Sunday Sojourn – Social Anxiety Revealed

Today on the blog, I’m joined by Miriam Drori, talking about the lead up to her upcoming release, Social Anxiety Revealed, published this week, on 22nd August. Over to you Miriam…

Coming Out

In my guest post on Sue Barnard’s blog, I wrote about how I found out about social anxiety. That led me to face another challenge: coming out.

Coming out about social anxiety has been a long and challenging process that started in 2002. It’s something that’s hard to bring up in conversation and embarrassing to mention at all, even though it’s obvious to people I meet that I have some sort of problem. This is how it went.

Stage One: Unknown

I followed a forum for people with social anxiety, but didn’t post on it.

Stage Two: Anonymous

I created a username and posted on the forum, but didn’t say my real name or where I lived.

Stage Three: Revelation

I admitted, on the forum, to living in Israel, having moved there from the UK. This created interest and a lot of disapproval that I took too personally.

In a group therapy course I attended during this stage, participants discussed the advantages and disadvantages of coming out about social anxiety. I noticed that those against were the ones who were able to hide it, while those for coming out couldn’t hide it. I knew I was in the second category. I knew that by not talking about it, I was only fooling myself and simply creating another reason to keep quiet.

Stage Four: Blog

I created an anonymous blog to talk about writing and social anxiety.

Stage Five: Name

I added my name to the blog and mentioned living in Israel. I kept expecting negative comments, but never received any.

Stage Six: Published

I published a romance, Neither Here Nor There, and made sure to mention social anxiety in the BIO and on various websites.

My second book, The Women Friends: Selina written in conjunction with Emma Rose Millar, also mentions social anxiety in the BIO.

Stage Seven: Now

My non-fiction book, Social Anxiety Revealed, will be released on August 22. At this point in a process that’s lasted fifteen years, I’m finally ready for it.

About Miriam

Miriam Drori is the author of a romance, Neither Here Nor There, and co-author of The Women Friends: Selina, the first in a series of novellas based on a painting by Gustav Klimt. She is married with three adult children and enjoys folk dancing, hiking, touring and reading.

Miriam sees the publication of Social Anxiety Revealed as an important step in fulfilling an ambition that began in about 2003: to raise awareness of a condition that’s very common yet little known.

Miriam has struggled with social anxiety for the past fifty years, although for thirty-five of those years, she didn’t even know the name of it or that a name existed. Only recently has she come to the conclusion that she shouldn’t have been struggling at all, but rather making friends with it.

In order to introduce this book and as a place for discussions with readers, Miriam has begun a blog that’s devoted solely to the topic of social anxiety: http://socialanxietyrevealed.wordpress.com/. Everyone is welcome to visit and comment.

Miriam Drori can be found all over the Internet, including: Miriam’s website and blog, a blog devoted to social anxiety, Facebook author page and Twitter.

Social Anxiety Revealed will be available from Amazon from August 22 in paperback and ebook formats.