i’m not sure how serious this is, but i recently noticed that i have mild anxiety attacks before i have to do or say anything in public or to a large group of people. my hands get sweaty, my heart starts beating uncontrollably, my breath grows ragged… is that what one would term an anxiety attack?

i haven’t always been shy. throughout elementary school and high school, i’ve never had problems with doing presentations in front of large audiences or singing solos in the jazz choir. i actually enjoyed doing those things, believe it or not. but there was one instance that i can clearly remember in my first year of university: my history discussion class was having a lively debate about the causes of world war ii and my view was completely torn up by a haughty hippy fourth-year student who essentially made me feel like a lowly insect under his birkenstock — for fifty minutes. after that, slowly but surely, i felt like my opinion didn’t really matter. i mean, who was i to tell off this fourth-year history honours student (who was still taking first-year classes, mind you)? who was i to tell anybody anything? my class participation began to dwindle more after that incident, as i encountered even more of these people in my courses. my anxiety with speaking or even singing karaoke in front of my own family has increased severely. i can literally feel my heart jumping out of my chest.

i realize it might seem like a little thing to most people, but these little things have quite a huge impact on me. and i can’t really blame other people for chipping away at my self-esteem; it’s me who makes it so easy for them to do so by letting every tiny thing offend me. those people have learned to be confident about their words — perhaps i’m simply jealous.

on a related note, i learned from a teacher in high school that shyness is now considered by a lot of doctors to be an “illness” which can be cured with medication and therapy. why can’t a personality trait be considered just that anymore? why must people bombard it with clinical esoterica until it becomes just another sickness that needs curing?