anxiety

Party-Going Tips For Shy, Anxious Introverts

Kate Sloan
Hanging out with Jaymz Bee at a jazz loft party in 2015.

Content note: This post will touch on social anxiety, alcohol, and drugs.

Parties are simultaneously the bane of my existence and some of my most looked-forward-to events. I’m sure some of the introverts reading this can relate! I love the getting-ready part and the chatting-tipsily-with-cool-people part; it’s the part in between that usually makes me nervous – sometimes to the point of not wanting to attend at all! If this sounds familiar, don’t worry: I’ve got some tips to help you get through the next party you attend. Here we go…

Wear at least one “conversation piece.”

Getting ready for a party feels to me like casting a magic spell. It sets the tone for the whole event and lays the groundwork for how I will feel, and how I will be perceived. One thing I always try to do when assembling a party ensemble is to include clothing items and accessories that are eye-catching, a little odd, and easy for someone to comment on or ask about. As you probably know, one of the trickiest things about approaching new people at a party is not knowing what to say – so by wearing something worth remarking upon, you’re doing the other party-goers a favor by giving them a free conversation starter to use with you! Some of my fave eye-poppin’ pieces are flashy heart-shaped jewelry, oversized hair accessories, enamel pins, bright-colored lipstick, and really great shoes.

Tell yourself you only have to stay for an hour.

I do this for almost every party I ever go to, and in almost every case, I end up staying longer than that one hour. It’s just a way of tricking my brain into letting me attend the party, because I know I can get through an hour, even if the whole hour sucks (which it never does). This is also a way I take care of myself: if I genuinely want to leave after an hour, it’s almost certainly because either the party is bad or there is something going on with my physical or mental health that’s making it difficult for me to enjoy myself – and in either case, I’d be happier at home on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and watching Netflix. If you’re attending a party with other people, you might want to tell them about your time-limit plan, too – this is a way of setting expectations so you don’t disappoint your party-animal friends when you’re walking out the door while their night’s just getting started. (Remember: even if you live together, you don’t have to leave the party at the same time!)

Keep your eyes up and your body language open.

I went to a raucous party full of mostly strangers with my partner last week (more on that soon) and noticed that way more people came up and talked to us than would ever approach me if I’d been there by myself. Setting aside the fact that my partner is very handsome and magnetic (which they are), I think this phenomenon mostly occurred because my energy was totally different than it would’ve been if I was alone. I wasn’t hunched over my phone in a corner, or affecting faux-blasé body language to seem cool and aloof – I was looking around the room, bright-eyed and phoneless, curious about who we could talk to next. Of course people wanted to meet us! Consider adapting the way you hold yourself, behave, and look at folks the next time you attend a party – it could totally transform your experience.

Come up with a go-to line to start a conversation.

Asking someone how they know the host is usually a safe bet. Complimenting some aspect of their outfit, as we’ve discussed, is another. If a holiday is coming up or has just passed, you can ask someone how they spent it or plan to spend it. Dating coach Camille Virginia recommends commenting on something in your environment – like, “Wow, this playlist is incredible,” or “[The host] always throws such great parties.” If you’re feeling a little braver, you could also just ask people one of these 100 questions Alex Franzen recommends – they might think you’re a bit of a weirdo at first, but then they’ll probably be excited to answer such an interesting question!

Watch your alcohol/drugs intake.

Look, I’m not going to tell you how to live your life; I’m not your dad. I just know that when I feel anxious at a party, I often lean too hard on substances, both to alleviate my mental discomfort and to give me something to do with my hands so I feel less awkward. If I get too drunk or too high, I almost invariably end up doing something I regret – often something embarrassing enough to give me even more anxiety the next day when I remember what happened! Naturally, this topic is extra fraught for people who struggle with addiction, or have done so in the past: parties can be a very triggering or challenging environment. When I’m trying to lay off the substances at a party, I’ll usually pour a non-alcoholic beverage (or even just water) into my glass and sip on that, or nibble on a snack – both help me feel less out-of-place and awkward, without getting me wasted.

Find one person and make them feel fascinating.

One of the reasons parties stress me out is that I feel a pressure to talk to tons of people – but the truth is, I often have my best party-going experiences when I only have one or two intense, intimate conversations, as opposed to several more casual or perfunctory ones. This jives with what some social psychology thinkers say about how introverts hate small talk and much prefer more soul-baring interactions. If you can find even just one person at the party who has an interesting job, or majored in something cool, or has an amazing outfit on, or is obsessed with the same TV show as you, you can ask a zillion follow-up questions (so long as they seem up for that) and go deep with this one person instead of swimming around in the shallow end with a bunch of people you barely know.

Take breaks when you need to.

Remember what I said earlier about how you should keep your phone tucked away and your eyes up? Yeahhh, there’s only so long I can do that for. Most of my introverted friends have some sort of system for taking periodic breaks at parties, whether they like to head outside for a smoke, step out on the balcony for a quiet moment alone, or hole up in the bathroom to check their email (just be mindful that other guests might need to pee!). At particularly crowded parties, sometimes you can take a time-out just by sitting in the corner by yourself and texting a friend or reading an article on your phone. (I used to have a friend who would legit bring a book to every party and unabashedly pull it out to read when she needed a moment of simulated solitude… Kudos.) You might find your brain feels more juiced up and socially energetic after even a brief breather, so you can get back in there and keep the party going.

Help with party logistics if you can.

Ask the host if you can help make drinks, collect used dishes, take people’s coats, run the evening’s game of Charades, or whatever other practical things need doing. This’ll help you feel less awkwardly aimless, while also giving you a low-pressure opportunity to meet and talk to a lot of the other attendees. Plus you’ll be helping out the host, who is probably rushed off their feet!

See someone standing alone? Go talk to them.

They’re probably one of your own kind! And they’ll almost certainly be grateful you bothered. A simple “Hey! How’s your night going?” can turn someone’s whole evening around. Similarly, if you’re standing in a group and you see one or two people nearby looking left out, invite them into your circle. Parties are supposed to be all about mingling, after all!

Exit conversations gracefully.

I’m not always the best at this. Sometimes you want to leave an interaction, either because you’re getting socially overwhelmed or you just… don’t really like the person you’re talking to. It’s possible to do this without seeming rude, but most people aren’t very good at it! Try one of these lines: “Well, it was nice talking to you. I’m gonna mill around.” “It was so good to meet you – have a good time tonight!” You could also just make up an excuse (“I have to go to the bathroom,” “I have to go help my friend with something,” “I have to make a phone call”) but the truth is better, and often kinder.

Recharge as needed when you get home.

You probably know what kinds of activities help you reset your brain after expending a lot of social energy. I like to get in a hot bath with a book, watch some silly YouTube videos, or just stare mindlessly at my phone for a while. Whatever works best for you, do it – not only because you need it, but also because you’ll start to associate parties with that horrible drained feeling if you let yourself linger in that mood for too long after a party. Doing proper post-event self-care helps keep your relationship to parties a positive one!

What are your best tips for going to parties as a shy, anxious, and/or introverted person?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2019: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

I didn’t journal as much in 2019 as I usually do, in part because I was super busy and seemingly constantly traveling… That said, here are 6 of my fave journal entries from the year. They’re all, um, mostly variations on a theme, you could say…

January 1st

Late one night I got a bit panicky and started to feel derealization-y, like I might not be real or Matt might not be (hello, irrational delusions borne of insecurity, my old friends), and they were so good: they had me tell them the story of how we met so I’d remember we are real, and then they gave me a long, thorough, skillful, cathartic spanking while I wept it all out.

We stayed up until 4 a.m. after getting home from the New Year’s Eve party at 1 a.m., having sex and talking and laughing and basically trying to stretch out the last remaining hours before we had to check out of the hotel and say goodbye. They told me, at one point, that they feel like we “fit” together so well – “sexually, intellectually, emotionally, comedically” – that we understand each other and just “get” each other. “It’s not even blind optimism anymore at this point,” they said. “We’re a year in. It’s real.” I didn’t want to go to sleep. I wanted to stay there, giggling with them in the liminal space that is a hotel bed at 3 a.m. on New Year’s with someone you love in a city that isn’t your own.

Today, close to goodbye time, I cried, and they licked my tears off my face and told me how cool it would be to rim a drink with their submissive’s salty tears (what a perv). I said, “I don’t want to be without you,” and they told me I’m not without them; we’ll still be together even when we’re apart, like always. On New Year’s Eve they ordered two glasses of champagne for us at Augustine and raised a toast to “an amazing year, and many more” – so certain about it, in a way I’ve never been able to be, and it made me cry, just like it does when they sense my fear and grab my face and stare seriously into my eyes and say, “I’m not going anywhere.” I cried in the taxi and said, “We match, right?” – our code-phrase for “We are both feeling these intense feelings for each other, right?” – and they said, “Oh, 100%.”

February 15th

I had the mini-revelation recently that part of the reason I’ve been semi-unconsciously drawn to unrequited love dynamics my whole life might be that they provide me what seems like a socially acceptable justification for my ever-present melancholy. It’s, in some ways, even harder to accept my depression now that I’m in essentially my dream career and my dream relationship, because evidently nothing is causing this sadness but my own damn brain.

May 30th

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why I have such fucked-up abandonment/anxious attachment issues when I wasn’t abused or abandoned as a kid and was actually really loved and sheltered and protected. I don’t remember when exactly these feelings first surfaced, but I know they’re related to S___, G___, and C___. From those relationships, I learned that someone can abandon you:

  • unexpectedly and totally out of the blue
  • very expectedly
  • for things you can’t change
  • for reasons you’ll never know
  • even after promising they wouldn’t
  • even knowing you have abandonment issues
  • even if you’ve known them for a long time
  • for someone else
  • for no one else
  • even if they seemed to like or love you

It feels like there’s not a single condition under which I’m safe from being abandoned. And the work I need to do is becoming okay with that reality, and being able to trust enough to function in relationships even with that possibility being present. My fears of abandonment are just trying to protect me, the emotional thought process being that if I can see the hurt coming before it hits, I can spare myself the heartache. But that’s false because, even in relationships where I constantly suspected I was about to be dumped, the dumping hurt just as bad. It’s going to hurt whether you forecast it or not.

I jump a lot to catastrophizing – “They’re going to leave me and therefore I’m not safe” – and I need to moreso encourage the thought, “What if they’re going to stay with me and I’m safe?” There’s much more evidence of that. It’s just hard to convince a traumatized brain of these things.

August 2nd

I’ve probably written this before but I feel as if my life has been tugging me toward New York since I was about ten years old. I wanted to live there for a long time, first to become a musical theatre performer and later just because I liked it there. But as I got older I came to understand that the immigration process and the expense of the city probably would keep me here. I love Toronto, after all, and my life here, and my friends and family, and the Canadian healthcare system, and this city’s largely positive attitudes toward queerness and kink and multiculturalism. I could stay here and be happy, except that I wouldn’t be with Matt.

A person I’m in love with is pretty much the only force that could drag me to another country at this point, and it almost feels like Matt was sent to me to (among other things) usher me into that city I’ve half-wanted to live in for so long. They’ve told me that if and when I decide to move there, they will make it their number-one project to figure out how to make that happen.

The problem of trying to get me there is the biggest and scariest thing in my life right now, but it’s a good problem to have. And I know that in Matt I have a partner who is willing to go basically to the ends of the earth to unite us on a more permanent basis.

September 2nd

Having kind of a dissociate-y day where it’s difficult for me to grasp that Matt is really my partner. They’re so beautiful and perfect that often in the early days of our relationship, and still sometimes even now, I had the sense that my life wasn’t really my life but was actually a movie I was watching, perhaps through the slitted eyes of a mask, perhaps in some kind of virtual-reality simulation that inserted me into someone else’s story like a Mary Sue in a piece of fanfiction. It’s odd to hear someone gorgeous, brilliant and accomplished describe you in those terms too when you don’t, to your core, believe them about yourself. For these nearly 2 years my life has felt sort of like a wrong classroom I walked into accidentally and just never left.

October 18th

It’s 2019 and I have been dating Matt for 22 months and I am still sometimes convinced I’m going to wake up from this dream. This life is not dreamy in the idyllic sense – I fight off psoriasis and chronic pain, I struggle sometimes to make my rent, I fight with friends and cry in bed and spend too much time on Twitter – but this one part of it feels like a dream, my connection with Matt. I feel like two kids stacked inside a trench coat, pretending to be a competent adult who’s good at relationships, pretending this relationship is just a normal and expected thing and not an earth-shattering inferno that exploded my life into something bigger and better. I keep waiting for my beloved to find me out or leave or disintegrate. But they ruffle my hair and say “I’m not going anywhere, kiddo,” and I can breathe for another few hours.

Together we regularly interrogate the concept of “deserving” love, deserving this relationship. Love isn’t transferrable like money or a contest prize: I don’t have to deserve it to have it. I have Matt’s love because they want to give it to me and specifically me, and that’s true even on days when I feel utterly undeserving. Telling them I don’t deserve them isn’t nice, is actually mean: it’s saying I doubt their taste and dismiss their agency, pushing them away, telling them one of their biggest and most central feelings is irrational and ill-informed. I should learn to accept their love like a compliment: say “thank you” and smile, even if you don’t agree, even if you don’t believe. They are entitled to their opinion and their opinion is that I’m worth loving. Somehow.

Got any favorite journal entries from 2019 to share?

Do I Want Kids? Part 1: Mental Health

Kate Sloan

Am I too crazy to have kids?

This question haunts me. I’m embarrassed at how often it flits through my head. When I get sucked down into the whirlpool of depression or anxiety, those moods pose a question which only serves to perpetuate them: Are you too fucked-up to ever get the things you want? And of course, in the throes of sadness and fear, “yes” is the only answer I can fathom.

There are times when my mental health is so bad that I can barely take care of myself – food, sleep, hygiene – so it’s scary to imagine trying to take care of someone else at those times. How can you be responsible for another human being if you’re crying too hard to get up off the floor, or if the world beyond your bed feels too scary to contemplate?

I’ve heard many a horror story from people whose parents raised them in a maelstrom of mental illness. Children of the severely depressed can be neglected; children of the deeply anxious can absorb compulsive fears; children of people with personality disorders can grow up hurt and confused, unable to truly trust anyone. Of course, these stories aren’t universal, and I probably know just as many people whose parents struggled with mental illness and who nonetheless turned out fine, but it’s hard to tune out these narratives when you’re scared they could come true for you.

I’d like to think my co-parent would be a relatively sane, grounded person, to help balance me out. (As much as I admire folks who raise kids solo, that doesn’t seem emotionally or financially tenable for me.) But then you risk creating an off-kilter family dynamic where one person is over-relied upon to prop up everyone else, psychologically and logistically, and that’s not fair at all. Maybe this is an area where polyamory could be an advantage: a solid support network of de facto other parents could take some pressure off. They do say it takes a village to raise a child, after all. The results of a legal paternity test can tell you a lot, but they’re not the whole picture, and a parent or guardian obviously doesn’t have to be genetically or legally related to a kid to assist in raising that kid.

Even supposing that I could overcome my own craziness enough to take care of a child – and/or rely on the help of other, steadier humans – I would still worry about transmitting that craziness to my kid. Some varieties of DNA test can predict whether a person might develop certain mental illnesses, but even if I went the adoption route, I’d still be concerned my negative thought patterns and tendency to overreact to emotional stimuli would get passed on to my little one through sheer osmosis. I would have to be careful and deliberate in the ways I chose to behave around them, and the values and habits I let them pick up – though I suppose that’s true for any parent. You probably want to clean up your act around someone you’re raising, to some extent, whether by quitting smoking or cutting back on profane language or, yes, consciously dialling back your “crazy” behaviors if you can. Hell, doing this might even help me feel less crazy, too.

That said, I don’t think it’s all bad for a mentally ill person to raise a child. Hell, both my parents struggle with depression and anxiety, and if anything, it just made them more empathetic when I started to notice my own psychological symptoms. I’ve also learned about cognitive-behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy while getting treated for my mental illnesses, and these are useful frameworks for anyone seeking to moderate and process their feelings. I could teach these systems to my kid(s), and maybe then they would have an easier time with childhood’s classically outsized emotions, like sadness, rage, and restlessness. Increased emotional literacy is one of the major silver linings I’ve found in my struggles with depression and anxiety, so I may as well try to impart it on my spawn.

It’s also worth noting that depression and anxiety don’t necessarily preclude you from being loving and supportive; you may just show your love and support in different ways than a neurotypical person, depending on how your symptoms manifest. I can still be there for loved ones when I’m having a rough time. It definitely looks different than my emotional support does when I’m feeling better – there’s fewer words of wisdom and more sitting in silence and solidarity – but it’s still a form of love. As the brilliant Carly Boyce pointed out in a suicide intervention workshop of hers that I attended, sometimes a person in distress doesn’t need you to pull them out of that distress – they just need you to keep them company until the feeling passes. As someone well-versed in distress, I could certainly do that for my kid.

So, am I too crazy to have kids? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s off the table entirely. I think, in order to feel comfortable taking that step, I would first have to feel stable in my medication regimen, brush up on my CBT and DBT skills, and have a relatively settled, dependable social support structure. But once those things were in place, I might just become a hyper-empathetic – if chronically frazzled – mom.

 

This 3-part series on parenthood was generously sponsored by the folks at TestMeDNA.com. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Confession: STI Testing Makes Me Anxious

Kate Sloan

It’s practically sex educators’ catchphrase: get tested!

I have indeed gotten tested, many times. I have requested panels from my GP, and sought out specialized clinics. I have kept on top of my sexual health all the years I’ve been sexually active (with the exception of the first few, when I didn’t know better). I’ve gotten tested between partners, and any time I think I may have put myself at risk.

But I would be lying if I said it was easy. Getting tested has felt hard every single time.

The thing about having an anxiety disorder is that sometimes you can’t tell the difference between real problems and imagined ones. Sometimes encountering a real problem once makes you fear that same problem coming up every time you run into that situation thereafter. Sometimes you manage to convince yourself the problem isn’t worth fearing, and then it comes up again, “proving” you were right to be scared.

That’s exactly what’s happened to me with STI testing: it’s become a locus of worry, because while testing me, doctors have erased my bisexuality, called me overzealous for getting tested more than once a year, and shamed me for being polyamorous and promiscuous (two separate identities that don’t necessarily overlap!). These things have only happened to me a few times but they’ve nonetheless made me dread getting tested.

I know I’m not alone in my medical anxieties. When I reported on an at-home HPV testing kit for Glamour in 2017, I spoke to people who’ve been unwilling or unable to get tested due to concerns around doctors’ and clinics’ slut-shaming, fat-shaming, and ableism, just to name a few. I have it easier than most, being a usually-able-bodied, white, cisgender, middle-class person living in a country that has publicly funded healthcare – and it’s still hard for me to go. That makes me worry for all the people less privileged than me who avoid getting tested for fear of how they might be treated – to say nothing of other barriers, like location and cost.

I thought about this a lot when STDCheck.com reached out to me wanting to sponsor a post and a giveaway. Crucially, you can order tests on their website and then just take a provided requisition form to the testing center of theirs that is closest to you. This presumably eliminates most or all of the “So why did you come in today?” conversation that is (for me, at least) the most intimidating part of the process. Their services are confidential, fast, and available in over 4,500 testing centers across the United States.

The internet is a huge blessing for me as an anxious person, letting me do things like scope out the layout of an unfamiliar café before I go there for the first time, or make restaurant reservations through a form so I don’t have to call and talk to a human. It might seem like these accommodations are impossible or unlikely in the medical field, but that doesn’t have to be the case, and I’m glad!

 

Here’s some exciting news: STDCheck.com is offering one reader of my site a $50 gift card you can use toward their services! You can enter below. The giveaway is only open to entrants who live in the United States, and it will run for one week. Best of luck, babes!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: this post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Sex Sells, Part 2: Camming

Kate Sloan

I log onto Skype. I send a quick “I’m ready when you are!” message to the stranger who paid me a few minutes ago. They call me up, and I put on my best Flirty Face. Maybe my clothes come off; maybe not. Maybe I have an orgasm; maybe not. By the end of the 15- or 30-minute show, my face is flushed – from nerves or pleasure or both – and I’m marginally richer than I was before.

When I partnered with Bubbles London Escorts to create this blog series on my experiences with sex work, I knew I’d have to touch on camming. And truth be told, I was reluctant. I don’t think of myself as a camgirl, not really; I don’t put in the hours upon hours of self-promotion and primping and flirting with silent time-wasters that people who cam for a living have to do. Folks occasionally ask me for advice on “getting into” camming, and I always bashfully tell them: I don’t use cam sites or seek out customers. They come to me, via DM or email, because they’ve enjoyed something I tweeted or read something I wrote or fixated on a selfie I Instagrammed, and they – inexplicably, to my mind – want to see me get lascivious just for them. I like money, and I like feeling desired, so when the opportunity arises, I often say yes.

I don’t cam very often – usually just a handful of times a year. It’s not something I seek out or advertise all that much, because honestly, it makes me anxious as hell. The process of scheduling a show, attiring myself appealingly, and then performing on camera directly conflicts with my insecurities and awkwardness and shyness. It requires a certain brassy confidence that I can convincingly fake for the duration of a show, maybe, on a good day. It’s for these reasons that I decided late last year to stop taking on new cam clients unless they seemed really great and made me feel really comfortable. The money I got from putting on these shows just wasn’t enough to justify how nervous and drained they made me feel.

But while I was doing it more actively, I had some regular customers I adored. There was the breezily confident guy who would tell me to “just do whatever feels good,” and would sit back in his chair, smoking a cigar and not jerking off at all, while I held a vibe on my clit and writhed. There was the sweet dork who only ever wanted to watch me give head to a realistic dildo, and then would chat with me about social justice in comic book universes once he’d come. There was the woman in her first queer relationship who wanted to learn more about how vulvas work from watching me touch mine. (Secretly, she was my fave.)

Camming wasn’t all smooth ‘n’ sexy; there were hijinks and misadventures, too. A client once requested a show while I was staying in a hotel in Italy with my mom, so I had to stake out a corner of our marble bathroom during a lull in the day and center my laptop between my splayed legs. Another client once reached out to schedule an impromptu show just as I was stumbling home drunk from a night out with friends, so the show he eventually got was probably more raucous than mine typically are. Adorably, someone once bought a camshow from me as a gift for her boyfriend, who she said would’ve been too shy to set one up himself.

My favorite cam clients were always the ones who treated me respectfully and gently, knowing I’m a human, not an object. They’d politely inquire mid-show, “Is it okay if I…?” or “Would you mind showing me…?” and I’d usually be happy to oblige. Sometimes I’d even get a reverent thank-you message from them the next day. “I learned so much from talking with you and watching you,” one such message read. “It opened up something in me.” I cried a little, finding it hard to wrap my mind around the idea that someone found the sight of me jerking off to be not only sexy but revelatory.

I haven’t cammed in quite a while. These days, I’d mostly rather lie in bed in my pajamas, talking to my partner on the phone or reading a book or watching Netflix, not caring what I look like. But I’m still grateful to the clients I had, and those I might have in the future. Though camming makes me incredibly nervous, it also – like many other daunting activities – leaves me flushed and grinning with the knowledge that I “felt the fear and did it anyway.”

 

Thanks to Bubbles London Escorts for sponsoring this post! The owner of this agency is very friendly and makes sure all client requests are dealt with promptly.