Stefano's Story Stefano is an Italian in his early thirties who lives in London. Having suffered from SA since he was in his early teens, he struggled for years to improve the quality of his life. He experimented with different kinds of therapeutic approaches, eventually overcoming his SA. Stefano now enjoys a satisfying social life and his progress with social anxiety has been paralleled by a career change that brought him from an office job to a fulfilling career as a therapist. He has discovered a passion for working with people, and is especially passionate about helping SA people overcome their anxieties and get the satisfaction they are looking for and deserve in their lives. Stefano can be contacted at Stefano_londonSA@onetel.com

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How has SA affected your life? SA has seriously affected my life. My social anxiety peaked in my late teens/early twenties, but I can recall several SA situations in my childhood, which makes me believe that the seeds for my social anxiety have actually been sown very early in my life. I avoided being together with people. The thought of being around people just wasn't attractive to me; it did not represent pleasure in my mind. In fact, social interactions where a source of pain most of the time. I had a limited social life, with a few good friends and even a rock band, but I never really thoroughly enjoyed any of that. I avoided social situations whenever possible. A negative feeling, lingering and oppressive, accompanied me at all times. I lived in fear of people. I envied the popular guys who seemed to find it so easy to have fun with people, and to be liked by people. I found it such a tiring work, not even worth the effort. It felt like I had fallen into a dark pit, where I lived a lonely, depressed and frustrated life. Every time I tried to climb its walls, I fell back and hurt myself. There was no one to share my feelings with, I thought nobody could understand me and that nobody could help. I desperately wanted to connect to people, to be accepted and be liked, but often the only thing to come back to me was negative feedback, and people finding me cold and distant. I frequently felt like there was a mighty force locked inside myself, which I could not understand nor express. Sometimes I just felt like screaming incoherently at the world, and at myself. I was frightened by what was going on inside me. My social anxiety came together with powerful physical symptoms. I felt very tense, especially in my abdomen and my back muscles. In front of people I tended to become physically tense, my heartbeat accelerated and often my face flushed up. When did you decide to get help- where did you look for it? In time I realised that I needed to confront my social anxiety, that this was absolutely critical to improve the quality of my life. Too scared to seek help from people, I looked for help from books, and started to browse through the "self-help" section in bookstores. I began to read books, finding new titles and authors, following new leads, reading more and more. I didn't find much in terms of SA-specific help; nonetheless this stage has been important for me, because it gave me hope and it showed me that there were supportive voices out there for people like me. Finding the SA-UK website also gave me a lot of hope about my situation. It was great to see that I was not alone in my pain, and that people wanted to get together to share their experiences and their feelings. I put the first milestone in my journey "out of the dark pit" when I decided to get bodywork to relieve the physical discomfort I felt. I knew that I needed something deep, structural, which could release these powerful forces locked inside myself. Following on some information provided by a book, I decided to try a bodywork technique called Rolfing. Together with the physical release, emotions and feelings deeply buried somewhere inside myself came to the surface, got moved around and re-arranged themselves in new patterns. The treatments I was receiving made me understand the awesome power of touch. Since then, I have come to realise that any anxiety has physical manifestations, and that skillful bodywork can be decisive in the resolution of psychological problems. The second milestone was my work with Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which significantly contributed to improve the quality of my life. I had already tried working with some other approaches, like hypnotherapy, which had helped a little, but had not provided decisive benefits. In just a couple of sessions of NLP, I made important steps forward. I then decided to attend a residential NLP training, which had a deep impact on me from many points of view, and one of the primary benefits was a new and more resourceful way to interpret and approach social situations. Tell us about the progress you have made...what successes have you had? I feel socially free. Years ago I was constantly feeling uncomfortable around people. Just making eye contact would make me feel uneasy. This is no longer the case now; I feel like it is OK to be around people, I know that I can have fun with people. There still are situations when I feel anxious or worried about interacting with people, but now these situations are the exception, and in the last year I have been able to manage stressful situations that in the past would have shattered me. I now have fun investigating my perceptions, my responses to different situations and my physical tensions. It is a challenging and fulfilling process of discovery. I am now a qualified massage therapist, and interaction with people is the essence of my work. What a big change! I have realised that physical contact, touch, has a great relaxing power. There has been a popular post on this topic in the SA-UK discussion forum some months ago, which shows me that a lot of other SA people share that belief with me. From time to time people remark that I have good social skills. While at the beginning I couldn't believe my ears, I have now become used to my transformed social behaviours and I feel fine about them. What advice do you have for others? An important fact to acknowledge is that there are a lot of socially anxious people in the world. You don't usually see or hear about SA, because SA people hide, but in fact there are a lot of them around. SA people usually tend to feel unique, and lonely, in their condition. Thinking that they are the only ones to feel socially anxious, they compare themselves to the "world outside" and develop an inferiority complex. This is what happened to me, and I think this is an experience common to a lot of SA people. Realising that thousands of people are affected by social anxiety is very important; a community like SA-UK is very important for this. Another important fact to acknowledge is that EVERYONE experiences anxiety in relation to social interactions, or just to the thought of social interactions. It is a matter of degrees of anxiety. Some people are highly stressed, some others just mildly so. Some people are anxious in a large range of social situations, others just in specific contexts. Anxiety is a component in the social life of everyone. Relating to people is a very complex matter, which can generate an incredibly vast number of emotional states: love, hate, affection, fear, sympathy, indifference, boredom, jealousy, empathy just to name a few. Anxiety is just one of the possible responses. From time to time I find myself in social situations where I am feeling comfortable, and then later someone else who also was there tells me that they were feeling anxious. Most of the time I wouldn't have noticed if they hadn't told me. It looked to me like they were comfortable and behaving "naturally". The next step after realising that everyone is socially anxious in varying degrees is realising that you can transform your responses and can feel comfortable around people. SA is a response to certain stimuli, and responses can be changed. Human beings are much more resourceful than what we usually give ourselves credit for. Our behaviours and emotional states can be changed in so many ways. It is very important to realise that we can create options for ourselves. Something else which is important is having a strong desire to change your responses, to improve the quality of your life. Professional help in the form of counseling or psychotherapy can be very helpful. In my case, Neuro-Linguistic Programming has been very effective. Whatever the approach or the technique, it is very important that the therapist wants to understand what SA is. From what I hear, a lot of people in the healing profession do not know SA and are not prepared to step into the world of their SA client. If this is the case, progress will probably be difficult. While you are working to neutralise SA, it is essential that you have exposure to social situations. You have to feel the change in your flesh and in your bones. You need practice, you need experimenting with a variety of behaviours and situations, so that your transformation becomes your day to day reality. What plans do you have for your future? My professional career in physical therapy is unfolding, and I have just decided to go back into higher education to get another degree, which is an exciting challenge. SA remains an important part of my life. I am interested in studying SA to find ways to neutralise it, and I have started working with SA people in one-to-one sessions, where I use a variety of techniques which can help explore and resolve the social anxiety. I have also set up a support group in London, called the London SA Support Group, which provides a safe environment where people can explore their SA. The group is open to everyone who wants to work on their SA and the only charge is for the room hire, which is split among the participants. If anybody is interested in these initiatives, wants to help, contribute ideas, experiences or comments, please contact me via e-mail at stefano_londonSA@onetel.com

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