“She’s just quiet” “She’s just shy” those are things I have heard all the time growing up with selective mutism. I always knew that I had selective mutism, it wasn’t a secret. But I knew it was more than just being shy. Kids that are just a little shy don’t have to go to therapy. Kids that are just a little shy don’t have to take medication to make them feel normal. But even knowing that I had no idea what was happening to me.
Like I said I knew it had something called selective mutism and that it was some sort of anxiety but that’s where my knowledge of my own condition ended. It wasn’t until I was about 12 years old that I happened to get curious one day and typed selective mutism into the search bar. Selective mutism is an anxiety disorder where the affected person becomes mute in certain social situations. That’s what I found out that day.
In an instant everything just clicked. That shyness wasn’t just shyness, it was genuine, intense panic and fear. If that was the case, why had no one told me? Why was I described as just shy when it was so much more than that? How was I one of the lucky people who got so much support growing up but in the end just ended up feeling dismissed in my pain? None of it was fair in my mind.
Even now as anxiety and mental health in general are starting to become somewhat less stigmatized, I still feel dismissed, just in a new way. “Everyone has anxiety” “Everyone feels anxious sometimes” those are the new phrases that replaced the ones that had ostracized me in the past. Now I was just like everyone else.
Of course it is true that everybody feels anxious sometimes. I’m not saying that that isn’t true but I still felt like I was being dismissed in my own experiences. It might be acknowledged now but in the end it’s still waved away with one little comment.
So many of us that struggle with anxiety as a mental health condition are just ignored as a common thing even when we are at our breaking points. We reach out for help and are told that everyone deals with this. The comfort we receive is that everyone is suffering. Even for those who only experience anxiety as a momentary feeling and not as something that plagues every step of their life, how can they take comfort in the suffering of others? How can any of us? In the end no matter what end of the anxiety spectrum you’re on, we all just get dismissed.
We can’t keep doing this. Disregarding our struggles won’t help the problem just go away. We need a sustainable solution. I’d be lying if I said I had the answers to this problem but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Anxiety won’t just go away, so instead of being the person to make others feel ashamed and ignored, be the one that extends a hand when we reach out of help.