1 | Introduction | 5/26/22

 I decided, after a little bit of thought, that it may be a good idea to give a bit of insight into what it's like to be cursed with severe social anxiety. I plan to mostly use this blog for the purpose of sharing wild events that happen in my day-to-day life, but also to kind of explain what being in my shoes is like.

I'll start with a bit of an introduction. I go by maniCARNY on the internet, but my real name is very much out in the open. I won't restate it here, you can find it on your own. I have been diagnosed with social anxiety, and have gone through therapy sessions for a year, starting in 2020 and ending in 2021. I left therapy mainly due to feeling I was officially "cured" from anxiety, and was ready to take the leads myself, but ironically, I also left because I was getting tired of mentally prepping myself to begin and get through each session. School had already been enough turmoil, and I was about ready to give myself a break.
Over the course of therapy, I learned how exactly my anxiety worked. I found out that I tended to overdramatize situations, whether it comes to sitting in the dentist's lobby, or thinking I said the wrong thing to my friend. I was offered many forms of self-treatment in order to deal with it, which all seemed to work well at the time. The main takeaway was: get through it, because it's not as bad as you think.
When I was diagnosed with anxiety by my doctor, she seemed hesitant to put me on the spectrum. My mother believed, though I was quick to deny it, that I was on the spectrum. I was just diagnosed with social anxiety, but I came to learn and accept that it may very well go beyond that.

I did a bit of research a few months ago, looking through the types of autism to see if any sounded like me, and sure enough, Kanner's syndrome matched me to a tee.
Kanner's syndrome is known as "classic autism", where people tend to have issues communicating and understanding others (very much me), avoiding eye contact (also me), and having hypersensitivity to stimuli (and of course, also me).
If you need proof:
- I tend to talk in almost robotic-like ways, where I usually repeat the same words over in response to different things, such as only saying "yeah" when someone is explaining something to me
- I can't easily understand tone, and so when someone types in a way that could be interpreted as aggressive, regardless of prior context, I will automatically assume the worst
- I always tend to move my eyes away from contact whenever the person I'm talking to breaks eye contact as well, though I tend to pay a lot more attention to it, and do it while the person is talking to me
- I very often get distracted by blinking lights in the corner of my eyes, and usually cover up the lights in order to avoid getting distracted. I also have astraphobia, which is a phobia of lightning. The sudden flash of lightning and the roaring boom of thunder scares me to the point of cowering under covers while blocking the noise out using headphones
I'm not officially diagnosed with Kanner's, and I don't really support self-diagnoses, but if a disorder matches you this closely, I feel it's only fair to categorize yourself under it.

Besides just anxiety, I also suffer from low self esteem. Basically, I don't think of myself very highly as a human. Instead of accepting that someone has made a bad move towards me, I find a way to pin the blame on myself as to seem like the other person is in the right. It's something I try to avoid doing when my brain is actually functional, but when I'm just stuck in a depressed mood, I will do anything to shoot myself down. Anything; even if it's grasping for straws.

When I was younger, specifically in late 2019, I went through a severe case of backstabbing and bullying from a group who I considered my friends. I was a little eccentric at that time, often fanaticizing fictional antagonists, and admittedly I was a bit of an asshole. Though, what those people did left a deep scar in me that still hasn't gone away. They called me "expendable", saying that if the group chat I was in (limited to 10 people) needed another person in, that I would essentially be the first one kicked out. I posted an image of a slightly suggestive image of one of my characters that I drew, trusting that they wouldn't make fun of me. Alas, for the next few months, they continually brought up the image, making fun of me for drawing it, and no matter how much I told them to drop it, they still brought it up. I begged and pleaded for them to stop. I dropped to the point of almost self-harming, seriously considering suicide. Luckily, due to my intense fear of pain and death, I never did anything like that to myself. Eventually, I confronted my best friend of the group, begging them to leave me alone. They finally dropped it after that, and I left the group chat, never to return. I was later re-invited into another group chat with much kinder and forgiving people, and for that, I appreciate them for taking me in, despite how weird and different I am.

Then, in mid 2020, I was manipulated for one straight year by a truly maniacal and deeply evil person. The ToyHouse community likely does not know of her, but the DeviantArt community might. I am going to keep her anonymous to those who don't know, but for reference to those who do, she was the creator of "Abience", a Springtrap and Deliah sequel.
She had me and a dozen other impressionable children believe that she was being harassed by her former friend. She had us searching, backing us into dead ends, searching for ways to stop this person. She offered for us to call the police in her area, but refused to give her address to us. She brought in the SaD creator, making them out to be a terrible person. She used a sockpuppet account to have us believe the SaD creator actually hated the Abience creator, but in reality, it was her behind it. She was behind the almost whole harassment campaign. She even possibly manipulated people into harassing children, believing that we were the bad people. She created a war, and it ended in her demise. She is a disgusting piece of cretin and I hope to never see her manipulating people like that ever again.
This sparked the most intense hatred I have ever had for one person. At the time, I entered another depressed state, where I was so worn out that I wanted to leave. I finally did leave after enough time, and felt excluded from that point on. It was lucky for some of the people in the server to come back and talk to me. They are still my friends to this day, one of them even being my boyfriend. In a way, I'm almost glad it happened.

That's my basic introduction. Nothing eventful has happened in the past few days, besides a dentist appointment this Monday where I had a filling done. I won't get into too much detail, but a lot went wrong during it, and I ended up crying during it. I used laughing gas as to make me feel more relaxed during it, but neither machine they used worked, and I felt like the dentists didn't believe me when I told them it wasn't working. If my mouth had been covered, I would've suffocated right there. The rest went well, fortunately.

I probably won't write every single day, just any days that are especially significant. I'll try to put in as much detail as to how I felt in the moment, as to give a stronger perspective on what it's like living with anxiety.
This is just the beginning. Get ready to go on my adventure along with me.