Social anxiety isn’t your typical anxiety or shyness. It’s different because anxiety is having excessive worrying, whereas social anxiety is only worrying when it comes to social situations. And you can have both–just like me.

The thing about both anxieties is that you don’t have much control of it unless you have a coping mechanism or way to calm yourself down.

The following is a list of things that are hard for students with social anxiety.

Discussions: Nothing is worse than when I enter a class and see a circle of desks with an empty space in the middle, and I remember – it’s a discussion day. The teacher says if I don’t participate, I get a bad grade. It stresses me out to the point that when I’m about to talk, I feel like my heart is racing and I start stuttering or talking at an unintelligible pace.

I don’t understand why teachers require discussions when they know many students that are terrified of talking in big groups just to receive an unfair grade because they didn’t talk a lot. I’ve done discussions before, and have never spoken that much, even if I prepared for it with lots of notes. If they only saw how much I’ve prepared, I should at least get some points.

Being around people I don’t know: I wish I had the confidence to go up to people and start conversations. When I try, feel like I’m the most awkward person someone has ever met, and the overthinking just gets worse. To prevent myself from spiraling down this self-destructive path, I gravitate towards my phone.

Asking Questions: I get too nervous to even ask what’s going on, and it frustrates me when the teachers move on. Don’t even get me started on asking questions in front of the class or to the teacher. I always get those constant thoughts like: “Why did I ask that? I sounded so dumb.”

Not Having Many Classes with Friends: Though I do have some classes with my friends, I still wish it was with all of them. But at least I get a few chances a day to not feel any sense of anxiety when I’m around them. The classes I don’t have any friends in suck; I don’t get the chance to really talk to anyone, unless I’m put in a group to talk to people, but other than that nobody really talks afterwards.

There are support systems for one to receive help and learn to manage it. Or find some hobby that’ll calm you down such as drawing or even playing sports. I highly recommend music, but we sadly can’t just whip out our earphones randomly in classes, unless you’re allowed.