by Leslie Lane —
When I was younger, I rarely felt shy or socially isolated. As my eating disorder became full blown, I found myself struggling more and more when out in the world. Even when my weight was stable, I felt uneasy around others and always felt as if I were being watched. Increasingly I had the urge to hide myself and just stay at home and away from the eye of the public. As time passed, I broke off friendships and even felt strained with some of my family. Fearing judgement and criticism, I stopped participating in my life and began to be rather reclusive.
Because of my social avoidance, my body image distortions grew, and I began to feel very awkward whenever pressed to be around people—even my closest friends. It got to the point where I only felt comfortable talking to my immediate family and therapist, and even those interactions felt strained. I’m going to be totally honest and say that I only felt at ease when alone, lying in my bed in the dark, with my animals. Yep, it had gotten to the point where I only wanted to be around my cats and dog.
Later, as I worked hard to combat my eating disorder, some of my distortions about my body began to decrease, but I was shocked to find myself encountering social anxiety like none other I had previously felt. As I tried to reemerge into a social life, I found myself stumbling to find topics to talk about. I had spent so much time in my head and emerged in my disorder that it felt like I could relate to little outside of my small world. During several conversations, I was so anxious that I lost my train of thought because I was so paranoid about putting my foot into my mouth that I couldn’t stay on topic. This was, of course, very embarrassing to me and led me to want to avoid people even more.
In terms of shedding some of the paranoia regarding my body image, I found that the only way to get myself to feel a bit better was to just power it out and force myself to be constantly exposed to both friends and strangers. Over time, things got better, and I became a bit less preoccupied with the judgements I believed people must have regarding me and my body. As I let go of these obsessive thoughts, I began to be able to communicate much more clearly and truly found so much more comfortable with people.
Although it is much better, I must admit that this is still an everyday struggle for me. I find that I must be hypervigilant about making sure to interact with people constantly—even when I want to isolate and feel stuck in my head. I know that my recovery depends on continuing to build and maintain a community of people around me who are both a source of support and inspiration and am, therefore, committed to continuing to work on this issue.
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