I’ve been thinking about how my journey with social anxiety has progressed. I can’t remember exactly when it started but I can remember the years of my life where it was quite bad.
One thing that was really difficult was making eye contact with people at the shops. It’s something I recognised I had trouble with maybe 3 or 4 years ago. After I learned what social anxiety was, I started trying to make eye contact with people at the checkout when they were scanning my items. I also tried to just be calmer overall during the whole interaction, and be okay with making eye contact and also looking away - both are normal, after all!
Coming into 2023, I’ve realised that I don’t have trouble with this anywhere near as much anymore. It’s taken quite a long time, and the change was so slow that I didn’t really perceive it until reflecting on this recently. But I’m so happy that I started making these little changes all that time ago so that I can now be in a much better place.
Anyway, just wanted to share this here to encourage anyone who’s interested in making a change - even if it’s very small!