The Story Behind It

As a medical student suffering from Social Anxiety disorder (SAD), I was constantly surrounded by doctors, nurses, and other medical students all day in hospitals. Developing Red Face symptoms (bright red facial blushing and profuse sweating) nearly every day was really embarrassing and difficult to deal with. Symptoms got even worse when doctors would draw attention to my red, moist face. Snarky, discouraging comments were consistently being made about me amongst the doctors and students. It was depressing being talked about and humiliated like that.

Mean comments about me were never any fun, but more discouraging than that was the fact that not even one of those doctors recognized I was suffering from Social Anxiety Disorder. Even the psychiatrists during my psychiatry rotation couldn’t recognize it on me. You believe that? Medical and mental health professionals could not recognize a mental health disorder in one of their own students!

This is when I realized how little is known about SAD and how easy it is to overlook it as a legitimate disorder. They all thought that I was “just a nervous person”,
when in reality, SAD conquered me in almost all social settings. This experience is what led to the creation of Social Anxiety Pixels.

The ultimate goal of Social Anxiety Pixels is to create awareness of SAD by building a beautiful collage of social media profiles, each one linking to its own unique social anxiety story. While suffering from a mental health disorder, it becomes very helpful to know that you’re not alone. Although not everyone has SAD, we’ve all had SAD-like moments. If you’ve had an embarrassing social moment in your life, post your story to your social media and upload it to our social anxiety pixel board. This beautiful collage of people coming together and sharing their stories will help empower SAD sufferers to get through their tough times.