#socialanxiety 


Cruise, dance and singing course in a foreign language which I participate in just to have fun and pass the time. At the last moment it turns out that we have to perform on the final night in front of an audience of 150 people. (Aaargghhhh)
So ... I'm out of tune, I have a cartoon-like voice and I move like Gollum, but my dream, since the times of the Antoniano choir, has always been to sing in a choir. In a choir, mind you, certainly not in solo, where the voice would not even come out. So the second option, singing with the others, doesn't scare me because we have time to rehearse, we hold the sheet with the foreign words in our hands, we are a group and, I tell myself, if something is wrong, I can always move my mouth and pretend to be in playback.
The other test, on the other hand, anguishes me, even if it is a nonsense made to laugh among us, even if the movements are very easy and the muggle companions as clumsy as I am. I fear many things: forgetting the steps, going in the opposite direction, making the audience laugh. I try to convince myself that the aim is to have fun and entertain and, therefore, the more you make a mistake, the more you reach the goal, I try to convince myself that I don't know those people, I don't care about them and I won't see them again, but it's of little use. Furthermore, I fear that participating in two performances at the same time makes me a fool who believes herself to be the Cuccarini on duty. As you well know, we never do anything without asking ourselves what people will think of us.
As the days pass and the performance approaches, my anxiety grows and I would like to extricate myself from the dance to focus only on singing. I try timidly to ask the teacher if I can exempt myself but she says no, smiling, full of confidence and cheerfulness, and I don't feel like insisting anymore. For her sake I will make the sacrificial lamb. With me there is an elderly lady, one of those talkative who sing, dance, enjoy life, piss off cheerfully at all, not caring about criticism. In short, the old woman I will never be. We joke together about the evening that awaits us and I, for the first time, after all these posts, come out with: "Imagine that I am suffering from social phobia."
She looks at me uncertainly: "What is it?"
Here, I feel, all together, stupid, sick, handicapped, ridiculous. I take courage and explain to her, in words understandable to an extroverted Muggle, that it is a form of extreme shyness. She looks reassured.
The last day of the tests I am now resigned to the pillory, when she, just she, without saying anything to me, turns to the teacher and asks  if I can be exempted and replaced because I don't feel like it.
I list below the flood of emotions:

1. HUGE UNBELIEVABLE GIANT RELIEF.

2. Nervousness at the idea that she, without warning me, allowed herself to choose for me.

3. Regret at the thought of the thing not done and the little missed opportunity.

4. Sense of guilt for having refused, for having escaped at the last minute creating difficulties for others, and for not being able to do it alone but having to resort to external help.

4. A bad, unpleasant feeling about this outing. Isn't it, I tell myself, that by dint of talking about it, my dear, old fs, is going away and I am here with you to think about nothing? Then I remember the other day, when an acquaintance I hadn't seen for some time asked me for news and I messed and didn't know where to look, what to do, how to escape. Because the fs is like this, it bites you in the back when you least expect it, with those you don't expect it, in the most banal and innocent situations. There was a time, I remember, when I couldn't even look my mother in the face and, to talk to her, I hid behind an object.

5. Discomfort at having discussed it openly with a stranger. It seems to me that I have broken through that shell of modesty that protected me - putting in the streets a feeling that perhaps should remain where it is, closed, guarded - debasing it, flaunting it like a flag. Which is what I always urge you to do, but now that I've done it, I feel like I've left the house wearing only a pair of vulgar underpants.

Having said all this, I invite those who told me that I appear "carefree and certainly not tormented by social phobia" to dwell on points 1 to 5.

(Ah ... anyway, for those interested, the performance went, we had fun and all those faces staring at us smiling and clapping didn't scare me. In fact, when it ended, I was also sorry.)

Kalinka