From social anxiety to finding it a “pleasure” to talk in new job
Pauline battled with social anxiety to the point she would do her shopping at night time to avoid coming into contact with other people… but when she reached out to receive support from counselling and Twining, she found a job she loves where she now feels speaking to people is a “pleasure” and she has seen her quality of life improve… here Pauline tells us her inspirational recovery story in her own words…
I have been in counselling many times over the years and each time it has helped me to move one big step forward in my life. Whenever I’ve come up against a problem – as recently as a year ago – the issue was that I had very bad social anxiety – I had been in group therapy to help me with that and was surprised to find out that there were lots of people that suffer with the same thing. Not being able to talk to anybody and not being able to even talk to neighbours next door or ask people for help if you need anything. Even if I was on the train, I wouldn’t be able get off at the stop I needed if it meant I needed to say “excuse me” to people to be able to get past and get off the train.
It was quite severe and although the group really helped with that, it still wasn’t that easy. I just felt like I needed a bit more intense work on it, so I asked my counsellor for some therapy again, so they gave me Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) which was really, really, brilliant, because it focused on the thoughts I was having at the time. They explained that my thoughts would generate a certain feeling and that feeling would generate a certain action. So even if I needed my shopping I would think “I can’t go out” because what if I bumped into my neighbours and it’s going to be horrible and I can’t say hello because I might mumble or dribble… the feeling I got from that was that I was very stupid and that made me feel worse about myself. This was just a spiral going round and round again. So, when I had that feeling it provoked a reaction and that was that I would never go out and do my shopping unless there was no one around; which was an inconvenience as it usually meant shopping at night time.
I think it was about 12 sessions of CBT and I really had to become more aware of my thoughts and catch my feelings. So, when I was worried someone was going to laugh at me for mumbling I would have to test that out. The counsellors would say to go out and prove to yourself that that’s not the case. I did that and it wasn’t easy. I had to create opportunities to go out to the shop or park. I needed to create situations where I spoke to people – just to say hello or goodbye – and I proved to myself that I can speak to people without mumbling, so I knew my thoughts weren’t true – I could speak to people without mumbling and wouldn’t make a fool of myself.
Because I was aware of that I could focus on it and I knew that I was OK. So each time something came up the counsellor made me focus on what was making me feel a certain way – to catch the thoughts – the counsellor actually made me write it down so I could think about why I was feeling a particular way. I could really see it written down and then I could challenge myself on my thoughts and ask “is this really true?” and often I realised it wasn’t true. Step by step I realised that the thoughts weren’t true.
My counsellor explained to me that as children are brains are like tape recorders, we record everything going on around us, and everything that’s said to us, especially by our parents. If it’s negative, unfortunately when we grow up, the tape recorder goes on again and we start calling ourselves these things, that we are ‘stupid’ or ‘ugly’ when this isn’t true. Without counselling I don’t know where I would be now. I would be completely stuck that’s for sure. I would be where I was before – unhappy, crying, chronic pain, no money, no life, afraid to go anywhere, no friends, no work, just in a vicious cycle. I needed to do something to go forward or else I don’t know where I would be now. Seeing a trained counsellor really helped me to see why I felt the way I did.
At the end of the therapy my counsellor asked if I’d like to be referred to Twining. I really wanted to work but I was still terrified. I was better with talking to people – neighbours and going shopping, etc., so I was living a normal functional life and I needed to work. I wanted to work and make a better life for myself. It was still hard, but Twining Enterprise sent me Dina and she was absolutely amazing.
At the time I had nobody in my life apart from my son and my daughter and they’d grown up and left home. I had no family to support me or anything like that, but Dina came along and she was amazing and she accepted me straight away. She wasn’t judgemental or putting me down or telling me I’m silly or anything like that. She was really interested in me and really caring and loving and every two weeks she would phone me and see how I am. She really got to know me and would tell me “Don’t you stress about this; I don’t want you to stress about that”.
She understood what keeps us stuck and how it can cause pain in the body. That’s what had happened to me – I had fibromyalgia and brain fog and no energy whatsoever and that is not curable. But over the year of being with Dina, she understood that as you get yourself stressed you will feel pain in your body. Now I hardly feel much pain in my body at all and that’s amazing. It just shows that by feeling low about myself and feeling upset and stressed and having emotions caused an aggravated pain and brain fog. I’d been with Dina for about a year and she was always encouraging me to get up and get out, even just to the park. She would never push me into work. When she mentioned it she would say it’s OK and that I didn’t have to do the volunteering work until I felt ready. She said lets build on it when I’m feeling better and ready to do that. We kept on like that and every time she called me I felt better and better about myself because I had someone that cared about me telling me I was a nice person and so my confidence grew.
I thought that Twining had just got lucky with Dina, I thought they can’t all be like that. Then she referred me to Kam, because she said what about doing some courses at home to build confidence because I could do that at home on my laptop. I didn’t need to go to a classroom with lots of people. Kam contacted me about doing the courses and he was just as amazing. Really brilliant. Really interested in me, really interested in what I wanted to do, really encouraging. He noticed that I kept putting myself down and had no confidence. I kept saying “I can’t do this course because I’ll be the lowest in the group, I have a learning disability, I can’t write as well as them”. Kam asked me to write down all my achievements, photocopy the list, and put it up all over my flat to remind myself, and it seemed to work! It kept building confidence in me.
I did the customer service training course at home online. It was really good. I was very, very nervous, but I’m sure everyone else was too. We had a teacher teaching us on Teams and we had software where we had to write down the answers. I was really nervous and asked the tutor for more time because I felt I would be slower than all the other people on the course. After a while the tutor got in touch and said that I didn’t need any more time than the others – I was at the same level. That really boosted my confidence as well. I realised I’m no different to anybody else – I’m as good as everyone else. I passed that course and was really, really pleased about it, and started to believe that maybe I could get a job and get some money that I would like.
I started to do voluntary work in one of the charity shops. I chose the one because there was two members of staff in there and I could just about cope with two members of staff. So I started to do that on a weekly basis. At times it was really difficult to do that and how I was struggling with what’s going on in my mind. But I managed to get on top of it. Dina said I didn’t have to do the voluntary work but it’s good if I do. I could choose the hours – even just an hour once per week. I did that – just one hour each week. It seemed to go OK – just two people I worked with, with customers going in and out. One hour was just bearable.
At the same time another course became available – a course to help you prepare to go back into employment. It was for the civil service. It was about preparing CVs to go back to work. I did this and thought again I wouldn’t be able to keep up, but I could. The tutors realised we all had different abilities so they waited for people to catch up. The tutors were all really caring and patient. I passed this course too and my confidence grew even more. Dina was more happy about it than me – she’s been like that all the time! She’s been so pleased with my progress and even up to now, she sometimes just checks that’s everything is OK and how’s it going.
The job centre was really pushing me to go out to work which was good in a way because I wanted to work. It’s so good that I had all this counselling and the support from Dina because it got me to the point where the job centre was sending me to an agency, where they would talk to me and try to help me find work and I was actually able to talk to the employment advisor and actually say what I wanted to do and what I didn’t want to do, and answer questions and relax and get what I needed out of it. Before I wouldn’t have even been able to go – and would have got myself into trouble – because social anxiety was too high.
I was able to work with the employment agency and he forwarded me a job that I could do from home with NHS Test and Trace. Again the doubts started “I won’t be able to do this”, but I did, because everything is set up to make it easy to learn. I did it for two weeks. I would get a record come up on my screen with the persons details and what I needed to collect from them and put into the system. I did OK with that and then those contracts ended because the Government changed their minds.
A few weeks ago this changed again and the agency called me back and I now have a job with NHS Test and Trace until March. I absolutely love this job because I am talking to people, and just helping them in a way, giving them comfort, giving them advice, and sometimes it’s not easy because I don’t know everything and I’m worried they will sense something in my voice, but it hasn’t happened yet. But I absolutely love my job, I feel like I am doing something worthwhile now. I am actually doing something and I’m getting paid for it as well. It’s just lovely to speak to these people and have a bit of a laugh here and there, it’s just a pleasure, so my quality of life is just so much better.
Please note - This charitable project is funded by the European Social Fund and The National Lottery Community Fund.
