I'm with you Leni. Although I do sometimes get brave enough to speak to new people, or people I hardly know, I often feel rejected by them. The curse of the socially anxious is we remember every rejection, or time we said something dumb, quite vividly. I remember going to an after school gathering, getting into a conversation with another parent, all good, feeling pleased I was managing to hold up my end of the conversation just fine, then someone else came and sat beside us and they turned to them like I'd just turned invisible. So I spoke to someone else, same thing happened moments later. I feel like people will talk to me only if there's no one else to talk to. Many people wouldn't even notice if this happened to them, I'm sure, but to the socially anxious, you may as well have slapped us in the face. I suspect many have no clue the person their talking to is anxious, so don't make any allowance for our inner turmoil.

And I don't really expect anyone to make any allowances for my inner turmoil tbh. They could well be dealing with s**t I don't know anything about that I'm not making any allowances for either, because I don't know about it.

Tbh, my symptoms are more physical than mental. Not that I don't have insecurities about the social interaction but those I can rationalize. It makes it suck all the more if I get into a panic attack because it seems to come from nowhere and has little to do with the people I'm talking to at that moment.