I went to an event last week that really stretched me as a person with social anxiety. Whenever I do something like this (stretch myself) I think about it in third person because I’m trying to notice the way that I’m experiencing it so that I can put myself in the place of my clients and my clients’ kids and really feel how uncomfortable and awful it is. It’s such a good reminder for me, to come at it from this beginner’s place.

The thing that always strikes me brand new is the realization that pain is really, really painful. I know that seems obvious but knowing that things are painful and feeling the pain are so different. When we tell our kids, “I know this is hard but you can do it” I think it’s helpful to remember that hard is a simple word for feelings that are complex and messy.

For one thing, pain isn’t nicely compartmentalized. It doesn’t just show up in the area where we’re feeling vulnerable and scared. So it doesn’t just say, “Hey, you might fail.” It also says, “And you deserve to fail because you are trash.” And, “Everyone will be disappointed in you.” And, “In fact, they are already disappointed in you because of the way that you are, as I mentioned earlier, trash.”

So it’s not just being nervous about giving a speech, it’s also a kind of existential agony.

The other thing is that being in pain is boring. It’s boring to have to — yet again — revisit your least kind self-talk. “Oh, it’s YOU again!” we say to that ugly little voice that is oh so familiar. It’s such a well run track and here we are running it again! And it is indeed a track that we will have to revisit over and over again in our anxious lives.

Now the good news is that some of it will fall away or we’ll figure out how to ignore it so well that it won’t matter at all. But being an anxious person means being anxious and anxiety is painful and pain often begets pain so we will find ourselves there again and again and again

This was what I thought about last week as I slogged my way through the pain, knowing that eventually it would stop because the pain-inducing event (a conference that was poorly planned, poorly executed and so caused lots of problems for me and the other presenters and which my social anxiety repeatedly invited me to take personally) would eventually end.

Which it did. And now I’m on the other side of it, rather exhausted, somewhat wiser and thinking yet again that it’s unfortunate that pain has to be so painful. A thing I will certainly remember when I’m talking to my next client who is, understandably, reluctant to face their anxiety instead of avoid it.