Dr says Social Anxiety

[Jarre]

Welcome lynyona to the forum. I echo the ladies and Mikes comments, however I am going to add another element to this. As someone who lived in a boarding school and was builled through his whole school life, college and univeristy I get alot of his symptoms. Having this happen at childhood sticks with you as your grow into an adult it melds how you are around people how you analyse new persons you come into contact with and you are always threat assessing everything around you. You help others because you don't want anyone to suffer the stuff you got and every time a person you help shuns you and pushes you away the deeper you go into your shell. The fact that you stay there is because the length of time you were bullied becomes a trauma that circulates around your brain at all times staying at the front. Normally when you sleep your brain files the days activites but traumatic events and constant events stay in the foreground weighing heavy on your mind. Your bodys natural filing system REM sleep does not touch these items. There are several options open depending on the policies of the local mental health teams. The is the talking therapies where the therapist looks at helping deal with the anxiety or how I call it my threat radar to try and make doing normal activites, work etc (I do work full time even though I suffer still at times so beleive me when i say there is still hope) there are trauma therapies like emdr (eye movment desensitization and reprocessing) which is basically trying to mimic the REM sleep you get to try through targeting head first into the issues and turning them on the head to enable it to be filed. I have done EMRDR therapy which helped a little enabling me to go back to work and have a reasonably constant life, its not perfect and is fully of bumps and divots but I am able to deal with the bumps and divots a bit easier. Trust is the hardest thing to gain for him as he will threat detect each person and we do gt sucked into helping the vunerable and don't always see the signs of someone taking advantage till its to late and as I said before it pushes one into their shell further. This is another thing a therapist will need to tackle to analyse certain events to make you see how that person "used" you and anylising the friendship to see where that point started to happen and try andlearn to spot it earlier on. Its not easy, you wil still find it happens again but you do become more cautious, the balance is the hardest thing to achieve. Alot of the problems I have today socially are due to the past so being able to come to terms with the past and file it will start to make a positive inpact on the future. Its not an easy thing and their will be times when he will think its pointless or he may get worse before he gets better the key thing he will need from you is the support and the "well get through this" and being honest.