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Causes of Anxiety: Living in the Box

Social anxiety and many other anxiety disorders can have many different causes (see ASN's Causes of Anxiety: Lack of Love). Aside from causes that seem to be present from a very young age or possibly from birth (see Causes of Anxiety: Overprotective and Controlling Parents), there are many additional factors that contribute to the development of social anxiety disorder and other anxiety disorders.

One such contributing factor is a person's chosen place of employment (see ASN's Work Anxiety and Anxiety at Work for more about how work can affect your anxiety level). My personal experiences with employment at private corporations and most recently in public bureaucracies has been, well, less than positive, to put it tactfully.

For those who do not know me that well yet, I will briefly rehash my experiences in the private sector. At first, I chose to work in computers because that was the only thing I knew at the time. I was young and naive and did not really know what the heck I was doing, so that is what I did. And, I excelled in terms of grades. However, the practical experience was for me, not a very pleasant one. At the internship that I served, the older employees went out of their way to harass other interns and myself (nobody liked the more senior employees most days). At the first job I found, the boss was emotionally abusive and would scream, holler, and yell at other employees and I whenever we made mistakes. This was the place where they actually had procedure in a procedure manual detailing the "correct" way to put the toilet paper roll on in the bathroom! At the next job after that, my boss was actually pretty decent, but fairly often he would snap on other coworkers and I. Many referred to it being "that time of month" for him. Nonetheless, I was unable to cope with the intense social anxiety, and all jobs were actually quite a sour experience. So, with the combination of all these poor experiences, I turned to the social work profession, a profession where I am now excelling.

At this juncture, I will now mention that all my life I have known that I am a contrarian. Doing the standard thing or reciting some pointless rhetoric passed down by superiors was never something I found any interest in, and still do not to this day. I was trained by my father that the system is out there to screw you (I do not know if it is that extreme in reality, but in general I believe that traditional institutions exist to preserve the power in the hands of a few).

In social I work, I excelled immediately working as a therapist for autistic children, and all I did was show up and work. I did not feel like I had any special skills that might help other people, however, it happened such that the way I act naturally is good for working with autistic children. To my surprise, I enjoyed the job and found that other people were really excited to have me on board! I was pretty surprised, as the job pretty much came out of nowhere.

After doing that for several years, I decided in 2009 that it was time to try something else. The next job that I found involved helping people with varying disabilities to decide what to do with their public funding. The training went well, but as soon as the actual experience started a personal sense of dread overcame me. The job was very bureaucratic, but I wanted to try it just to gain experience and see if maybe I was mistaken. The work was dreadful. Some people would scream and cuss me out because they failed to understand the asinine rules invented for this particular bureaucracy. In retrospect, I understand their frustration, however, that did not give them the right to vent it all on me. The main problem for me, however, was that I felt like a robot. Here I was, reciting the same garbage I had been instructed, and I was pushing people around and sending them through hoops, something I always personally hated. Many answers that I gave to people's questions were, "Well, let me check on that" or, "Yes, but only if..." and so on. There was very little room for individual thought, if any; all actions were prescribed. This was a work-from-home job, so I anticipated I would like that because of the level of freedom that it offered, however, that turned out to be a small concession to the overall problem. I was incredibly stressed; like some of the computer jobs, I would get anxious and lose sleep as many as two or three days before having to work. The level of social anxiety I was experiencing was again at an all-time high, and once I realized that, I knew it was time to get out. Then I quit, effective immediately.

At this point, I knew that social work was the right path because helping people gives me such a personal high, and I really enjoyed working with autistic children. The problem now was that the job I quit, working as a case manager, is a very typical job in the social work profession. The worries going through my mind were intense: "If I am unable to do what is a basic job in social work, how am I ever going to make a living without intense anxiety?" This was the reality that I had to face. Jobs that were simple to many people were incredibly difficult for me. I could not perform entry-level work in computers, and neither could I perform the entry-level work in social work. Therefore, for a few days, I concluded that I was a failure. I recalled, around this time, how I said to other people at work, "I am just like my father. I am unable to get along in the real world." I went back to the autism job which, to my relief, welcomed me with open arms. But, here I was working in an entry-level professional role as well! I still felt like a failure because here I am, twenty-six years old, and all I can do is pretty basic work. With all this evidence mounting, the clear answer seemed to be that indeed, I would be cast aside in society.

But, things change so fast. After I quit the job, I also began to think, "Well, if this bureaucratic garbage is one of the largest causes of anxiety for me and I cannot do it, then what can I do?" After all, I have reassured many people that they all have their place in the world; would I be a hypocrite if I was unable to find my own place?

Then, I started considering all the evidence in my own life. In my own life, the worst causes of anxiety were doing all the simple and mundane things that most people do. I always strongly hated doing the typical or standard things and not thinking for myself. I was unable to work in the computer industry in three different jobs, and I was unable to work in a silly bureaucratic system invented by people who know the least about society. Also, several of my friends had noted that even with their degrees, they were struggling to get hired, or that after having gone to school for five years and learning complex theories, they found themselves doing basically the same mindless tasks at work every day. I realized that the few things I did like allowed a large degree of freedom. I worked with my father doing carpentry for five summers and I liked that because I could do whatever the heck I wanted, as long as I worked hard. The same thing applied to working as a therapist for autistic children; while the children do enjoy their routine, a high degree of creativity is required in order to break them out of it, or to keep them interested in doing therapy every day. The supervisors there also let me do whatever the heck I wanted, as long as it helped the child. The other thing that I realized is that while simple and repetitive tasks bored me, incredibly complex tasks strongly grasped my interest. I loved pondering how to beat the market average when investing in stocks (in fact I have figured how to retire a millionaire by investing just $3000 per year). I enjoyed navigating bureaucracies and pointing out the flaws and figuring out how to maximize personal rewards from the system (i.e. there are better and legal ways of doing your taxes than others).

After compiling all this evidence and doing some really hard thinking, I learned that beyond the shadow of a doubt, the right career path for me was to become a social entrepreneur (someone who solves a social problem by starting a nonprofit or for-profit business). There is a large degree of freedom that scares most people, but I naturally gravitate towards it because I enjoy that freedom and feel that I have the ability to begin a successful business venture. To me, it was scarier to see all these people, especially living in Milwaukee, fighting it out trying to get the edge on one another in order to have just a little more. While people are not enslaved by ball and chain in modern society, they are instead held to a desk, sitting as idle prisoners to powerful institutions which are really in charge. The city is literally like a war zone, although many inhabitants would never admit that; if you are not paying attention, someone is going to take advantage of you in a second. The cliche of the rat race was exactly correct; each rat is trying to outwit all the other rats and find his or her own cheese. For me, however, I want no part of it; I would rather stand by on the sidelines, patiently doing my own thing until the right time arrives. I would much prefer finding my own cheese and then creating a method that helps other people find their own cheese as well.

While I do use extensive amounts of personal experience when writing on this website, the point is not to give myself glory, but rather to share my experiences with other social anxiety disorder sufferers so that they can find their own place in life as well. For sufferers of social anxiety disorder, traditional methods can be very intense causes of anxiety, and very often a high degree of creativity must be employed in order for people like us to make a living! Although society, friends, and family may attempt to confine us to certain areas in life, there is nothing wrong with doing something different. Once you find you true purpose in life (mine is to help people and create full-time income by working independently; see also ASN's Creating a Purpose Driven Life for more on this), all you need to do is figure out how you can make a contribution to society, while simultaneously making a living from it. For social anxiety sufferers, this might mean becoming an entrepreneur, and it might also mean working from home via pyramid marketing, or any other work-from-home type venture (perhaps you might fix and sell cars, be an on-call PC repairman, or build and sell wooden furniture). Alternatively, some people are in fact truly happy by doing the same thing everyone else does, and that is fine, if it works for them.

In conclusion, living in the box is something that is not for everyone. In fact, the majority of people who choose those kinds of lifestyles may enjoy material success, but their emotional life is a total disaster, and they often end up hating their careers. The important thing is that no matter who you are or what you do, there is always something that you can find so that you can make a contribution to society and find personal fulfillment at the same time! If you are having a difficult time, hang in there and work at it, because good things happen to people who work at it (see ASN's Apply Yourself and You'll be Just Fine if you doubt this!)


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