Social Anxiety discussion

reply to post by Lynzer


Thats pretty much it.

Its not something that just "goes away"

It'll be present somedays, while other days you'll feel better.

Everyone has to come to terms with that. If you will ever truly "get over it", and live mostly in a state of confidence and high self esteem, it'll only happen after you come to terms with it.

Like all anxiety, Social anxiety feeds off of fear.

Mindfulness vanquishes fear, and thus permits you to be yourself, in joy and peace.

reply to post by valiant


Be proud to be you, you are an original. No one else can be you, you are a perfect expression of oneness.
Most people are living inside their heads and won't even notice you blushing. People are so wrapped up in their own insecurities, fears and desires. This life is yours. It is for your enjoyment, forget others, remember the self.
There is a way out. The truth will set you free.
Whatever arises within or without is ok always, it is the perfect expression of oneness.

Eckhart Tolle wrote a book called The Power of Now, here is a clip from youtube. I think it may help you, it helped me.
youtu.be...
youtu.be...

Namaste.

I sympathise with anyone who has social anxiety or worse. It's truly a horrible thing to suffer from. I've just started EFT and so far I would say I'm feeling more positive, so give it a try, it might work for you too. Some of the other links might be useful as well.





www.doctoryourself.com...

healsocialanxiety.com...

www.anxiety2calm.com...

socialanxietydisorder.org.uk...

I agree with unityemissions, that most underlying mental health problems have probably got something to do with bad health or possibly a parasite/bacteria infection. If you suspect you might have an infection, go to the doctors or try a cleanse. It also helps to eat healthy and plenty of exercise won't hurt either. It certainly helps with sleep problems. Best of luck!

Fot further help, try joining the social anxiety/phobia forum
www.socialphobiaworld.com...

reply to post by valiant


used to have it. I got over it when I got my current job. My mentor looked me straight in the eye and said are you going to throw $$$$$$ a year away? get over it! He wasn't the most sensitive of fellows hahaha

I did and it wasn't easy and I used to get home wiped out. it was easier said than done but what I do is very challenging. that helped a lot since it would help me get through the day. after a while I just learned to cope to get a task done now it is completely gone. My friend on the other hand hasn't beat it and she is wreck i work with her. It's not easy at all to get over social anxiety. I am very thankful i was able to.


I still remember the feeling and it really sucks. it no longer makes sense why I felt that way but i still remember how it felt. hang in there and good luck!

I also suffer from social anxiety. I have almost sought treatment for it multiple times but I always end up talking myself out of it thinking I can handle it myslef.

I have always been overly shy even as child and I am 4'10 which as you can imagine gave everyone at school something to pick at. I am currently in grad school in a medical field program. I am required to give presentations at least once a week and I am finding this extremely stressing. I have utilized beta blockers before which basically turn of the flight or flight physical responses and I can usually control the inner thoughts if I can control the outer response. I find that this makes all the difference because part of the problem is nervousness that someone will see your nervousness. I know that the thoughts are irrational but that does not make them any less real at the time.
I sympathize with what you are going through and I definitely encourage you to go seek someone to talk to about this, even if its just our family doctor because it seems to be affecting your quality of life and that is important.

a reply to: valiant

I hear absolutely everything you're saying. You are not alone.

The hardest thing is knowing who to trust when you need to express yourself, and the big wide world is full of vipers.

Beautiful creatures, but sometimes deadly.

Hi there Valiant. I'm sorry I didn't see this thread earlier as I have much to say about the subject of "social anxiety".

First, there is NO SUCH THING AS SOCIAL ANXIETY DISORDER! I thoroughly despise these big-pharma labels of issues of symptoms that occlude the problem!

I'm a developmental psychologist with a special interest in the dynamic unfolding of psychopathology. Thus, I know quite well how various disorders emerge over development, and even more-so, I know and understand how utterly USELESS a focus on symptoms (i.e. Obsessive compulsive disorder; social anxiety disorder; and other affective disorders which are given a special, diagnostically "useful" names i.e. profitable from the perspective of the drug companies/insurance companies) is.

So what then do you deal with? Like you, Ive dealt with social anxiety for years, probably since I was a kid. And like you, no doubt, the emergence of this feeling is very much law-based: there is no "gene" that makes one person more anxious than another person. Human development (like all mammalian development) occurs in whats called a "dyadic context", which means, when you're born, your brain continues to develop WITH REFERENCE to the types of social cues you're given (as as infant) as you, with your infant needs, struggle to regulate endogenous needs, such as temperature regulation, and continued organ development (immune system brain, gut etc) while in interaction with immediate others.

There's a whole science behind human development, and the unsurprising verdict is: it's law-based, which means, when things go wrong early on, or later on in life (such as with your social anxiety) it has very much to do with the evolving "phase space" of your nervous system. To give an example from early infancy. When a infant makes the effort to connect with it's mother, it'll express this through a smile or some other gestural action that indicates that they want to be stimulated. If the mother is sensitive to the cue, she'll respond, and in responding, she will help "create" an experience for the infant of being "effective". In the brain, at this moment, the infants want for connection (an affective, arousal state) will be "matched", or whats termed "time-locked", with the pleasant response of the mother. This "links" the two states together in the brain - happy feeling + happy response from mother - helps create a positive anticipatory state for the infant.

Now, no doubt, you can probably imagine what happens when things don't go right. When the infants state is "dysynchronous" with the mothers, or, for example, when the infant wants to sleep but the mother wants to stimulate her, or the infant wants to eat but the mother wants to pick her and play with her, or even more often, when the infant seeks playful connection but is rebuffed by an anxious, overwhelmed mother, these states, the internal experience of the infant + the dissonant response of the mother, also become "time-locked", that is, linked up neurologically in the brain. If these types of experience happen very often, and, depending on things like "inborn temperament" (which has much to do with the stress-levels of the mother during fetal development) which tinkers with 'reactivity', the infants mind will become sensitized to negative cues, which will be experienced by the infant as an increase in anxiety and a cognitive focus on the relevant behavior.

With this background in mind, you can probably see why I find the symptom-focused label of "social anxiety disorder" to be useless, as it obfuscates and renders enigmatic the "micro-traumas", or for many people who deal with social-anxiety, the full blown social traumas (such as in bullying) that created the response to begin with.

The people we become as adults isn't some pre-formed platonic "entity" that precedes our becoming. We are animals which exist and evolve in environments. Our biology - and the physics it is "nested within" - makes certain demands from us, and, as Darwin so astutely emphasized, we are constantly ADAPTING to the types of environments we interact with; inevitably, our body's (and not US! As this is completely unconscious) and in particular, the right brain, encodes the type of signals that are normally produced in human infants - the want for connection, the need for warmth, the need for feeding, for cleaning etc - with the types of responses we receive. The responses, very much like the scaffolding that surrounds a building, either allows or prevents the emergence of a positive, cheerful, trusting mind, or conversely, a guarded, fearful or apprehensive mind.

You are an adult, with a mind that "thinks" and is probably incessantly involved in "contents", thoughts, concepts. This concept-focus, which is of course normal for a fully mature human being, obscures the PROCESSES that SELECTS and defines what you should pay attention to. In neurological terms, the right brain "frames", while the left brain "holds". The left brain is the part of you that hears what you say, what you think to yourself, what you fear. You "know yourself", you say, but I would be willing to bet, knowing what I do, personally, in myself, as theoretically, with the science I am wholly committed to, that you are OVERLY-IDENTIFIED with a particular state of yourself, or what psychoanalysis calls a "self-state"; translating this idea into psychoneurological terms, when you find yourself feeling this way, you are in a 'deep' basin of attraction, a state in your brain that is deeply subtended (probabilistically biasing expression).

I can write more later as I'm at the end of my laptops battery life, but what you need to develop, inculcate, and increase as a capacity, is self-awareness, or whats more popularly termed "mindfulness". What you DO NOT and SHOULD NOT do, but which appears to be the basis of your malady, is become too effortful in your attempts to get away from this experience (the anxiety). In neurological language this is what we call a "positive feedback". The right brain, following basic homeostatic programs conserved from all lower organisms, basically increases awareness of the threats that have in the past caused you pain. When you increase conscious focus on this, you EXPAND THE EXPRESSION of it. You CANNOT overcome a negative self-state by reacting in this anxious, fearful and frustrated manner. The really only affective means to bias the system (the self-state) is to RELAX your awareness of it, DEVELOP A COMPASSIONATE relationship WITH IT, and overtime, you will discover that you can TOLERATE the anxiety in social situations, so much, and with such ease, that it will melt away from your awareness, allowing you to live and experience yourself in more joyous, playful and self-expressive states.

As a longtime sufferer from anxiety in general I can only tell you what helps me. Having the privilege of taking care of an animal or animals is one helpful tool. When you give affection and attention to an animal that can show its appreciation back in someway is thoroughly therapeutic.
Finding the delicate balance between being outgoing and your inner self takes time, self reflecting and being kind to yourself. Remember, you don't have to be friends with everyone. I have friends now that I used to argue with. I realized that over time, being around folks you either naturally connect with pass small talk or you don't and not to think about it too much.
Having something of a creative outlet has also helped me. Pottery is a grounding artwork that seems to clear the mind. Getting into a subject through local classes is a good way to focus and feel out just how and when to share thoughts on something with folks who are interested in similar subjects.
May you find peace in all that you do.

Social anxiety seems to be a fear of the nasty side of human beings in terms of social interaction.

Most people wear a mask and modify their behaviour depending on who they are with and the situation they are in, so its no suprise people can feel a distrust of people in general.

I guess it's no surprise either that social anxiety is on the increase due to the fact that youre never that far away from a smart phone, that can record you out in public and upload your percieved flawes to the world. I remember reading about a poor guy who happened to be fat dancing away, enjoying the music of a pub, some youngsters not only mocked him but recorded him and uploaded him on the Web for public humiliation.

We feared big brother, our little brothers and sisters can be far worse.