LIFE AS A SOCIALLY ANXIOUS EXTROVERT

September 26, 2026 - Published

[Hey, I'm not one to post publicly about things that are this personal, but I figured it would be helpful to some people since I've seen very few firsthand experiences on it. Also, this particular issue of mine does not happen to be incredibly secret. Everyone notices it the first time they meet me lol]

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Since I was young, my parents labelled me as "shy."

There was no reason to think that this label was incorrect. If anything, I seemed unnaturally shy.

I would avoid interactions at parties, I would sit alone at recess, and I would make very few friends at school. What better label could there be?

Being shy, being introverted, and eventually, being socially anxious, were all viewed as essentially different flavors of the same thing. However, they really aren't. Social anxiety is a mental illness, while the other two are personality traits. This is important to understand because it's completely possible to have a mental illness at odds with your personality.

This might sound incredibly obvious to some people, but since the understanding of mental health is still evolving, there's a surprising number of people that haven't wrapped their heads around this yet.

I would personally compare it to someone who loves staying active with sports but has trouble getting out of bed due to depression, or an early bird who prefers sleeping early but has trouble managing sleep because they have ADHD. In the same way, I love social interaction and being surrounded by people, but my social anxiety prevents me from doing so.

Social anxiety is something that most people have a good general idea of, because it does share a lot of traits with shyness. People with social anxiety will have a lot of fear involving social situations, getting attention, embarrassing themselves, etc. However, there's another aspect that a lot of people don't understand.

Many people will ask me what I'm afraid of when I'm being "shy," but the truth is that there's usually not anything specific at all. Some people call social anxiety "social phobia," and this makes it much easier to explain, because I can compare it to a different phobia, like arachnophobia.

How do you think someone with arachnophobia would feel if they had spiders crawling on them?

You can try as you like, but nothing you can say would stop them from being afraid. You can tell them that the spiders are harmless. You can tell them that the spiders won't hurt them. But spiders are crawling on them. Do you even need to ask why they're afraid?

Get it? Cool. Social situations are spiders to me.

If I try to look someone in the eyes, spiders are crawling on me. If I try to order food at a restaurant, spiders are crawling on me. If I have to excuse myself to go to the bathroom, spiders are crawling on me.

Most of the time, I am not afraid of embarrassment, or humiliation, or messing up publicly in front of a crowd of people. The activities that most often give me trouble are perfectly normal and accepted social behaviors that have very little risk of messing up. I am afraid of social situations because I have a phobia of social situations.

So, for years, this social anxiety caused me to have a lot of behaviors resembling a shy and introverted personality. It wasn't even until very recently that this was called into question, and I would trace the trend back to when I first started interacting with people online.

While I definitely still had some of that anxiety carry over online, I noticed that it was much, much easier to talk to people, and in that arose a desire to talk to people. For once in my life, I didn't have to worry about how I looked, how to emote properly, how to look people in the eyes, what to say, how to say it, when to speak, how long to figure out responses...

SO much of what plagued me in real life was suddenly gone, and I could just take the time to express what I wanted to say without worrying about every little thing -- and it turned out that I wanted to talk a LOT.

My parents didn't pick up on this until they took me to my first Smash Bros. tournament, where they were shocked at how well I was able to talk to people. I personally didn't feel terribly different -- I was mostly just there to play games -- but I can't imagine how it'd feel to see your child, who had trouble talking to a fast food worker, walk into an entire active building of complete strangers and have no issues communicating.

Over time, I became closer to my online friends and have regular conversations, manually figuring out how typical conversations flowed, even asking for tips on how to communicate or reach out to people. Eventually, we began to have voice chats, group hangouts, and more.

One day, one of my friends mentions that I'm an extrovert like it's obvious. At first, I shrug it off. That's silly, of course I'm not. Maybe I act a bit more extroverted online, but I'm definitely still an introvert, especially if you've seen me in real life, I tell them.

...Of course, I was the one that ended up being wrong. I would say there are 2 primary definitions of "extrovert," and I currently consider myself as fitting both definitions.

The first definition is the more common I hear, that being along the lines of "someone who is unreserved, loves talking, and seeks out large busy social situations." When I'm comfortable around people, this is very much me -- when I think about it, there isn't even that much difference between online and offline.

Before, I thought this couldn't be me, but only because I didn't have many people around me where I became so comfortable that my social anxiety wouldn't kick in. I love talking for long periods of time, hanging out in groups, and can sometimes even be the one pushing for social events to occur.

The second definition is one I've heard more often recently, being pushed as the "correct" definition by some people. Simply put, "extroverts are people who gain energy by being around people." If I'm with people I'm comfortable around, this is always the case for me, no matter how talkative I feel like being that day. Because of that, I would actually consider this definition to be more correct for me if I had to choose.

Though, am I really still an extrovert if these definitions only apply when I'm comfortable? Well, that could be up for debate, but I've met many introverts who are still introverted even when comfortable. The issue for me is the fact that my social anxiety counters these definitions almost directly when I'm not comfortable.

Personally, I feel social anxiety tiring me out a lot when I'm in uncomfortable situations. If I have to constantly micromanage and think about everything I'm doing and saying, then that takes a lot of energy out of me, even if I normally gain energy when being around people.

Similarly, being around people I don't know well reduces my ability to talk by a lot. If I hit a topic that resonates with me, I can find words coming out easily, but that's generally rare because I'm also constantly worrying about what types of people the listeners are and how they would receive certain types of information.

Extroversion is a spectrum, and my situation is very complicated, but I don't think it's unreasonable to call myself an extrovert. I think I can also say that being a socially anxious extrovert... is really hard!!

I saw someone online call it "the worst of both worlds," and it really is an unfortunate situation to crave social interaction so strongly and yet also be terrified of it. However, if you're in a similar situation, just know that it's not doomed. Social anxiety is ultimately a mental illness, which means that it's curable, unlike personality traits and neurodevelopmental conditions.**

It took me years, but I'm now in a wonderful spot where I have online and offline friends, people I can talk with and hang out with. I have social skills I've developed through immense effort, and even if it can sometimes be tiring to use them, they've been incredibly helpful in all aspects of my life.

I still have struggles a lot of the time, but they're not impossible to work through. Even though it's a bit more rare to be a socially anxious extrovert, there's a surprising amount of help you can find just due to the fact that a lot of advice directed towards introverts will still apply to you.

You might have to do some research, you might have to reach out to others, you might even have to do therapy -- I sure had to. But in the end, I do think all the effort was well worth it. And I'm sure you would too!

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** I worded this sentence a bit funny because I have to make this extra clear -- autism is not a mental illness and I am NOT on the side of the people who want to "cure" it. There are other mental disabilities classified as neurodevelopmental conditions (e.g. ADHD) that are considered to not really be "curable," but autism specifically has had (and is still having) a massive amount of harm to a large number of people because of the misunderstanding that it "must be cured" -- though despite using the word "misunderstanding," there are definitely cases where it may be fueled by some type of malevolence.

Despite this, I still found it necessary to emphasize that social anxiety is a curable illness, because there is a point where it can be improved to the point that it is no longer a disorder. This is something that's not possible for a lot of disorders! The fact that a crippling condition I have can be cured is something that gave me a lot of hope, so I did want to make sure that was mentioned in here for anyone else it may bring hope to as well.

However, please PLEASE let me know if anything in this article was worded incorrectly in this aspect. Since this article is focused on mental health from the perspective of someone with disabilities, I don't want it to be inaccurate or come across as ableist.