I'm new here and have a specific question to ask. To my knowledge, I never struggled with social anxiety. There were a few times in high school when I felt like I was unintelligent and disliked by everyone, or questioned the genuinity of a friendship. I struggled in a Dual Enrollment English class that required me to discuss my opinions on a reading assignment set by the teacher. I often kept my opinions to myself during the discussion because I felt like I would sound dumb or stumble over my words, even though I knew my grade would suffer for not participating. In college, I failed my introduction to mass communication class the first time I took it because the professor required his students to present two speeches to the class, one informative and one persuasive. I've always had a fear of public speaking, which mostly likely stemmed from being teased for a speech impediment I had when I was a younger--one that I still struggle with today.

Currently, I work full-time at Walmart as a self-checkout host. I've found that I am very sociable and friendly, and I love my job because I get to interact with the customers on a more personal basis (helping them use the self-checkout registers). However, recently I've come to dread going to work. I've noticed that I will become uncomfortable when larger groups of people come into self-checkout and I will often have to force myself to interact with them. Sometimes I will find myself reviewing a conversation I've had with someone, wondering if I said something wrong, talked too much or too little, or offended the person.

I don't remember having social anxiety growing up, and to my knowledge these feelings have only started two months ago. My anxiety in dealing with customers, friendly or not, is steadily becoming worse to the point where I'm mentally begging the Customer Service Managers (CSMs) to send me to break early just to get away from people.

Have I developed social phobia by working with people or have I always had it and never realized it until now?