Bit of back story, from 14 to age 18 I was very confident, friends in school, playing in bands all over the place, I started very young and always felt invincible, had huge natural energy all the time. Talking to people gave me energy and I loved it. 

At 18 I went to music Uni and got hyperhidrosis, which completely fucked everything I had going. I suddenly couldn’t go and see people like I always did. It’s a condition where you sweat like 5 times as much in pressure situations which is crazy embarrassing. Mine was so bad that I looked like I came out the shower within 5 minutes.  Everything stopped, meeting people, my day to day activities, hobbies, girlfriends, working on myself, it was suddenly just a haze of worry. 

After Uni age 21 I moved to Manchester uk to try and forget about it, but I could only do very mundane tasks and stayed unemployed. 

I had about 5-6 years of doing almost everything indoors, I also ordered all my food shopping online, and got my mum to cut my hair to avoid barbers. It was a very bad patch in my life. 

I sorted my issue out last year finally medically, which is a miracle. So now to put it simply, I can return to social situations again. However, I think I’ve changed massively in this down period. 

I’m trying to return to social life again, but every time I go out, I don’t actually enjoy what we’re doing now, the people we are with, even trying to talk to girls, I just really really can’t be arsed with any of it anymore. I’m not the worst at meeting girls and that, but post condition me, seems to be much worse at this. Holding a conversation is harder, because I’m naturally less interested. And that leads me to feeling less confident also. 

I used to really enjoy talking to new people, but for some reason now I really don’t enjoy it anymore. It’s kind of sad because I’m now playing in a band again, however i don’t enjoy most of what we do.

We had a gig last night, and then we had a house party to go to afterwards. Gigs for me at the moment are crazy robotic, I show up, have a couple of drinks and make incredibly boring small talk with new people I don’t like, then play our set, then once we’ve finished playing all I can think about doing is going home and chilling out with a small selection of people like my best mates rather than a large group. Large groups where you don’t know a couple of people make me feel uneasy these days. 

I found myself leaving the party last night, by myself quite early on, and sadly most of me actually wanted to do that, it’s like I’d rather just be by myself now. I definitely still have a lot of social anxiety post condition but I can’t really understand why. 

 Deep down, I know that I still enjoy social activities,  but I feel as though I’ve potentially been changed too much by this condition to ever fully return to who I was before. 

I want to be who I used to be, but I’m just not that guy anymore potentially, I’m permanently scarred I think. 

It’s called ‘exposure therapy’ when you do something over and over until it’s good again. However it’s been almost a full year now of me trying to enjoy social stuff again, and I think I may just have to come to the realisation that I’m way more of an introvert now.