I've been thinking about this for some time now.
Besides the genetics and circumstances in environment, I believe there actually is a huge number of anxiety sufferers who "learned" anxiety instead of feeling it because of other known factors.
Of course I understand that anxiety as learned behavior is possibly already researched and proven to some extent, but I wanted to offer my personal story to you folks who believe that your anxiety (or depression) might be a learned behavior.
My childhood perhaps can't be described as "normal" as there was a war going on and me and my mother fled to another country. My mother was cleaning and cooking to provide us with money and she even mentioned that mice went next to our heads as we were sleeping (it was a cheap, rented apartment in basement). As a toddler I spent countless hours sitting and being quiet as my mother was working in apartments. However I was not abused or starved ever in my life, so my point will be related to my mother.
My mother was having panic attacks since I can remember, for all sorts of reasons. Actually, I think it got worse when she and I moved back to our destroyed poor country and she couldn't find any work. I don't know what to think here actually as I believe she became over-protective for me and refused going to work so she can be near-by and watch nothing bad happens to me. This continued for years after the war was over, and for the next 20 years she never had a job.
Her panic was related to everything that had anything to do with me: If I was late for a few minutes when coming back to school, if I got the lower grade than usual, if I didn't answer the phone for few times she called in a row, if I got the mild fever, if my nose got stuffed, actually, every little reason there is for her to believe something is wrong with me or I am in some kind of danger, results in her panic attacks.
I watched her panic and I guess it made me believe that I am so clumsy, vulnerable and dependent I could never think for myself and I am the reason for her panic. When I think of that know, I believe I started blaming myself for it, so I felt guilt for no reason at all. She was telling me (with her behavior) that I need special attention and treatment that I really didn't need in reality.
Firstly, I started feeling insecure more and more. As I watched other kids who behaved more independently, I started actually believing something was wrong with me. I was very shy and that shyness eventually grew to social anxiety. That one grew to extreme social anxiety. I found myself in a position where I was afraid to leave the house.
I decided to cope with my fear and run towards it. In college I had little problem speaking in front of large crowds because that fear of public speaking was an intense fear I felt everyday and I could cope with it. Spending time away from my mother was very beneficial to me, because her depression and anxiety and her own insecurities were so hardly projected to me, it all became heavy to "carry around." I did what I could to help, but I knew I could do just "that much" to a point where the quality of my own life starts to decrease.
So, THIS IS MY MESSAGE to all of you with high social anxiety: close your eyes, and just ASK YOURSELF, really ask yourself: "Are my anxieties and insecurities really mine or they belong to someone else?"
Insecurities are projected and "delivered" to us through unsuspected words and treatment sometimes wrapped in kindness or caring, but they are in real life what trojan viruses are for computers: they always contain something that harms as.
So have a good antivirus installed in your mind.
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