“Those who can’t, teach.” “Researchers study what they don’t understand.” I humbly accept some of the slings and arrows of these clichés as a scholar of communication. I’ve been labeled as uncommunicative more than once in my life, and it’s only in the last ten years or so that I’ve begun to understand this from the perspective of someone with Social Anxiety Disorder.
Aided by insights from disability studies and cultural studies of medicine and pathology, I’ve grown to ask not, What is wrong with me? but, What is wrong with the society around me that has problems with someone like me?
To be clear, I’m not antisocial in the sense of shunning, hostility, or antagonism. Although, as a critical scholar, I do engage in critique of the status quo and believe things can be better.
What I’d like to apply here is my perspective as someone who does not find communication always to be exclusively, inherently, immediately beneficial. There is an assumption that communication, and its associated functions of connection and community-building, is naturally and universally a good thing. I suggest this is ideological. Whenever we are in the territory of common-sensical, “of course, everyone knows that” beliefs, we are in potentially ideological waters. Not that this is necessarily bad; it just warrants interrogation.
With that in mind, I’d like to describe a socially anxious perspective on communication.
First, let me define “anxiety” as an irrational, disproportionate, or unaccounted-for fear response. Anxiety is not stress. Anxiety is having a fight-or-flight response to situations in which your life is not in danger. Anxiety is panic with no apparent cause. Anxiety is your body and mind acting as if there is a tiger about to pounce on you when there is not.
I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I experience anxiety as a constant baseline. This has been useful in some ways, such as fear motivating me to be productive and energetic. However, it has taken a physical and mental toll. I also have Social Anxiety Disorder. In addition to sort of always feeling as if there is a tiger around the corner, I feel like tigers are very close when in social settings. The worst for me are unstructured social events, such as parties, particularly those that combine my personal and professional life, such as work parties or receptions at my professional conferences. (For what it’s worth, I’ve never been diagnosed for autism spectrum disorder, and I don’t feel I have many of the criteria. However, I do experience certain aspects, such as hypersensitivity, overstimulation, and avoiding eye contact.)
I don’t think people are tigers. I disagree with the therapeutic perspective that social anxiety is primarily based on fear of being rejected by others. This is too foundational psychodynamic. Actually, I find joy in relations with other persons. It’s hard to describe, but the feeling is more like: When there are lots of people around, the potential for tigers in the rooms leaps.
Second, allow me to address communication. For this essay, I draw upon James Carey’s models of transmission and ritual communication. Transmission exchanges information; ritual builds community by expressing shared values and identities. Ultimately, either model is about the communion at the root of communication. It connects persons, and connection has to be good, right?
In Lars Von Trier’s movie Melancholia, a clinically depressed woman is presented initially as the buzzkill at a wedding celebration. During this ritualistic event, it turns out the world is about to end due to a rogue planet’s impending collision with Earth. Once this is known, her disruptive demeanor — which conflicted with the communion of the wedding — becomes a strength, as she is able to process the situation and help others deal with it. Perhaps those of us who experience danger or doom constantly are better equipped to be of aid when such actual situations arise. Perhaps we have an evolutionary function and are not merely an inconvenience.
As a socially anxious person, I’d like to suggest some caveats to the benefits of communication.
Transmission is neutral. Information can be helpful, but it can also be traumatizing, confusing, or destabilizing. Moreover, as our era of “fake news” and social media manipulation has made all too clear, it can be incorrect disinformation or affective manipulation disguised as information. Indeed, we are experiencing a moment in which the factuality of information, data, personal experience, or science is epistemologically unstable.
Therefore, nothing is inherently good about informative connectedness. One can connect to bad actors or bad information. A socially anxious perspective offers a potentially useful degree of judicious suspicion. An anxious person, perhaps, has more of a critical perspective when it comes to media literacy.
What about conspiracy theories? One theory is that persons who seek order and control are more susceptible to conspiracy theories. The idea of bad persons being in control is more appealing than the idea that no one is in control, or control is impossible. An anxious perspective, however, easily accepts that the universe is not a place that can be comfortably ordered and controlled, for any ends.
But what about human connection? Isn’t it always good to foster connectedness between persons? As a socially anxious person, I have two responses. One, in line with the previous point, is that persons can be bad. Connecting to someone has no guarantee of benefit. Two, I would differentiate between connection and empathy. While empathy is a form of connection, not all connection involves empathy. A torturer is connected to their victim. A socially anxious perspective does not presume that connection will result in beneficial understanding. Instead, I have a more wait-and-see approach. Empathy must be demonstrated. Understanding must be mutual. Again, instead of antisociality, I suggest that this is a potentially wise form of precaution.
Consider, for example, the at times damaging effects of diving too suddenly into interpersonal relationships, not seeing warning signs, or tolerating abuse. Instead of seeing connection as equivalent to empathy and understanding, a socially anxious person may demand more proof through action.
Then, there are communities. In Carey’s model, ritualistic acts include activities such as collective chanting of beliefs in a religious service or mass wearing of school colors on a sport’s game day (something my university participates in strongly, myself included). These acts of communication build and reinforce connectedness, performatively displaying and sharing group belonging.
As Groucho Marx famously said, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” Rather than the quip of a mere curmudgeon, I suggest this offers a wise suspicion. Belonging is dangerous, because its very definition includes the threat of expulsion. The benefits of group membership come with a risk of their loss, which can be leveraged. The seductive pleasures of collectivity come with a potential policing of variance. Belonging always comes with the specter of rejection.
As a gay man, I experienced this in a conflicted relationship with the imagined community of LGBTQ culture. I wanted acceptance that would assuage the trauma of previous rejections. And yet, there were always conditions: physical appearance, age, interests, etc. The contemporary expansion of sexuality-based identities into dimensions of race, class, gender, romantic affiliation, and other vectors is a heartening trend to see.
An anxious perspective adds some useful suspicion. Groups are not inherently bad, but one should not ever expect to find a perfect home over the rainbow. Belonging is always contingent, and when one understands that, one can appreciate it more usefully.
Finally, I want to clarify that social anxiety is not just about potential bad ramifications, as I’ve discussed above. In line with introvertism, one aspect of it is simply that social interactions, whether positive or negative, can be experienced as draining. Communication for me has benefits, but it also always takes something from me. This goes beyond the social situations I described previously. Teaching brings me great joy, but requires hours of recuperation. A chat with a dear friend enriches me greatly, but it also depletes my energy and personal resources. I love my academic conferences, but, between panel presentations and group receptions, I have learned that I must recharge in quiet hotel-room time. My intellect, perception, and ability to connect all suffer if I do not. Similarly, my husband and I can participate in socializing, but I’ve learned not to book events back-to-back and to allow time in-between to regenerate.
A word on online communication: The lack of physical proximity does not necessarily negate social anxiety. This essay was inspired by my main professional organization having to move its annual conference into an online format due to the pandemic. While some of us joke that “I’ve trained for this Olympics all my life,” it does not mean that it is anxiety-free. I have been actively engaged in the conference using Twitter, Instagram, and the virtual platform. This has been much easier for me than walking into a crowded reception and plastering on a smile. However, I still have a twinge of fear of reading responses to my comments, just as I fear opening the envelopes of letters in my mailbox or reading the response to an email I’ve sent.
I don’t enjoy this. However, I think it does inform a perspective that I urge in my scholarship, and appreciate in the work of others, that offline and online are not two separate realms. They are entangled, to draw on Karen Barad, and participate in each other’s ongoing continual (re)becomings. In short, they are not exclusive binaries, and one should not automatically map other dualisms onto them. This is why, for example, I find debate over whether online or offline communication is better—as if they are separate, as if there is an essential goodness to communication. Such a shared belief warrants ideological interrogation—who benefits from the belief, and who doesn’t?
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