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Hi all, My name is Jason. I'm 38 years old. I've always has really bad social anxiety. When I was younger I had really bad problems with remembering names and processing information in real time. It was as if the anxiety was shorting out my brain. About 5 years ago I started getting bullied at work. This happened to me over and over again at different workplaces, at least 4 different places over 4 years. I started to think that having social anxiety is a sign to others that you are a loser, and that as a loser, you are fair game for open attack. What I did was ignore my attackers, but then something interesting happened. More people joined in on the attack. This seems to me to be some sort of phenomenon. When one person starts attacking someone who has social anxiety, someone who is seen by the group as a 'loser', then that signals that others should jump in and start trying to stress out the loser. In my case, there was a reason why they were stressing me out. They wanted me to quit. They wanted me to leave but they didn't want to fire me. So instead they just started trying to stress me out to make my life miserable so that I would leave. During the attacks I started to see the social world differently than I ever had before. I started to realize that there was a social hierarchy, that there was a 'pecking order' so to speak among the various people I worked with. I had vaguely realized social hierarchies before, but now it was so much clearer. The way they were coordinating in attacking me made the whole group look like it was one giant superorganism. When I was younger I went into psychology and attempted a PhD in neuroscience, all in an attempt to understand what was wrong with me. I completed a bachelors in psychology but was unable to complete my PhD, largely because of the problems with processing information in real time and also because of the social problems (for example, I didn't network effectively when I was there). Therefore, when this group effort to stress me out started, and when I saw it happen over and over again at different locations, I began to think that there was something very important that could be learned from what was happening. I began to develop a theory that could explain what I was seeing. The theory I developed was that the brain changes based on winning and losing social battles. If you win social battles you become more confident and less anxious. You rise to the top of the social hierarchy and are ready for leadership. You tell other people what to do. If you lose battles, you start to become unconfident and anxious. Not only that but you develop self-doubt, guilt and shame. Therefore, to get rid of social anxiety you have to win social battles. The problem was I couldn't face my attackers when they were attacking me because my fight-or-flight would kick in and I wouldn't be able to talk, or I wouldn't be able to talk without getting really mad. So what I did was just continue to ignore my aggressors until this gradually went away. Eventually when my attackers would attack I wouldn't be so worked up that I couldn't respond. I started responding and in this way began to win battles. My social anxiety gradually went away, my confidence went up and my self-doubt and guilt largely went away. I am writing my theory along with some of my experiences at www.confidencedisorder.com. I feel like I have discovered something big, but I don't know yet if I am right or just grasping at straws. I would love to hear from other people to see if any of this rings true. Cheers, Jason