The UGLY TRUTH about Social Anxiety | Bocchi The Rock

Ochi the rock is probably the most accurate piece of media depicting what social anxiety is from being beaten by a dog and a little five-year-old in terms of social skills to her having melt down every other scene in the show but has lighthearted in comical the anime is let's take off a rose tinted glasses and see her social anxiety for what it really is where simple conversations feels like hell where simple social interaction could traumatize them and on top of that piles of misconceptions about social anxiety that leaves them misunderstood and their suffering for naught so let's delve deeper into the harsh and cold truth about social anxiety so for those who don't know Ochi the rock is an anime series focusing on our pink-haired protagonist hitori goto or bochi who suffers from a disorder called social anxiety to an extreme degree struggling with day-to-day activities that involves socializing she thought that things wouldn't get better but inspiration struck her when she saw a guitarist on TV who had similar circumstances as her and decided that she wanted to be a guitarist too hoping that one day she would be able to set foot on stage with her social anxiety gone as she mastered the guitar she came to high school brandishing her guitar in hopes that someone would talk to her which failed or not eventually someone found her and was invited to join a band and from there on her musical journey and her path to overcome her disorder began so we have been hearing the term social anxiety a lot for a while now but what is it exactly well going by the name of the disorder itself it gives us the idea that this has something to do with being anxious in social situations while many of us are familiar with the feeling of being anxious and in social situations it's not quite as simple as that people with social anxiety experience anxiousness to an abnormal level making social interaction extremely difficult for them some even struggle to say hi or even maintain eye contact which is what we saw from hitori in the anime now I know some of you can't fathom the idea of being afraid of interacting with people especially extroverts but to help you understand better imagine this imagine that you're every movement from the way you breathe the way you move your fingers the way you look at things the way you stand up the way you walk the way you laugh the way you talk the way you blink every single thing about you is being judged by all the people around you with a mindset like this you definitely instantly freeze on the spot the exaggerated self-awareness that social anxiety causes makes people with this disorder overthink things and blow things out of proportion it's also known as the spotlight effect in which people not only the ones suffering from social anxiety overestimate what people think about them with a difference that socially anxious individuals experience it more intensely and this is one of the many things that socially anxious people experience physical symptoms may include dizziness or feigning muscle tension blushing heart palpitations hyperventilating or sharpness of breath nausea or vomiting IBS excessive sweating shaking or trembling as for the psychological symptoms we have feelings of dread before social situations fear stress or Panic brain fog intrusive thoughts loneliness fatigue hesitance to speak up difficulty making eye contact and low self-esteem that is a lot according link to this article anyways because I'm 100 sure that there's a lot more symptoms than this putting that aside what causes social anxiety in the anime it was never elaborated how bocci's social anxiety started just that it manifested in her Middle School correct me if I'm wrong though since I haven't read the Manga though this is actually quite common with socially anxious individuals and it just might be that hitori doesn't remember what caused it but in actuality something did happen which caused her to be like this this phenomenon is referred to as disassociative Amnesia in which the brain forcefully tries to forget a really bad experience leaving the individual with large memory gaps depending on how bad the said experience is and this is linked to social anxiety in a way that something horrible happened in a social situation that a brain tries its hardest to forget it but even if they forgot the memory they subconsciously remember that their mental is card which is why social anxiety remains even if the memory is forgotten and I suspect that the enemy purposely did not mention watches trigger for it to be more realistic and the anime after all showcases her point of view as a socially anxious person and now that we know what social anxiety is let's delve deeper and examine bochi's social anxiety and the behaviors she has shown throughout the anime I have to say the author really did a great job of characterizing bochi since all of her behavioral patterns really attributes to the fact that she's socially anxious and I've noticed quite a few of them the way she reacts to being complimented indicates that she has low self-esteem and which is one of the symptoms as I mentioned with no one to interact to and no one to give her validation dubst and fear her mind which worsens her disorder this is why we see Bocce over exaggerate the small compliments she receives sending her to euphora and matching fake scenarios according to her fantasies when the opposite happens however let's say that she was told that she sucks at playing the guitar she also retreats to her own little world and make up scenarios only this time the negative thoughts are Amplified instead of a positive one one might say that her emotions are enhanced due to her disorder but if we look at this at a different angle we can also say that her ability to make up this scenarios are indicative of her also suffering from disassociation a method for the brain to momentarily cope with negative thoughts by temporarily detaching herself from reality and live in her head in that moment so the visualization of her having wild thoughts in the anime is an exaggeration minus the scenes where she defied the loss of Nature and because she uses this to cope with negative situations she unintentionally also disassociates when she doesn't want to if You observe scenes whenever the band are having a group conversation you'd notice the bocce being eerily quiet not just that but on one-on-one conversations as well let's take the example of wankita the red-haired girl was trying to converse with bocce at work Kita was babbling and rambling on about random things and what did Bocce did she replied mentally in her head her excessive disassociation caused her to be so detached from reality that words that supposed to be coming out of from her mouth is stuck in her head as thoughts and this is her reason for being so quiet plus the fact that she has horrible social skills due to her social anxiety so if we take a step back and look at it as a whole social anxiety is linked with different mental disorders such as disassociation and Detachment which Bocce was suddenly suffering from and with how heavily sugar-coated her experience are in the enemy for the sake of it being comedic because anime can you imagine how much worse it is in real life now I think this is a good time to mention that even without the proper diagnosis I myself have suffered from this I'm probably still suffering from it so I can say with certainty and confidence that the enemy is an accurate portrayal of the disorder although in a lighter tone I also had a similar experience with this character in school only that I went on from middle school to high school and compared to her classmates let's just say that my classmates were not the best the behavioral patterns I mentioned before are also uncannerly similar to mine from not being able to maintain eye contact to disassociating and retreating to my own world in my head only that it's much worse with no one to sugarcoat it although this character and I are similar in terms of experience with social anxiety I really can't speak for everyone but but she has it nice she has a supportive family classmates that don't bully her despite her condition and pretty much no traumatic events but in real life the opposite of these are the main factors of what triggers this disorder it's nothing but a vicious cycle traumatic events causes social anxiety which in turn causes low self-esteem low self-esteems worse in social anxiety and social anxiety can possibly cause another traumatic event it's an extremely difficult cycle to break which is why many of us simply gives up on trying to resolve this issue because the more we try the worse it gets this is the harsh reality of social anxiety and it makes me upset with how people misuse the term social anxiety people would be feeling the slightest of anxiousness and they would claim that they have social anxiety especially the ones doing it online just for likes and attention it's utterly disgusting just because you feel nervous does not automatically mean you have this disorder this gives people the idea that social anxiety is shallow when it's not it's way worse than just feeling nervous over a normal situation getting back on track I also want to point out that there are triggers for the disorder can vary from person to person taking myself as an example I can pretty much stand at a stage with a room full of audience with all their eyes on me delivering a performance with full confidence even though I know I'm pretty bad with it to the socially anxious watching I know that it sounds like an absolute nightmare I wouldn't blame you for thinking that way but the only reason I'm able to stand before them is the fact that I'm pretty much just putting up a neck and if I'm following a planet script then there's really no reason for me to be anxious but I think this is just specific to me though and now let's take a look at an example that other socially anxious individuals can do that I can't and that's the ability to message people they know online for many people suffering from this disorder chatting online is one of their ways if not the only way they can socialize without fear not for me though even though I can't see their faces the amount of anxiety I experience is the same as socializing in person and this just goes out to reinforce what I said that social anxiety varies from person to person what one socially anxious person might be afraid of might not be the same for another and speaking of online chatting I have said before that the online world is a safe haven for many of us and bochi is not an exception the internet is another one of bochi's escape prison a way to avoid facing reality but for her it became way more than that she realized that the online world is a great place to share her passion without facing people so she shared her guitar videos online and what's amazing about it is that she was able to create her own Community her own place in the internet world with over 30 000 subscribers and supportive commenters oh and while we're on that topic why don't you hit that subscribe button all cosplayers bought you when we hit 30k anyways back to the point the online world is a great place to interact with people without fear however I do think that relying on the internet as an alternative for social interaction would do more harm than good relying on the online world for social interaction would result on a person being dependent on it meaning that person would most likely spend more time indoors than Outdoors not that I'm saying that it's completely bad but it does hinder our ability to recover from this disorder and the truth is that the use of the internet more specifically online platforms can and potentially make our social anxiety worse as the study about social media use and social anxiety the overall conclusion is that social media use by those struggling with social anxiety as an alternative to face-to-face communication results in poorer well-being in a lower self-confidence if it is not coupled with real-time interaction so what we thought was a safe place for us can actually make us worse since we are preventing ourselves from facing our actual problems and meet people outside interacting with people online does not train our social skills meeting people in person does so the online world when used in this context is like some sort of poison maybe even some sort of addiction that chains Us in place it is yet another cruel cycle that makes the disorder worse so if the online world isn't even a viable option then what do we even do at this point let's take another look at bocce how did she meet her friends in the first place was it by pure coincidence or luck neither of it what she was able to meet her friends through a shared interest which was music she spent years honing her guitar skills not just to achieve her dreams but to actually make friends of course her approach to this was a little weird I was surprised she doesn't get tired bringing that guitar with her everywhere she goes but in the end it was pretty effective and I think this is what people with social anxiety should focus on if interacting with people is a little too much I'm not saying you should learn the guitar I'm saying that you should find something that you can be truly passionate about invest a lot of time with it and learn to grow in it it really doesn't matter what it is it could be painting reading singing or it could be even as simple as playing video games when the opportunity arises you'd be able to make friends through a shared interest and even if you don't make friends right right away you'd be able to have something that can truly make you happy and can serve as a strong Foundation to build self-confidence and a sense of self-worth besides it took years for bocce to meet nijika and the others so don't give up moving on to watch his friends I can say that she is a pretty intriguing friend group the four of them has their own unique personality types that I think represents the types of people we generally see nijika seems to be the ambivert of the group someone who loves to spend time socializing but also likes to spend time indoors Kita is obviously the extrovert sometimes known as our worst nightmare but the two I find most interesting Israel and of course Pochi ryo's personality type is often confused with social anxiety or shyness in general that being said rio is an anti-social a person who doesn't necessarily hate being with people nor is scared to be with p people but would just prefer to spend their time alone in contrast to Bocce who's the complete opposite but despite that people mistake these two different traits as one I suppose it's because the two are similar in the aspect of socializing they both choose not to meet people just for different reasons Ryo chooses not to socialize but she can and what she just can't at least just not properly and together with all these four they form a somewhat balanced friend group of course at first Bocce was a nervous train wreck even when they already consider each other as friends she just can't be completely unaffordable around them there's this unreasonable expectations that Pochi has set for herself that if she fails to do this or that for friends they're going to leave her or maybe if she does something stupid or dumb they think that she's a weirdo and eventually creeper friends out this keeps her at Edge every time when she's with them even after months after forming their friendship as we saw in the anime when Kita and nijiga visited potia house the poor girl isn't even comfortable at her own home however with situations like this we tend to suffer more in our mind than in reality as we saw in the later episodes in the anime we saw what our friends really think about Bocce and quote they said that she is cool and fun and this isn't just to cheer her up since she wasn't even there we also got a glimpse of kita's inner thoughts about Bocce and with the way she looked at her I can say that in a way she admired her so in reality things aren't as bad as our minds makes it to be and I think that Bocce is slowly realizing this as the anime continued but she wasn't able to improve her condition just by pure luck it's important to note that what Bocce did it for people like her as a feat equivalent to the moon landing okay that might sound a little exaggerated but what I'm trying to say is it takes a lot of effort and courage to take even one step trying to fix social anxiety by yourself I can even go as far as to say that even thinking about trying to improve this condition through socializing is hellish in itself so for bocce to put herself out there she had to break a ton of mental barriers before getting there not only is she fighting anxiety she's also fighting layers of self-doubt negativity and lots of overthinking but despite that she went from not being able to look people in the eye to being able to smile with her friends now that might seem that it's such a small Improvement that it's barely noticeable but I do remember that she overcame mountains of hurdles to get to this point not to mention that she seemingly only to be continually improving over time so my respect goes out to the people who's trying to improve their Condition it's extremely hard to get started and it's even harder to keep going at it as each interaction has a risk of putting you all the way back to step one for me this types of people are the most courageous one unironically you're fighting something that's wired into your brain something that's your natural enemy and with not many people to understand you it's not easy and I wish that it was as simple as flicking a light switch off but I can guarantee you that even though it's hard even when there are more Downs than UPS as long as you consistently try your hardest you will get better one step at a time this anime really did a great job at delivering the portrayal of social anxiety although in the much lighter tone and I do hope that this anime and maybe even this video would give others the idea of what social anxiety really is the struggles of people suffering from this really does go unnoticed Sometimes using a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms like Detachment from reality and different kinds of escapism like the Internet it's an uphill battle for many of us but through passion and hobbies I'm sure that we'll meet people with the same interest as us now this isn't really my usual type of content if you take a look at my channel then you'd find that some of them are questionable but I do like to switch from non-serious to Serious content from time to time just to balance things out so if you're looking for deep Dives like this or if you're degenerate like me then why not stick around and subscribe there's going to be a lot more videos like this funnily enough when I was making this video I saw a Reddit post about kikuri a character from the same anime and I found her to be a very interesting character so I'll make a character analysis for her as soon as I finish the manga I'll also be doing a deep dive involving uh traps let's just say that so stay tuned for that but that's it for this one and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Hazie

Views: 148,112

Keywords: 2023 anime, Anime, Anime Review, Anime analysis, Anime recommendation, AnimeAnalysis, Nijika, Social anxiety, anime, anime 2023, anime recommendations, anime summer 2023, anime to watch, best anime, best anime 2023, best anime of 2023, best anime to watch, bocchi, bocchi the rock anime, goto, how to overcome social anxiety, memes, new anime, new anime 2023, newanime, overcome social anxiety, social anxiety disorder, top 10 anime, top anime 2023, upcoming new anime 2023

Id: 37vPBsYANTE

Length: 20min 43sec (1243 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 31 2023