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Filling the Silence: Self-Experience and Communication in Social Anxiety

Anna Bortolan Orcid Logo

Erkenntnis

Swansea University Author: Anna Bortolan Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1007/s10670-025-00986-w

Abstract

This paper aims to explore from a philosophical perspective the experience of silence in social anxiety. Moving from the account of lived silences in mood disorders developed by Degerman (2024a), I argue that while “imposed”, “depressed”, “unknowing”, and “peaceful” silences can all be experienced b...

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Published in: Erkenntnis
ISSN: 0165-0106 1572-8420
Published: Springer Science and Business Media LLC 2025
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa69618
Abstract: This paper aims to explore from a philosophical perspective the experience of silence in social anxiety. Moving from the account of lived silences in mood disorders developed by Degerman (2024a), I argue that while “imposed”, “depressed”, “unknowing”, and “peaceful” silences can all be experienced by those who are socially anxious, this condition is also associated with two distinct ways of perceiving silence that are not captured by Degerman’s taxonomy. More specifically, drawing also on the exploration of published first-person reports of this condition, I maintain that social anxiety may be accompanied by both a perceived inability to fill certain silences when one wants to do so, and a weakened sense of control over how silences are filled. I then proceed to outline how these dynamics may be rooted in forms of self-experience that are affectively laden and shape one’s sense of possibility when interacting with other people.
Keywords: Silence; Social Anxiety; Lived Experience; Self-Experience; Affective States
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Funders: No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.

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