“It was just another crack in the stone. Eventually the stone broke and became gravel, leaving me a nervous wreck” (“David”). An individual with social anxiety disorder (SAD) possesses an extreme fear of social situations. This fear can be so profound that the individual is no longer able to function at full capacity in daily life. Much of this fear stems from the stigma created by the disorder. In his book Stigma, Erving Goffman defines it as “an attribute that is deeply discrediting” (Goffman 3). Those who are stigmatized, who possess a stigma, must avoid ostracism by drawing attention away from their stigmatizing attribute, which can ruin their image as a whole. This is difficult for a person with SAD, who is predisposed to becoming extremely aware of their condition when introduced into a social situation. Enter David, a middle-aged, lower-class husband and father of a son. Raised by authoritarian parents and no stranger to bullying at school, David had a childhood filled with feelings of inferiority. Seizures and other similar episodes marked David from his early years and seemed to prefigure a life of mental instability; even though nothing but denials of mental illness were made at the time. These episodes became less frequent as David reached early adulthood, and the episodes of his early years seemed like a distant story. Then, at age thirty-nine, during a typical neighborhood walk, he had his first panic attack, starting a growing trend of panic attacks that continues to the present day. That event set the wheels of his SAD in motion, culminating in the panic attack he suffered at the manufacturing plant where he had worked for mu…… means of paper……that stigma ended up costing him his job. Now that David accepts his mental disorder and takes medication, he reports that normal people in mixed contact situations treat him better now. Therefore, the reactions normal people have towards David depend on how self-aware he is; the more it is, the more his behavior will reflect this, and therefore the more abnormal he will seem to normal people. Social anxiety disorder causes an individual to become extremely aware of how people see them. These individuals are discreditable and therefore their stigmatizing disorder may be hidden from others. However, hiding stigma internalizes feelings of shame and inferiority and can be detrimental to the well-being of the individual with SAD. This is the case of David, who lost his career due to a disorder he never wanted to believe he had, but now has no choice but to accept it..