Fear of Society or Society of Fear
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Makenzie Skovlund
AP English 11
09 April 2014 Fear of Society or Society of Fear?
We’ve all been there. Sweaty palms because it’s almost presentation time, butterflies in your stomach because you’re on your first date, or an overwhelming sense of nervousness about choosing which college to attend. Ah yes, the great teenage years. Teenage years are ones of high stress, difficult decisions, and soaring emotions.
The daily life of a teenager oftentimes seems as if it’s a soap opera with the extreme highs and lows and sometimes dramatic outbursts. In a teenager’s life, anxiety can result from something as simple as a broken nail to as extreme as passing or failing a class.
While these examples may be normal, for those suffering with an anxiety disorder, these worries, obsessions or fears become extremely overwhelming. Many times these anticipations are found to be irrational or untrue but still negatively impact the person suffering from social anxiety, due to the inability to see them as such.
Everyday interactions cause irrational anxiety, fear, selfconsciousness, and embarrassment, also known as social phobia. America has the highest amount of cases of social phobia. Why is that? We’re an incredibly successful country, but our culture and values do have an impact on social phobia. Teenagers in the United States have grown up with the “every man for himself” idea and, for some kids, the concept becomes all too real.
Teenagers with social phobias are focused on their social performance. They’re extremely selfconscious and uncomfortable with the idea of being judged or even
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noticed. Everyone feels shy, but what makes someone be diagnosed with social phobia and not just have a case of severe shyness? People with social anxiety have an intense fear of interacting with strangers. In fact, the degree of fear is so extreme, that a person with social phobia may start to experience physical symptoms such as:
Makenzie Skovlund
AP English 11
09 April 2014 Fear of Society or Society of Fear?
We’ve all been there. Sweaty palms because it’s almost presentation time, butterflies in your stomach because you’re on your first date, or an overwhelming sense of nervousness about choosing which college to attend. Ah yes, the great teenage years. Teenage years are ones of high stress, difficult decisions, and soaring emotions.
The daily life of a teenager oftentimes seems as if it’s a soap opera with the extreme highs and lows and sometimes dramatic outbursts. In a teenager’s life, anxiety can result from something as simple as a broken nail to as extreme as passing or failing a class.
While these examples may be normal, for those suffering with an anxiety disorder, these worries, obsessions or fears become extremely overwhelming. Many times these anticipations are found to be irrational or untrue but still negatively impact the person suffering from social anxiety, due to the inability to see them as such.
Everyday interactions cause irrational anxiety, fear, selfconsciousness, and embarrassment, also known as social phobia. America has the highest amount of cases of social phobia. Why is that? We’re an incredibly successful country, but our culture and values do have an impact on social phobia. Teenagers in the United States have grown up with the “every man for himself” idea and, for some kids, the concept becomes all too real.
Teenagers with social phobias are focused on their social performance. They’re extremely selfconscious and uncomfortable with the idea of being judged or even
Skovlund 2
noticed. Everyone feels shy, but what makes someone be diagnosed with social phobia and not just have a case of severe shyness? People with social anxiety have an intense fear of interacting with strangers. In fact, the degree of fear is so extreme, that a person with social phobia may start to experience physical symptoms such as: