Story of my academic career in a nutshell. Though it wasn’t exactly social anxiety getting in the way…
Happened to me in my last two years of undergrad. Though in my case I didn’t even know it was depression till after I’d worked my way out of it.
Guys. Don’t do that. Don’t wait to work your own way out of it. Even if you’re not suicidal (I never was, I just wanted to not have to deal with anything; avoidance was the name of my game). I put large swathes of my life on hold in order to struggle with it—and I didn’t even realize, somehow, though in retrospect it seems so OBVIOUS.
Oh, but it made such a heaping mess; I had an extra year’s worth of student loans because I had to repeat classes, and I blew off two years of education when I could’ve used it to actually DO something, and it affected my ability to pursue a career for YEARS because I just didn’t have a record that’d make me desirable to an employer. And it messed me up psychologically in a way that I spent years cleaning up. Bad mental habits, coping mechanisms gone awry, humiliation and guilt about my own choices and actions. Relationships that went south because I was just too embarrassed to meet their eyes.
I wish that I’d realized what I was dealing with at the time, because I would’ve hit the campus counseling services like a freaking tornado. If you’re a student, you’re sitting pretty, because most colleges and universities offer free counseling services to students. I don’t know whether they could’ve helped me out of my depression or not, but they could’ve helped me THROUGH it—could’ve helped me develop skills to manage it and avoid the worst of the mess it made. Could’ve helped me understand what I was going through so that I could make informed choices instead of flailing around.
I know that especially for people with social anxiety, it’s nervewracking and exhausting to think about opening yourself up and getting help that way, which is even more stressful when you’re suffering a condition that makes EVERYTHING nervewracking and exhausting. But just remember that everybody who walks through those doors is going through a similar experience. Everybody you talk to, this is their JOB, to deal with people having problems. You’re not especially weird or different to them. You’re not a burden to them, because frankly helping you is what they get paid for. If they didn’t like it, they’d be in a different job.