Leading Light

Member Testimonial

admin — Fri, 20 May 2011 07:44:33 +0000

“I think its a nice group. which no much people and it has a good acknowledment and platform to comabat Social Anxiety”

Nick Hanlon – SA West – Social Anxiety Bristol

admin — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 15:01:20 +0000

Nick Hanlon. BBC Interview on Social Anxiety

Nick Hanlon is an inspiration to me, he is the facilitator the Social Anxiety West self help group in Bristol.

I first attended his sessions back in 2005, (after two and half years of attempting to go). I was extremely terrified when I got out of my car that Monday evening and walked towards the doors of the Redland Library. As soon as I walked in, Nick welcomed me with a warm smile, I felt safe, I felt safe in the fact that there were five others in this group who all got how I felt. It was a great feeling. I highly recommend seeking a social anxiety self help group in your area.

Please listen to Nick’s interview with BBC Radio Bristol, I can guess that Nick still pinches himself when being on radio as he could never do this before! Well done to you mate!

Social Anxiety: Mad For Dance

admin — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 16:23:51 +0000

Short film about Social Anxiety Disorder.

‘Emma has always suffered from social anxiety disorder. Friends finally persuaded her to join a street dance class to build her confidence.’

Member Testimonial

Leading-Light — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 12:37:10 +0000

”A great opportunity for people to socialise and share experiences in a safe, friendly, non-pressurised, non-judgemental environment. ”

— on Aug 17, 2010.

Member Testimonial

Leading-Light — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:49:39 +0000

“ Coming to this group regularly has made such a profound change to my life (for the better, of course!). I always feel positive and more confident after each session. Members are friendly and supportive. To all newcomers and doubters: this really is the best way (and I’ve tried quite a few) to overcome anxieties, take back control and move forward. And, Steve and Ken are very wise, inspiring and genuinely caring chaps… ”

— on Jul 30, 2010.

Member Testimonial

Leading-Light — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:51:57 +0000

“ Everyone is very welcoming and supportive. It’s a great place to start facing your fears in the company of other people who know how you feel. There’s no pressure to talk or do anything so I strongly recommend to anyone that hasn’t come yet because they are feeling too anxious to just give it a go I’m so happy that I found this fantastic group! ”

— on Jul 15, 2010.

University of Westminster Final Show and Social Anxiety

Leading-Light — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:09:40 +0000

I went to a final degree show for a number of universities last night in the fashionable east-end area of Brick Lane. Olmo Reverter, one of the student’s exhibiting his work decided to collaborate with Leading Light to create awareness on social anxiety disorder.

6 Members of the group, including myself. decided to participate in the exhibit by having our photo taken in black and white and to accompany each piece would be a short audio from each person talking about their personal experiences.

I was quite anxious coming along to the exhibit to see my own picture, but once I was there I felt at ease. I totally feel like I have come a long way in my personal development as I was actually ok with the sound of my own voice, something that I have had trouble with for a lot of my life.

About the project: Social Anxiety Disorder

This project endeavours to dispel some of the stigma surrounding Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) by presenting stories of people affected. Their portraits give an insight into the mind of a SAD sufferer by showing their vulnerability. They attempt to illustrate what their faces alone cannot tell; the deep-rooted fear imprinted by a disorder of inhibition, fear and avoidance. A SAD sufferer will typically shrink into the background and slip from societies view.

Social Anxiety Disorder is a crippling feeling of intense, uncontrollable fear of being judged and ridiculed in social situations. It is the third most common mental disorder only behind depression and alcoholism. Sufferers will feel that whatever they do, they will humiliate themselves in front of other people. Even if those with the disorder realise their fears are irrational and unwarranted, the anxiety itself is no less hard to control.

These debilitating emotions can produce panic attacks and lead to clinical depression. People will often seek to limit and withdraw from social situations as a means of avoiding the terror they’re subjected to each time they’re confronted with human interaction. This can have a devastating impact on lifestyles, relationships and careers.

Sufferers can often seek to self-medicate with alcohol or other drugs in an attempt to suppress the symptoms.

As with most conditions, early detection and diagnosis make treatment much more effective. Unfortunately people withstand a lot of needless suffering from the disorder and only receive treatment when they finally seek medical help for resultant substance abuse problems or clinical depression.

Social anxiety disorder is commonly treated with a form of psychotherapy known as cognitive behavioural therapy. This changes patients’ thought patterns in social situations, then the behavioural element re-trains patients how to react to the anxiety triggered in these situations. Anti-depressant and tranquilising drugs are also prescribed in conjunction with counselling.

When asked how she felt about speaking to people who’ve never experienced a mental disorder, one SAD sufferer said “I am passionate about fighting the stigma of mental distress in society, but I know it is a battle that has to be taken from the personal to the public to get people talking.” This project aims to help do that.

Social Anxiety by Rockman: Part 4

Leading-Light — Thu, 27 May 2010 07:28:45 +0000

We’re heading to another Bank Holiday Weekend where most of the people are looking forward to a long weekend spent enjoying all the world has to offer, to me it causes more dread than excitement. Firstly there is the odd offer to go somewhere, which you have to find an excuse not to do, you just say yes and then have to explain politely why you didn’t make it afterwards. Then if there isn’t one you have the trauma of three days at home, watching the same four walls and wondering how you will occupy the next 15 minutes without feeling totally rejected and forgotten by everyone, but that was the plan wasn’t it!

It’s bad enough on most normal weekends, 48 hours of my own company is now about 47 too many but it does mean I’ll be free of my Social Anxiety for those hours. It also means my depression will kick in and the battle will continue until some time about 1 am on the Sunday night, when I finally retire to bed feeling guilty that I’ve wasted another weekend, sad that I have to go to work in the morning, grateful that I have to go to work in the morning and depressed that once again I’ve not managed to beat the cycle, and then comes the anxiety that I will have to leave my safe haven in the morning to travel to work. Once again it’s going to be a sleepless night.

Since joining the Leading Light Group my weekends have been much better, with the social get togethers and other events I have found I have at least something to aim at, something that I may dislike doing but if it means helping breaking the cycle and in the process making some new friends then it is all worth my while.

I honestly don’t think that people that don’t have Social Anxiety, Shyness or Depression could ever relate to what I’ve just written, and I wouldn’t blame them, weekends are times to let rip, be free, do as you wish, be your true self. Being Socially Anxious/Shy means you temper that and put it away, you don’t ever, you can watch it and enjoy others, on the times you actually attend things, but unless you have a beer or three you don’t, and I don’t want just to be a beer player, I want to enjoy the things myself without that. If I always have to have a beer is it me? Or Beer Me? Can I operate without one, or it that my walking stick? How many makes me funny, and how many makes me embarrassing? Without question I have had some really nice nights out, the shame being is that I was too drunk to remember any of them, but others did and will remember me dancing on a table or going to help behind a bar or dressing up in make up! All these stories are true but sadly I only remember bits and pieces and mostly not good, just me feeling like a complete idiot and I’ve lost a lot of friends or potential friends by just hiding away after a rather shameful night!

Back to this weekend, which was of course the whole point of this blog, yes I’m still dreading it, but I know I have some outlets. No nothing I can attend is planned, but I can still visit the site and post an message or two. I’ve gotten to know a couple of the people really well and could always have a chat, I can always email one or two of them just to ‘get it off my chest’. I know it’s not perfect, but I know these people understand, they’ve been there, and nothing but nothing is to silly for them. They have all been there and have their own stories, and understand what I am going through, and even if they can’t understand directly they have their own stories and know we’re not alone.

So I’m now not dreading the Bank Holiday too much now, you have no need to either, take that first step, yes it’s the hardest or second hardest, the first was when you knew you suffered from Social Anxiety, Shyness, or Depression, and you decided to do something about it.

All the best

Rockman

Ruby Wax “Losing it”

Leading-Light — Mon, 24 May 2010 17:57:16 +0000

On Sunday my girlfriend and I went to see Ruby Wax and Judith Owen perform their show “Losing it” at Richmond Theatre.

The show was based on Ruby Wax’s life, going from the “loser” at school to fame and fortune, to depression. She had the house of her dreams, a devoted husband and three children yet she felt lost in her life, and as she often mentioned “I didn’t have a manual”.

Judith Owen made a fine musical sidekick as she broke out into song after every monologue performed by Ruby. Judith had an incredible voice and played beautifully on the piano.

I laughed a lot but it was also incredibly moving, there was a good mixture of humour and serious messages throughout, it was a roller coaster of emotions.

Ruby was definately on top form and it is really refreshing to see that she is so open about her mental health issues. Although things are shifting, there still is a massive stigma towards mental health issue. Ruby added that if she had a broken leg she would get heaps of get well soon cards, but when she went to the Priory Clinic to treat her depression she didn’t get any.

Steve Light

Social Anxiety by Rockman: Part 3

Leading-Light — Sun, 23 May 2010 07:56:48 +0000

There is not one thing that made me anxious, shy or depressed, nothing I could point out and say that was when I knew, it was something which just took hold and seemed to grow with time. I sometimes think that the three are linked and I’m shy because I’m Socially Anxious and depressed because I’m shy, or it could be I’m anxious because I get depressed and shy because I’m anxious, I’ve yet to put them in a order that I’m 100% happy with. Like many others I at first just thought I was very shy and that’s why I avoided certain situations, the sweating raised heart rate and sometime dizzy spells were put down to me just about worrying about meeting new people.

It was only after my first real serious bout of depression that I began to delve deeper into all of it really. I had some pretty dark days and felt that I could talk to very few people and certainly couldn’t trust them with this sort of information, so I kept it to myself and took the hit the bottle route, which I now find isn’t too uncommon either. Of course this didn’t solve a thing and in fact made me more introverted and isolated as I now needed privacy more so I could hide my drinking habits as well as my anxiety, shyness & depression issues. The internet was a double edged sword for me, in one respect it meant that I still had contact with people and it didn’t really matter that I didn’t really know them and it could have all been an act, that’s pretty true in real life too. It fed my social contact yearning with me having to venture no further than my keyboard, and I was also a lot better ‘typing’ to people than I had ever been talking to them. It got to a stage where I was a member of numerous forums and about three or four chat-rooms, I was so much regular at some of these that I was made a monitor of six of them and this sounded wonderful, I thought I was accepted and once again this led to me withdrawing away from real contact. It soon became apparent that what this really meant was that I was reading six forums in completeness and didn’t have that much time to post myself and I was losing even that contact, this in turn led to me having another bout of depression and once again trying to drink my way out of it, that meant that I couldn’t really monitor any of the forums and soon had to leave them. The drinking also meant that every once in a while I would post some silly remark or some nonsense in one of the chat rooms, or on a few occasions I just couldn’t remember a thing about what I may have put.

I would then just leave the site and go join another one. After a few years of this type of behaviour I was getting to a stage where I couldn’t remember if I had been a member before or not and was re-joining sites, in some cases for a third time, it was also at this time that I was nearly completely a hermit and if it wasn’t for work I wouldn’t leave the house but I needed my job and the money it provided me for booze and internet connection. I remember clearly that twice I had a week off work and in the whole time only saw one other person and he was the fellow who delivered my internet shopping, consisting mainly of beer & whiskey & micro-wave meals.

It wasn’t a way to live and any invites that I used to shun were now well and truly stopped as people just had about given up asking and being refused, then disaster struck me and my internet went down and wouldn’t be repaired for a week. I now had two choices the first being just sitting around doing nothing but watching television and surviving on what I had left in my freezer, the second was to actually go out shopping and meeting people interacting with shopkeepers and checkout people. That is when just how deeply my anxiety had taken root and it was a wake up call and I took a long hard look at what I was doing with my life and what I wanted to do with the rest of it. I tried at first to do things on my own as I had always done, but this wasn’t very successful and so I turned back to the internet and searched for other means of help, finally I came upon a meet-up site and joined a couple, but although I would say I was going to this event or that and sometimes paying in advance for them but the time the day came I would find some excuse not to go, or I would head off but the closer I got the more anxious I would become until I would turn around and head home.

I finally thought enough was enough and searched for something that could really help and found a self-help Social Anxiety, Shyness & Depression Group and after a couple of failed attempts I finally managed to make one of the meetings. It was like taking a breath of fresh air after being locked up for years, it opened my eyes to how many people suffer from social anxiety and what a range of people too, from all walks of life. It also helped that finally I could talk to people who could understand where I was coming from and relate to it, it was also good in some strange sense, to hear their stories and see that I wasn’t quite the freak that I thought I was, but the best thing was to see how far some of them had gone and were now able to converse with strangers, okay maybe they still felt anxious but they were dealing with it and so could I.

That was a few months ago and since then I have been enjoying life a lot more, I’m not very far down the path but rather than just looking at the route I am now on my way and each step and each meeting is rewarding in themselves, if only for the small moments where I can talk and open up to similar minded people.