A College Student Talks About Overcoming His Social Anxiety

This speech was delivered at the New York University Child Study Center Second Annual Child Advocacy Award Dinner honoring Tipper Gore on November 30, 1999:

I want to take a few moments to tell you why I am standing in front of you tonight.

Looking at it from the outside, I have had a pretty normal life. I grew up in New York, the son of two loving parents. I played little league, I took piano lessons, and I went to church on Sundays. I was a good student. In the sixth grade I started feeling different. I began to believe that I would not be liked by anybody. I also began to be very nervous and panicky around people. Fear became a major part of my life. Fear I would say the wrong thing in front of friends and teachers or that I might somehow embarrass and humiliate myself. My fear gradually intensified throughout junior high and high school. My desire to not let anyone see my nervousness became so dramatic that everything was pre-meditated. For me, every situation required extreme thought and calculation. I gave great thought to things that others would find routine -- how I moved from place to place, how I held a book or what I did with my hands. I had this overwhelming feeling that I was being watched and scrutinized with every move I made. I began to avoid anything that involved risk. If I wasn't doing anything, I couldn't screw up. If I was alone in my room, there was no risk involved and no fear of failure and embarrassment. My high school experience was four years of a non-risky routine. I never dated, I never spoke with anyone on the phone if it wasn't about homework, and Saturday nights might be spent at a movie with a friend. That was the extent of my social life. "Joel, why are you so quiet? Why don't you like to go to parties? Why don't you have a girlfriend?" I would hear people say these things and I would become so angry that people had discovered I wasn't normal. I found myself making excuses, the best of which was that I was trying to be a good student and those other normal kids were doing stupid things and I was reaching for a higher goal. The fact is, I really wanted to not be so quiet, to go to parties and to have a girlfriend, but I was too scared to risk failure. I began to believe that I was simply not meant to be a socially confident person and that everyone else was.

Every once in a while, I would have a burst of confidence and I tasted what it must feel like to be without fear. It made me realize that there was a different person trapped inside of me. A person I really liked. That there was a world out there that was not filled with fear and self-consciousness. When I felt confident, I was very likeable and outgoing and funny and, if I do say so myself, dangerously charming. But those moments would come and go and when they left, I didn't know how to get them back. The more I thought about getting them back, the more frustrated I became. I didn't know how to get there from here.

I graduated from high school in May of 1997 and entered NYU the following fall. I thought that perhaps my problems were high school and I was just going through a phase. Then I realized it was a really, really long phase. A new environment, new people and college life would somehow snap me out of this. At first, the initial excitement that things might be different helped. But soon the newness wore off and the fear that plagued me in high school was back in full force. But now I wasn't just a scared little kid, I was a scared adult. At NYU, there was no escape from the people who were living the lives I wanted to live. Everyday I saw guys and girls my age doing things I was too afraid to do - dating, going to parties, pledging fraternities and living active social lives. The jealousy I had of them was overwhelming. By the end of my freshman year, I began to actively search for a way to change my life and to stop being driven by my fears. Eastern meditative religions became very intriguing and I had serious thoughts about running away to a Zen monastery where I would not have to speak with anyone or interact with any one. Perhaps there, the anger and jealously I felt at NYU would be gone. As you can imagine, my Roman Catholic parents didn't think this was the best idea.