Recognizing the impact anxiety had on his life both internally and externally, this year Gabriel Lopez, who is currently a Radio major at MCCC, embarked on a journey to rebuild his social skills, starting with therapy.
He says, “I decided I needed a therapist again. I’ve kinda been rebuilding that framework to socialization.” He adds, “I was like maybe ten or eleven years old when I first got diagnosed with anxiety issues. I believe I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety so I kind of knew while growing up kind of what anxiety is.”
Lopez, already facing challenges with making friends in high school, found his social life was worsened by the COVID pandemic.
He says, “[COVID] kind of affected me heavily because around that time I was trying to meet new friends. At the time when you are making those new friends and you don’t have that in-person connection it’s kind of weird”
While Lopez spent most of his childhood struggling with anxiety, some individuals experience symptoms later on in life.
For Kaitlyn Angelluci, a second-year Mathematics major, making friends and keeping up with school clubs in high school came easily. Surrounded by a big group of friends she met in field hockey, Kaitlyn says she enjoyed an active social life. After practice, she and her friends would often go out to eat or watch a movie.
But when COVID happened, during her sophomore year of high school, things changed.
Angelluci says, “I remember [the school was] like ‘OK so we’re not going to have class for two weeks but after these two weeks we should be back.’ But they kept extending the date and then it was the last day of school.”
While big group text chains became Angelucci’s “new normal” during the pandemic, she says she missed the deeper in-person connections.
According to the Center for Collegiate Mental Health Annual Report (Collegiate Mental Health ) more than 22 percent of college students regularly experience social anxiety and it is the top concern for 4 percent of the students tested.
Alvyn Haywood, Professor of Communications at Mercer who teaches public speaking, spends his days helping students open up in front of others. He says people were always anxious in his classes, but he has seen a change.
“Post COVID I first came back and people said you know ‘I have social anxiety’…what struck me was that more students came with medical documentation that they’d been diagnosed with social anxiety,” Professor Haywood says.
Heather Jennings, Mercer Psychology Professor, says it’s important to understand the difference between general social anxiety and an actual social anxiety disorder.
Professor Jennings says, “Everybody experiences anxiety and there is a dividing point between, even somebody who’s like, ‘oh my God I’m a nervous kind of person, I am always worried about something,’ versus a person who has a clinical disorder. It’s really necessary to put those two groups in different places.”
She continues, “Social anxiety is real, but it doesn’t mean that it’s clinical. It doesn’t mean that you need to go into therapy. It doesn’t mean that you have a disorder.”
A VOICE survey of 46 MCCC students found that more than 36 percent of students feel anxious in social situations such as meeting new people or attending their professor’s office hours for help. These students fall into the generally anxious but not clinically diagnosed group that Dr. Jennings metioned. The same study found that almost 40 percent of students felt their anxiety in social situations increased after COVID.
According to Professor Jennings, the increased anxiety post COVID may just mean that students in college lost some skills along the way because “COVID put everybody in a little bubble for three years.”
While COVID may have caused social anxiety to increase, people are finding ways to rebuild the skills by attending clubs and organizations at Mercer.
Lopez says, “Whether I am working on [controlling anxiety] down at the doctor’s office or just making an effort to reach out to classmates, I want to kind of this year make an effort to, you could say, make an impact on school, in a positive fashion, of course. I started with Journalism. And that’s kind of been my whole bridge, my gateway to socializing.
While clubs and organizations can help some to rebuild social skills, other students found that having a mentor helps them push past their anxiety.
Alexis Oliva, a second year Business major, says Terry Smith, a Peer Student Academic Success Coach, who runs the “Outreach Table” and the “One Day at a Time” support group at Mercer had a great impact on his academic life.
Oliva says “If [Terry] wasn’t there at all, I would have a very hard time at Mercer. I go back to the table because [Terry] helped me connect to other students.”
Although talking to mentors and becoming engaged in activities can offer a path to overcoming social anxieties, some students aren’t ready to take that step.
Angelluci says, “I don’t do clubs [at MCCC]. I just kind of go to class and I go home and do the work. I don’t really talk to anyone here, unless it’s about the class, but then we don’t talk outside of it. I don’t have the same dynamic I had in high school.”
Prof. Jennings explains, “[Scientists] belief right now is that this is where willpower, grit, and persistence all come from, which is fascinating. But if you’re really, really anxious, you’re not going to do those things because of the discomfort. They believe the only way to do those things is to push through the discomfort, and then things become easier.”
Lopez is one of Mercer’s students who made the decision to go outside of his comfort zone. In an effort to rebuild his social skills and gain control of his anxiety, he continues to attend club meetings and spark up conversations with new friends.
“Maybe journalism is not your thing, maybe you’re not into writing and maybe you don’t want to join the clubs. That’s fine. I would just say make an effort. You don’t have to be the one to engage. Maybe someone will engage with you,” Lopez says.
This article was produced as part of MCCC’s Community Reporting “J Lab” certificate program made possible by grant funding from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities and The New School: Journalism + Design. For more information about the J Lab contact Program Director Prof. Holly Johnson at johnsonh@mccc.edu.
