YES!!! i even believed them! i really did want to talk and make friends but i physically couldn’t get the words out so i was just the shy kid who didn’t talk.

I was an adult when I realised what I was doing was selective mutism. I also suffer from pretty severe dissociation so my brain doesn’t always recognise family correctly. The best way I can describe it is that logically, I know who they are. But I have no emotional attachment. So as a kid with a huge family and dissociation I was often mute in places I felt uncomfortable, which was just about everywhere that wasn’t at home or with my grandma.

yeah

Basically.

I’m not so sure when it started but it got rly bad when I was 9 years old because I stopped talking to my grandparents until I was 15.

Yes! I was always called quiet or shy, but I deal with social anxiety and selective mutism, I always have so much to say but I'm too scared to say any of it.

Yes! It drove me crazy because I had so may words inside I wanted to say but couldn't. And I wasn't able to explain all the anxiety that was happening inside because I couldn't talk. Over the past year or two I have gotten so much better and found a social setting where I can talk very freely. It feels so good to be able to talk. Its weird because I was called an extrovert by someone in that social group when for my whole life I was always called the shy introvert.