Fearful Times: Finding your way in decolonization and abolition work with social anxiety

I’ve been socially anxious for as long as I can remember. Navigating the world has always been quite difficult and frustrating. A lot of times I’ve felt like giving up on things that were important to me because they were not accessible. Joining my first justice collective was one of those times. For a long time, I was unsure about my decision to join. I was constantly questioning myself about everything and rarely felt confident enough to speak at all during our meetings. Eventually I just started feeling like there wasn’t any reason for me to be involved anymore. During that time, a member of our collective began giving me rides home. During these rides, they’d ask me questions about myself and we eventually got to know each other better. Having someone that I grew familiar with helped motivate me to find ways to feel comfortable enough to participate more and eventually join more collectives. This was definitely a process that took quite a bit of time. It’s still an ongoing process, as I have not yet reached the level of comfort and involvement in the collectives that I’d like to be.

Social anxiety is characterized by consistent fear of social performance situations. It is common that the individual with social anxiety fears being embarrassed. Decolonization and abolition work can be anything that strives to dismantle oppressive systems of the world like imperialism. This article will focus on navigating how to work collectively. In decolonization and abolition work, it is not rare to meet new people and working together is a necessity. This can be tricky when you have social anxiety. Abolition and decolonization are both collective efforts, so it will also be a collective effort to carve out space for people with social anxiety to contribute while staying healthy. This article will outline both individual practices and practices our communities can begin to adopt to best center disability justice and radical mental health solidarity.

Finding a Buddy

It’s important to have someone who you feel safe with, aside from your therapist if you have one. Here the disability justice principle of cross-disability and access support can be applied. Your buddy can act as an access support. This basically means they can help you attain your access needs. Your buddy may also be disabled and perhaps have a different disability than you. This is where the principle of cross-disability solidarity comes into play. This solidarity strengthens our community for the collective liberation of all disabled people. It is imperative to have someone, especially if you plan on going to demonstrations. I don’t recommend going to demonstrations by yourself if you have social anxiety. It may be extremely overwhelming and being at a demonstration with a cloudy head can get dangerous. Another function this serves, is being able to have someone other than a therapist to decompress with. Finding someone is probably one of the hardest things to do when you have social anxiety, but it is possible and can happen organically. If finding someone feels too hard perhaps you can start with a journal. If you find that you cannot physically find anyone, there’s no pressure to keep looking. There are online communities you can join on platforms like Instagram, that may be a bit easier to utilize. A good start may be to submit a personal to disabled_personals or if that is too uncomfortable, you could start by simply following someone who submitted a personal that interests you. A personal is a short bio of yourself explaining as much or as little as you want and expressing what you’re looking for in terms of companionship. The hegemonic social aspects of the world make it difficult for many of us with social anxiety to make friends or buddies, so finding support and safety your way on your own terms can be liberating.

Down Time

We’re all humans, and being such, we all need rest. Having social anxiety may make you even more susceptible to burn out. The best way to prevent this is to be deliberate in making time to rest or do something fun. Given how busy many of us are, scheduling down time for yourself may be the best strategy to ensure you actually get it. You are the best judge of how much downtime you require, as everyone’s limits are different. There is no right way to rest and there is no shame in resting. Capitalist culture deems rest deplorable, but rest is a productive form of resistance.

Strategize Rehearse and Script

Strategy and rehearsal can be helpful tactics when you have social anxiety. The repetition and knowing you have a plan can often make you feel prepared. This preparedness can sometimes ease some of the anxiety. You can strategize and rehearse anything. An example could be bringing up a new idea in your abolition group. One way you could go about doing this is by first requesting that discussing your idea be added to the agenda for the next meeting. This will give you time and space to give your suggestion, which may make it easier to take that leap and say something. Writing a script and rehearsing what you would like to say are other tactics that may be helpful. There are plenty of other ways to strategize and things to rehearse. Do what feels right. Perhaps you have social anxiety and are in a prison abolition group and you’d like to share an idea. Strategizing in this scenario could mean doing deep breathing exercises a few minutes before the meeting or maybe listening to sound healing the night before to ensure that you have a good night’s rest. Before the meeting, you may want to review the agenda to pick a time when you’d want to give your suggestion. If you do decide to make a script, you could even read it off when you decide to give your suggestion. These are just a few examples of things you could include in a strategy in a situation like this.

Boundaries

In our capitalist society, something known as grind culture dominates our living. It’s the idea that our labor must never cease, and we cannot have limits around what we can and will do. Because this is considered ‘normal’ in our society, there is not a culture of consideration for differences in ability or how oppressive systems like racism, sexism, and ableism make labor more difficult for those under these systems. Because of this lack of consideration, the labor of setting boundaries and limits tend to be left to the individual. Setting boundaries is a laborious task and may not always be respected by those who consume our labor, but it is important. It’s important because it deviates from the exploitative idea that humans only deserve good when they are constantly producing what is deemed valuable to capitalism. It is also important because everyone deserves to be comfortable.

The last individual tactic this article will discuss is developing boundaries. It is helpful to take some time to really think about your limits. If you have social anxiety, it’s unlikely decolonization and abolition work will be comfortable for you, it is hardly ever comfortable for people without social anxiety. It is important that you have some idea of what you are and are not willing to do. This can and will change over time, so creating a practice of ongoing self-reflection for yourself around boundaries and learning how to understand and honor your needs is key here and is essential internal healing work for our collective liberation as well. There’s no shame in not being able to do everything your accomplices are doing. Capitalism only deems us as ‘normal’ people when we are producing and consuming what it qualifies as valuable. Boundaries will also change and evolve depending on your current state and that’s okay. The important thing is that you have a clear idea or at least work on having an idea of what you are willing to do. A way to start setting up boundaries is thinking about how certain actions will affect you and your anxiety. Perhaps your group is hosting a workshop and you are trying to figure out how you would like to be involved. You could start thinking about things like how big of a crowd you’d be comfortable with being around, which could then lead you to decide if you actually want to have a role where you attend the workshop. Maybe going to the workshop will cause some distress. Then think about how you would handle those effects. If you don’t think those effects are manageable, then that is a good spot to place a boundary and let accomplices know that you will not be able to do that. Letting your accomplices know about your boundaries may be difficult as well. One way of navigating through this is talking through text if that’s easier, or telling one accomplice who makes you feel safe. Social anxiety may make us feel as though we have to fit in with the rest of the world even if it means doing things that are extremely inconvenient and detrimental to our health. The ability to say no to conformity and doing what is comfortable can be liberating. Saying no and setting necessary boundaries can also disrupt ableist cultural norms and serve as a means to co-create new cultural practices in alignment with disability justice practices which ultimately serve our collective liberation as well.

Creating New Culture in Solidarity with People with Social Anxiety and Neurodivergence

Checking in is a practice allies and accomplices can engage in solidarity with people with social anxiety and other forms of neurodivergence in their communities. It is also an important over-arching disability justice practice for allies. Checking-in is simple: ask your socially anxious accomplice about their current state. It means asking them to share as much as they are comfortable sharing about how they are feeling in a certain moment. You can check in after every meeting, once a week, or however often you two are comfortable with talking about those things. Important times to check in are moments when significant change has happened in your group or when the group has decided on an action collectively. Here are a few questions for check ins, “How are you feeling about__?”, “What’s your anxiety level?”, and “Are you comfortable with__?” When people check in with us, it typically shows that they care. So often the structures of the world disregard our well-being, so this can be significant to people with social anxiety.

Affirm

Feeling judged about our performance is a common feeling for people with social anxiety. Given this, creating cultures which value affirmation can disrupt ableism and create safer and more liberatory spaces. As an ally affirming your socially anxious accomplice can be very helpful. These do not have to be grand gestures. Helpful affirmations can be things like telling them they had an interesting idea or expressing appreciation for their involvement. Because people with social anxiety may also struggle with a need for approval from others to feel comfortable, balanced affirmation and feedback, nothing profuse can be the most beneficial. For a person with social anxiety, finding this balance for themselves can be empowering, because it supports them to acknowledge their good qualities and actions while affirming within themselves that it is not necessary to constantly have the approval of others. Thus, the practice of affirmation and feedback can become a culture of dialogue in which everyone involved learns to speak more clearly about what would be most supportive for them.

Culture of Care

Offering support is important, and for allies and accomplices taking care of yourself is important too. One way to take care of yourself is honoring your own limits and needs. As for those of us with social anxiety, setting boundaries by deciding what you are willing to do and how often you are willing to do these things is crucial. Because our society is deeply ableist and still largely organized for profit rather than care, boundary-setting conversations may be difficult for many of us without social anxiety or other forms of neurodivergence. Be deliberate in putting time and energy into figuring out your boundaries before discussing them with your anxious accomplice or with others in your communities. During these conversations it may be a good idea to come up with more boundaries and strategies together. The both of you could decide together what types of conversations may be triggering or maybe how often the both of you would like to be in contact with one another. You all could also work on things like creating a course of action for when the socially anxious person is in distress. The course of action can include things like drawing or playing with sensory toys, while telling themselves grounding affirmations. An example of a grounding affirmation could be something like, “I am present”. This can also be helpful to the person with social anxiety because worrying about being too much for others is common. That honesty about how much you are willing to do may also help the socially anxious person trust you more. We have the common misperception that boundaries and limit setting is about separation, when in fact when we engage in honest boundaries and limit-setting we honor ourselves and our right to autonomy in ways that lay the groundwork for deeper intimacy and increased interdependence.

Offer Alternatives

There may be collective courses of action that may be making your socially anxious comrade extremely uncomfortable. Collective courses of action could be things like writing and calling government officials. For example, it is a norm in many social justice organizations or communities to vigorously (sometimes somewhat aggressively) encourage people to take action. It is never a good idea to force socially anxious people to push through that discomfort. This is when it is imperative to honor peoples’ limits and access needs and to brainstorm modifications or completely different roles your anxious comrade can play. Everyone has something to offer and there is a way for everyone who wishes to to meaningfully participate. Like many of us, socially anxious people often have a hard time saying no and expressing our true feelings. That means if someone suggests we do something, it may be difficult for us to tell them we feel uncomfortable with that. If you have a sense that your socially anxious comrade is uncomfortable with an assignment, it may be a good idea to check in with them after the meeting or group discussion. Furthermore, offering options as a means of creating cultures of care and centering disability justice principles is empowering because often people with social anxiety do not feel we have options and often we don’t due to ableist norms.

Liberation Through Care

It is important that we take care of each other – this is an essential part of the process of decolonizing and abolition work. These tactics can also work for people who don’t identify themselves as having social anxiety or other neurodivergence. It is my hope that this article offers guidance for those of us who are socially anxious to find their way in navigating this work, and our accomplices who may help us as we all put forth the effort to decolonize the world and abolish all oppressive systems. Racism, Sexism, Ableism, and all other forms of oppression are anxiety producing. Oppressive systems produce inter-generational and collective trauma. One way this manifest is, at the inception of these systems, certain groups of people are oppressed and harmed. These groups of people come up with ways to cope with this harm and survive. Some of these survival techniques are the best people can do, but are not always ideal. These practices may get passed down through generations and often harms each generation. An example of this is a black mother during U.S. chattel slavery verbally degrading their child to protect them from being sold and separated. The mother may say negative things about their child in front of the violent kidnappers to make it seem as though the child will not produce valuable labor. This practice of black parents saying negative things or speaking harshly about their children has been passed down through generations. Another piece of this trauma is the constant need for black people to appease white people in order to survive. Black people have had to learn a lot about the social norms of white people and white people have not had to do the same, so there is a lot of room for misunderstanding of Black culture. This misunderstanding and criminalizing of Black culture has often lead to the harming of the Black community. There are many pieces to black inter-generational trauma, but focusing on these two pieces alone, you can see how this would produce anxiety. A child with parents who may not overtly show acceptance of them have to live in a world where their cultural norms are not acceptable to the point where they may not survive without conformity can produce quite a bit of anxiety in that child. A common fear of people with social anxiety is saying the wrong thing and offending people, or behaving in a seemingly strange way. For a black person, behaving in a way that seems strange to white people can get us killed. That is how high the stakes are for us to perform socially. That is quite a lot of pressure to carry

No single person with social anxiety can speak for all of us. Yet, I have used my knowledge of neuroscience and my personal experience as a guide, self-affirming that my own experiences have value in helping to shape liberatory and healing culture. The tactics I recommend are flexible so they may be personalized for everyone’s experience. These strategies themselves are decolonization and abolition work. They dismantle the hegemonic posture of the world that invisiblizes the pervasiveness of social anxiety and gas lights many of us with neurodivergence, and diverse disabilities, giving those of us with social anxiety autonomy and creating a path for increased cross-disability solidarity.