there's our catastrophe

work is its own cure. you have to like it better than being loved.

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Posts tagged social anxiety

May 7 2012

Oct 27 2011

There was a post on a social anxiety tumblr which basically went, ‘When I go to a nail salon and the person who’s doing my nails turns to a co-worker and start talking away and I start getting scared because I can’t understand what they’re saying.”

torayot:

I am tempted to say that it’s not social anxiety but racism.

I think it’s very probably both.  I see a lot of people trying to avoid interrogating their shitty behaviour because it’s interconnected with their mental illness and I’m super sick of it.   If you’re scared of people not speaking English, or speaking with an accent, or whatever, you can be both a) actually frightened and b) frightened because of your racism.  mental illnesses aren’t just some creature from the planet Zorg that take over your brain and fill it with weird shit, they work with the fears and ideas and preconceptions that are there.  and (because I just know someone is gonna go there): yes, I’ve lived with severe anxiety and panic attacks. 

side note: this is one reason why I think the debate over whether terms like “homophobia” or “xenophobia” are appropriative/slanderous of medical phobias is misguided.  people can and do have oppressive phobias.