My life is a table. Yes, you read that right. Not a list, format, or structure, but a flat wooden slab with four legs attached. I’ve become quite attached to this table, so much so that it’s become the very essence of my life. This table’s seen a lot. It’s witnessed moments of laughter, countless awkward Teams calls, and varying productive ones. It’s been a site of eating, watching, editing, researching, and many many tears. It might as well have a name by this point because the majority of my life is spent with this table, my closest confidant. Yet it’s not because I’m working unnecessarily, I mean I have been, but really, this table represents more than that. The table has become the place where I’ve been trying to become someone else. I’ve spent so much time at the bloody thing that I’ve forgotten how to live. The biggest joke of all is that it doesn’t even belong to me. I’d been working seven days a week, juggling different facets of life. As soon as the working week finished it would simply be replaced with a different kind of work for the weekend ahead. I had lived like this for years as many of us do, but I began to feel entrapped by the cycle of aspiring to become someone different. I started to dread every weekend rather than looking forward to it as I once had. Things had shifted and changed and I realised that I’d been chasing a dream that had left me in a state of mere existence. In the process of chasing what I thought I wanted so much, I missed out on so much. I was stressed and rushed away from my nan’s 80th birthday party earlier this year as I needed to get home to complete an assignment. I turned down seeing friends because I had to work on an edit. I didn’t get to see someone I love before it was too late as I was tied down with deadlines. All the while I loyally returned to the table, my habitat for trying to be the person I wanted to be. Summer ‘22 – Exam season Even now as I’m sitting here at the table, I’ve realised that I actually detest it as it’s a symbol of want and trying. It’s not a friend or a family member, it’s not an experience. It just represents work and stress. When I became unwell a couple of months ago I took a step back from everything for a while which led me to realise that there has to be more to life than this. We are told that we should work hard and aim high, but goal-orientated table life doesn’t do that. It just consumes you, and you reach a point where you’ve not seen your loved ones for weeks or sometimes months. Only last week my partner lost one of his closest loved ones quite suddenly. That was the moment when we both realised that things needed to change. None of us are getting any younger and for as long as we are trying to reach the next goal or thing, we neglect to live in the here and now. We miss out on experiencing things and neglect to spend time with the people who matter the most. I did this. I lost myself to a dream that I had been following for years. Once I achieved that dream, I couldn’t settle with it and just wanted more. This burnt me out, leaving me to only see life through one lens. Progression, aspiration, achievement.. I was awarded achievement. It was there tenfold yet I couldn’t just sit with it. When I achieved my undergraduate degree I celebrated, yet promptly enrolled for a masters and was already thinking about a PhD. When I co-authored a paper that became published this year, I was straight onto the next potential opportunity to be seen as a researcher. When my photography transcended from social media posts to be on sale in a shop, I didn’t tell anyone. I knew that these things were all achievements but I couldn’t fully enjoy them. How can we be happy with what we have when we are continuously seeking more? Be who you are If you enjoy your table life, that’s one thing, but if you are in a situation like this and you have come to resent it, then it might be time to rethink. Life doesn’t just have to be about big achievements and goals. I’ve known people whose legacy has been about who they were, making people laugh – being one hell of a character. Does anyone remember those who had a fancy title or a shelf of trophies and certificates? Unless we’re talking of someone in the public eye it’s highly unlikely. There is nothing wrong with having a goal or something to work towards, but when it takes over your life to the extent that you begin to see it as work, drudge, and something that you have to do rather than want to do, then it might be time to step back. Even if just for a little while. It seems to me I could live my life, a lot better than I think I am.. Rush – Working Man With or without a table in your life, life itself is hard work. Whether you have a big objective or not, what I have learnt over the last few years is that you are enough without trying to become something different. You may not like what that difference is, or worse still it may not even happen. But what can happen is in the here and now, living for the moment and enjoying a life of being with the people who matter. Walking away from something that was my dream for so long hasn’t been easy, and at times, really hurts. But I’ve realised that I don’t want to keep yearning for that next goal, next certificate, continuously trying to be something else. One day I may return to the world I was seeking, but with a new attitude, once I’ve healed from the burnout I’ve led myself to over the last ten years. A lesson from this is that it won’t be about trying to find a new identity, trying to fit in, or continuously pushing myself away from who I really am. Now I know that it’s ok to leave that mindset behind. It’s time to start living.

Social media. Whether you love it, loathe it or have mixed feelings towards it, we cannot avoid it. It feels as though everyone has some sort of presence in the ever-increasing digital world and its currency of likes, followers and other attention based metrics. But for some of us, it can be just as anxiety provoking as interactions within the offline world. Here’s a situation I’m sure many of us have been in at some point… You spend some time thinking about something you may want to post online. You’ve spent hours carefully crafting your work. You’re feeling confident with it and you are finally ready to share it. So you hit that ‘tweet’ or share button to send it off into the world, and then there’s everything else after… Yet nothing happens. Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile on Pexels.com An hour or more passes by. The view counter increases but no one wants what you have shared. The like counter remains stuck at zero. Suddenly you are struck with an overwhelming feeling of dread, shame and perhaps even embarrassment… ‘I got it so wrong’, ‘That was so stupid of me’ or even ‘I’m a failure’. Truthfully speaking… Everyone likes to say that they ‘aren’t bothered’ about likes, but the truth is that most of us welcome this feedback. It feels good to know that other people like who you are or what you have to share with the world. To receive no likes is a negative reinforcement. It instils in us the belief that we are not very good or that people don’t like us. It reduces the likelihood of us doing it again. After all, calling the metric a ‘like’ infers that the opposite action is a ‘dislike’, surely? There is a world of taboo and stigma that exists surrounding this issue. Firstly, to be seen as someone who wants attention has held negative connotations since the label ‘attention seeker’ came into play. So we might feel insecure about not receiving likes, but we cannot talk about it because to do so we put ourselves into the discursive category of being an ‘attention seeker’. Photo by Larissa Farber on Pexels.com The attention economy… But the digital world is mired in an attention economy. Attention is the very thing that enables us to succeed because in this age, we need to be visible. For those of us with disabilities and severe social anxiety, careers and work opportunities are just not set up for us. Many of us need to find paid work, but paid work is inherently social. Paid work values extroversion and face-to-face contact. Unless you’re a well established tech expert or digital nomad, the chances are you are going to need to earn through a mask. A mask that completely exhausts you on top of the general duties required of a job. So is it any wonder that we have a huge community of neurodiverse freelancers out there? It’s the only way for us to survive that provides us with the autonomy to work remotely, flexibly and without being enforced into the neurotypical conformity that saturates the contemporary job market. So we need to get online, and we need to become visible. In other words, we need attention and that includes likes. Being an attention seeker isn’t merely about self-indulgence, for many of us it’s survival. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com The problem for those of us with social anxiety is that putting ourselves out there can be just as difficult as applying for a job or going into a meeting with potential new clients. In fact, it can be worse. The meeting in the boardroom might only be witnessed by one or two others, but that tweet with your latest article or piece of art is seen by thousands, perhaps more. There’s so much pressure to get it right. To develop resilience we have to pretend that we don’t care – and above all, we can never openly say that we do. But we do care. Our digital footprints and the world of screenshots leave a permanent trace of what we put out there. Not to mention algorithms. One erroneous move online and you’re out of the game for an unknown time frame. So we have societal judgements about attention seeking, technical features that leave visibility permanent and algorithms that can remove our visibility altogether. Is it any wonder why social anxiety is so prevalent in the online world? It’s a precarious world, and the attention economy doesn’t play fair. It doesn’t care whether people are disabled or disadvantaged in some way. Those trying to earn an income online, are seen as crass or self-indulgent. Yet those are the very people who perhaps need the most visibility. We don’t have wealth or the option to find fully remote work – employers don’t really want people like us. We don’t have capital, the only capital that is possible for us is that of attention, that of becoming visible and hoping that we can make our livelihood through this. ‘Out there’ – ©L. Barrett Whether you are introverted or someone with extreme social anxiety, this act of putting ourselves out there continuously can take its toll. This need to be visible is a complete paradox when we spend much of our lives attempting to be less visible to others. It can make us feel like a commodity, as though we are attempting to be something we are not. The important lesson is that we can still be ourselves. It just might take longer to be seen. Especially when we are not conforming to the social norms of social media. But norms are flexible and as with rules, they can too be broken. It takes people to come together and be in the right place at that right time, but one day we will hopefully begin to be seen in the right way. For who we are and not solely based on some algorithmic win. So, next time you share a post that doesn’t gain attention, know that it’s ok to feel upset about this. You wouldn’t deny yourself of this if you received negative feedback offline. It’s your work. It doesn’t make you selfish or a narcissist and it’s valid to care about ‘likes’ or lack of them. Attention is something that we need to financially survive in this world. We need to step away from the stigma that ‘just for likes’ is just something that self-indulgent people do. Because unless you’ve already made it in this world, most of us aren’t just using social media for fun or leisure. It’s survival. (This article was originally published on Psychreg on 07/01/2023) If you’re interested in this topic, feel free to get in touch or come and chat with us on Twitter.

The blog post I’m sharing tonight isn’t what I had planned, but it’s been such a nice day. I think that it’s good to acknowledge that when we live in such cold and difficult times. It actually started in a onesie (does anyone even wear them anymore?). Today we walked, talked and enjoyed the more gentle routine that we’ve now found for ourselves. Since I stepped back from some big life commitments last week, it’s been such a relief to find time for ourselves again. It’s nice to have space to think. Usually, I would be sharing edited shots on Twitter but it seems a bit broken right now. I’ve realised of late that you don’t have to be perfect, nor do you need to perform. So here they are in blog form, unedited, fresh and just there in the moment… Enjoy x Always hiding from something or someone.. A bit last season.. Tall trees It started snowing seconds after this was taken.. This was an interaction I could handle.. If you made it to the end and want to watch some of the walk (without talk), look no further..

It’s the morning of New Year’s Eve. I’ve woken up with all sorts of thoughts running through my mind, reflecting on everything that has happened over this last year. And what a year 2022 has been. We’ve gone from a pandemic crisis to a cost of living crisis, to personal struggles and personal endings. It’s not all been bad, but when we live in such times it can be difficult to see beyond the immediate difficulties that we face. We tend to hold onto the things that really hurt us, which can prevent us from seeing the happy moments. So what I would love for you to do once you have read this, is a simple thing. Look back through the photos you have taken this year. I recently did this for our end of year review blog over on Made in Pembs. It’s amazing how a picture can reframe how you feel. Here are some of my own personal favourites… Hiding Wild horses Somewhere in Bath The woodlands are our hideout Visiting Old Sarum Meeting Ruby: I’ve adopted Ruby for two years now. I finally got to meet her this year. One of our many road trips. It got this close.. My brother’s wedding. We watched their vows from a storage cupboard. The boat trip. There was only one this year, say no more.. Cycling is our sanctuary. Can’t wait to get back out in ’23.. In the heatwave. We went inland in hope that it would be cooler and quieter.. Saying goodbye to Taylor. I have this tattoo in his honour. Through Taylor’s legacy, I found Rush. So that’s a few of my favourites, all sorts of emotions but it’s good to look back in this way. It’s been a tough year, but not all bad. So, now it’s your turn. Go and do this one simple thing. Check back through your photos and see how many memories you have made. Solidarity for 2023 x All photos are property of Laura Barrett ©2022, Jon Thrower ©2022 and Aunty Social World ©2022.

Someone recently asked me to describe what help I needed for my social anxiety. My answer was simple, ‘I don’t need help, I just need choice’. For so many of us, living with social anxiety is something that is part of the everyday. We plan everything we do that involves ‘out there’ and ‘others’ meticulously, whether that be going for a walk at a quiet time of day, or finding our way through an unexpected social interaction such as weather talk with the neighbour. It’s an exhausting and often veiled existence in a world that prides itself on physical togetherness. Anything outside of this is deemed a psychological problem, but are we truly that problem, or is this perhaps more a reflection of a societal problem that does not accept how we want to live? From an evolutionary perspective, we are well known to be social animals. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, media discourses were largely fixated around the impact of social isolation where those who experienced loneliness had the most dominant voices. This is one perspective and a valid one, but there are other narratives out there. Being social doesn’t mean having to be around someone in person. Personally, I find in person or face to face interaction extremely difficult, but I don’t perceive this as a problem until the point where it is imposed on me as one. Where we live in a social world that continuously pushes us into unwanted and forced social situations, we are then told that we are ‘anti-social’, ‘difficult’, ‘rude’ or even ‘hostile’ for resisting these situations. This transcends across multiple contexts, including work, education and many other realms of life. There are a plethora of political actors who push the rhetoric of ‘face to face is best’ in these contexts. But for who is this truly benefiting, and more to the point who is being given the choice? Choice.. Choice is the central problem when it comes to societal attitudes towards those with social anxiety. For those who enjoy taking part in face to face activities, the choice factor doesn’t register, as their own preferences and needs are naturally met. Yet for those who would prefer to not engage in face to face interactions, choice is pertinent. Choice is also absent. Where we have to ask permission to be ‘excused’ from social and professional contexts, and are faced with debate, argument and then made to feel guilty for not wanting to partake, this emphasises how we are not permitted choice, because it is not about our needs. In-person vs remote has been a pressing debate over recent years, such as the ‘back to the office’ and pro face to face learning rhetoric. Personally, I think that both perspectives are equally as valid, but we do need choice. We live in the digital era, which has only made choice more possible than ever before. It doesn’t need to be a dichotomy, digital experiences and connections are equally as valid from my perspective. I can go a number of months without seeing a friend in person, yet we speak every day online. There is always an alternative method for social interaction. We just need to set down our battle sticks and start to accept individual differences. By doing so this will allow choice, put an end to a debate that is going nowhere, and help us to see that it isn’t about being together or apart. It is more to do with tolerance surrounding the ways that we prefer to be together. There will always be instances of mismatch, such as where one person’s need clashes with another person’s want. The issue lies where a face to face interaction is imposed or forced, without consideration of alternatives. In such situations, it would be helpful to distinguish between need and want, where one person’s mere preference could result in another person’s sheer distress. Returning to the initial question asked surrounding my own social anxiety. What could be more helpful for myself and many others, is to change the way we target those who want less face to face interaction as being difficult, and become advocates of choice. By doing so this may be a remedy for social anxiety, along with a happier, healthier and more productive society.