Social anxiety, to put it bluntly, is no fun. It is a crippling psychological condition that can turn even the most basic of social situations into a terror inducing nightmare of epic proportions. If you struggle from social anxiety, as I did for a very long time (and to a certain extent, still do), becoming a streamer is probably the last thing you would think to do…and I understand, it is one of the last things I would have done myself.
But today I want to share the story of how I went from a lifetime of living with social anxiety to becoming a guy who regularly streams and puts himself out there for the entire world to see. And, while I’m not a Twitch megastar, I have experienced a lot of personal growth through my experience as a streamer. It is my hope that if you’re like me and you struggle with social anxiety, that perhaps you will find something relatable as I recount my story.
My Story
From the time that I was a small child and well into my adult years, one of the most persistent and frustrating issues in my life was the feeling of always being under the spotlight. The fear that everywhere I went people were always watching, secretly judging & critiquing every little thing that I did. It was this fear that caused me to withdraw away from others, often trying as hard as I could to fit in with the background so as not to be noticed. As I came to know later in life, this is a psychological phenomenon known as “the spotlight effect” (fittingly enough), and it is actually quite common among people who suffer from social anxiety.
Over the years, hiding away from this perceived spotlight may have made me feel safe, but it was hell for life satisfaction. Living life from within the bubble of social anxiety was like being a prisoner in a jail of my mind’s own creation. I was caught between a rock and a hard place…the comfort of the mental prison and the daunting price that I would have to pay for freedom.
I knew the only way out of my comfort zone & ultimately to cure my social anxiety was to do something that scared me. The idea of streaming scared me…and that is what made it perfect. Streaming provided me with the opportunity to go the other way, to make a bold decision that was unlike the way that I had lived my life up to that point…to walk proudly (or at least as close to “proud” as I could muster) onto the stage and embrace the spotlight rather than run away from it.
Embracing “The Spotlight”
The first time I streamed, I didn’t know what to expect. To be honest I really wasn’t all that familiar with Twitch as a platform. The only thing that I really knew about it was that it was a popular place for streamers, and that made it as good a place as any to begin my life as a streamer.
I sat in my living room, a webcam in front of me, an Xbox 360 controller in my hands, and the streaming software that I had downloaded earlier in the day pulled up on my computer. I took a deep breath and clicked on the “Go Live” button.
Just like that, my stream was up and going…with a whopping total of zero viewers.
And so I began my journey as a streamer, not with a bang…not even with a fizzle but instead by sitting in my living room, “streaming” to an audience of nobody. It was just me and the stunning, apathetic silence of being a random, unknown person on the internet.
Regardless, I had done it. I was officially a streamer.
"I’m doing it, I’m really doing it!”
Streaming to an empty room isn’t so bad. In fact it can be quite relaxing. The nice thing about this is that rather than being thrust directly into a limelight that I was not ready for, it instead gave me the opportunity to slowly get used to the concept of streaming on my own terms. I was just sitting in my living room, playing a video game like I had done so many times in the past. “Hey,” I thought to myself, “Streaming isn’t so scary after all, it’s just me hanging out by myself and doing a little gaming.”
I started talking about the game as I played as a way of amusing myself and trying to inject a little life into the stream. After all, just because no one was watching didn’t mean that I couldn’t still have fun with it.
…But then a funny thing happened.
I looked over at my computer monitor and noticed something strange. The magical viewer number which had previously read 0, suddenly now displayed the number 1. Realization hit me
“There’s a stranger out there right now watching me.”
And suddenly everything that had felt so normal to me only moments ago now felt strange & foreign. Streaming was no longer just a test, it had now become real.
And just like that, all those years of socially anxious thoughts came rushing back to me:
“How do I look to them? What do they think of me? Do they like me?”
But the viewer said nothing. They just sat there, watching me from behind the infinite void of the internet. An unseen, unheard, unknown observer of my life.
I was no longer having fun.
I could feel my throat tighten up. The jokes that were flowing so freely a second ago, were no longer coming out, now aware of the potential of the unknown stranger’s judgment.
Luckily, I had a safety net…I retreated back by focusing my attention entirely on playing the game. Unfortunately, that too now felt much more awkward then before. My experience watching “let’s plays” and streams in the past had already made me familiar with how unforgiving viewers can be towards even the slightest of gameplay blunders. Now aware that my performance in the game was being watched and evaluated by an outside party, even playing the game had suddenly become more of a challenge.
Nonetheless, I continued to play, piping up only to quickly explain a mistake or error that I had made in the game so as to subdue my new viewer’s hasty judgment. It was my was of communicating “Hey, I really am a good gamer…just an innocent mistake…really (please believe me)”
After a few of the most tense moments that I had experienced on the internet up to that point, the number eventually dropped from 1 back down to 0. I breathed a sigh that was equal parts disappointment (at having just lost my first viewer) and relief (at the ordeal now being over).
I had been shaken, but I was not deterred
Now aware of how unprepared I had been for handling a real live audience in my stream, I turned to the internet to do some researching.
I learned that like my first viewer, many twitch users prefer to “lurk” (watch a stream passively without interacting with the streamer) rather than join in and actively participate via the chat. I also learned that in dealing with “lurkers”, that it was best to just let them be rather than call attention to them (in an odd reversal, despite me being the one on camera, many lurkers seem to feel that the streamer communicating with them puts THEM on the spot, causing them to flee the stream in search of new streams where they can lurk in peace)
In short, I learned that it was best to ignore the viewer and focus only on the game until the viewer chose to interact with you. This was, of course, easier said than done. Given my history with anxiety, knowing that a person was watching me would surely be the only thing on my mind anytime a viewer popped in. Nonetheless, I went ahead with adopting the policy of speaking only when spoken to by the viewer.
Over the next few streams, new viewers would stop by the stream occasionally…and each time I would wait with baited breath with all of the same anxious thoughts from before swirling in my head. But this time, they were joined by a few new anxious thoughts:
“Will this person chat with me? How will it go? Should I try to be funny or will I come across as lame and chase them off?”
As time went on, I started to notice the long lulls between new viewers. Every time my view count dropped back to zero, there was an indeterminable waiting period between when the next viewer would stumble upon my stream. I would fluctuate between brief periods of having a viewer followed by long periods of having nothing.
Over time, a new viewer dropping in became something that I dreaded less and less. After a while it even grew to become something that I would look forward to. Streaming to an empty room was fine but had definitely started to feel a bit hollow. When a new person would come in, I would usually think “Hey, at least there’s someone out there actually watching this.”
Enter “The Chat”
The first person that came into my stream and actually wanted to chat was innocent enough. We exchanged pleasantries and they asked a few basic questions about the game that I was playing, if it was my first time playing it, and how long I had been streaming. I answered their questions and (as I had learned during my research) focused my attention back toward playing the game when the viewer let the conversation drop off, looking to the chat periodically to see if my new viewer friend had left any more messages.
My next few viewers to step into the chat all followed the same pattern. Mostly small talk about the game that I was playing and occasionally a hint or a tip if I found myself getting stuck. Every now and then, me and a viewer would really hit it off and make a few jokes back and forth.
Having a friendly person in the chat was nice and it really helped to take the edge out of the performance aspect of being a streamer. It was like playing the game with a friend rather than performing in front of a judgmental audience. It was around that time that I managed to gain my first follower. It was a nice feeling and a real confidence booster knowing that a stranger out there had enjoyed me enough as a streamer to actually follow me.
Over time, I stopped feeling tense and uncomfortable and started to accept viewers and the chat as part of the streaming process. Sometimes I would have no audience and those times would be fine. Other times I would have viewers who would choose to lurk and that would be fine. And every now and then, I would have an active chat room and that too would be completely fine.
Lessons Learned
Streaming on Twitch helped me to see that the spotlight effect was bullshit (something that I always knew but nonetheless could never really break free from until I confronted it). It helped me learn to relax and be myself in front of strangers. And perhaps most importantly, it has helped me learn to stop fearing the judgment of others.
When I started, I felt a lot of pressure to entertain and be funny but as I have settled into streaming, I have learned how to relax and be myself. These days it feels very normal (almost routine) for me, a person who lived with social anxiety for years, to get on camera and broadcast myself live to a world of complete strangers.
Streaming for a couple hours at a time also means that I have had to get used to running my mouth…A LOT. Whether there is a person in the chat or not, I tend to keep a running stream of consciousness flowing while I stream. As a person who grew up extremely introverted, this was a huge change for me. This has helped me to get used to hearing my own voice and making lots of casual conversation over small things. I went from being a person who methodically planned out conversations in my head to becoming a person who just absentmindedly runs my mouth without even realizing it.
I am still very early in the process with a long way to go in terms of developing my stream and growing my audience (as of writing this, I have still yet to hit Twitch “Affiliate” status), but streaming has helped me out a lot and the results are noticeable. If you’re a person who, like me, has had a history of anxiety and you are open to experimenting, perhaps streaming could offer some help for you as well.
Thank you for reading & I sincerely hope you have been able to gain something of value from my story.
To keep up with my adventures on Twitch, you can follow me at: