I cured my social anxiety in my 30s. I only wish I had tried harder in my 20s

If you’d met me at any point in my twenties, you’d have probably thought I was quite sociable—extroverted, even. I spent most weekends going out beneath the lilac-pink lights of clubs like or else rolling around a park with anywhere between two to 20 people. On my 25th birthday, I went to New York alone on a whim, and ended up at a Halloween house party with tens of strangers. On my 26th, I did the same thing and spent the entire time with various Tinder matches on different rooftops. I was never the stereotypical loner, which is weird, because I always felt like one on the inside.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy hanging out with others—it’s more that the whole thing made me incredibly anxious. Mostly, I’d rely on alcohol to relax in big social settings. And if I was sober, I’d spend the majority of interactions waiting until it was polite to go home. I hated the idea that I might say the wrong thing, which caused me to shut down in large groups, which meant that I was never really present with others. For a while, I considered the idea that I might be autistic, but those around me asserted that this couldn’t be the case. “But you’re so sociable,” they’d say. “An autistic person would never stay in so many random Airbnbs,” someone said once. I often wondered how I’d managed to dupe all of these people.

Then, around 30, a few years post-pandemic, something changed. I wish I could pinpoint what it was. It’s not that I no longer felt socially anxious, it’s more that I could no longer be bothered to feel socially anxious. It was draining, and for what? Therefore, over time, bit by bit, the sensation sort of drifted away.

I also started employing this strange mental exercise whenever I was around people. I’d remind myself that they were also rattling around their own minds, and therefore what I did or said really didn’t matter—it’s like a video game! I often recalled Jemima Kirke’s famous adage, “I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much.” At the heart of my social anxiety, I realised, was an assumption that others were studying me in great detail, which is absurd, obviously, and quite self-involved. But also, even if they were, why did it matter? Essentially, I trained myself to care less—and it worked.