leading the conversation and joking with everyone.

Unfortunately I'm not "cured". Other attempts since then havn't been nearly as successfull, but I think I know why. When my brother and his friend came to pick me up, I kidded around with them the whole way there and once we got to the bar. I was having fun, and I was in a joking frame of mind. Since everyone we were talking to was in a similar state, I kind of bridged them into our my frame.

I have been in that frame before, and anytime I do manage to get into it, it is by far easier for me to be social than normal. As an experiment, I'm going to try to use NLP to set a trigger and see if I can't move into that state whenever I want to.

Where am I With My Anxiety?

I have struggled with social anxiety for the past 20 years of my life. Events that began to unfold when I was 6 led to me first feeling uncomfortable when I was 8. When I was 6, my first grade teacher didn't know how to teach exceptionally smart kids like me and assumed that because I couldn't learn well from her that I must be stupid. They put me into a class for slower kids where that teacher quickly realized that I learned quite a bit faster than the most kids and got bored rather easily.

In 3rd grade I was put back into normal classes, and the teachers couldn't understand why I'd daydream all of the time, yet was still able to do very well on my work. So, they once again figured there was something wrong with me and sent me to the school psychologist for testing. She then sent me to doctors who eventually determined that in reallity, there was nothing wrong with me, other than that I learn faster than most people, and get bored easily.

All of this took its toll on me. Just the fact that everyone assumed that something was wrong with me didn't help my self esteem at all. When you added in name calling, and bullying that all of this caused it was even worse. At least at that point I still had my friends in class with me. In 5th grade, that all changed. My 4th grade teacher, probably one of the best I ever had, knew how to teach me. This led to me doing very well, and I was put classes with the smartest kids in 5th grade. None of my friends were in any of my classes, and because of everything that happened, I was afraid to make new friends. Because I was quiet and submissive, I would get picked on more, and the process continued to propetuate itself until I was a junior in high school.

While I was a junior, I broke out of my shell a little bit but not enough. I became comfortable with people coming to me for help with things I knew about. I was comfortable talking about music. I still wasn't comfortable approaching anyone but my best friends.

As I went through college and began to work I became very comfortable speaking in front of large groups of people about things I knew very well. I could walk into a room of 10 to 100 people without breaking a sweat or stammering for one work. Even still, one on one, I was a wreck. My anxiety has pretty much stayed this way up until a few months ago.

I was nearing the end of a bad relationship, and needed to find a way to bring myself to dump her. I started reading everything I could trying to find a way to get over the fears I had of doing it. While I was doing that, I came acrossed many techniques and methodologies of dealing with fear and anxiety. In the end they did little to help me dump her, but they did start making changes in my life overall.

One thing that I discovered is Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP is a way of making changes to the way you mentally perceive and act on things. I would definitely encourage anyone looking to make changes in their life to study up on it. This is by far one of the quickest methods of making change.

I also read a book called "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. This is definitely a must read for anyone who hasn't already read it. Once you read it, you will notice change in your life even if you don't totally agree with Mr. Tolle about everything.

The most important thing that I have done is just talk to people. I felt a little wierd doing it at first, but I walked around saying at least "Hi" to everyone I passed in stores or at work. Now I do it without thinking about it, and every once in a while I somehow manage to get into an interesting conversation that way.

That gives you an bit of an overview of what I have done already. I will go deeper into the details and keep everyone up to date on my progress in future posts.