How To Get Rid Of Social Anxiety?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

As a rule, it is possible to completely cope with social phobia already in psychotherapy, but it is quite possible to help yourself take steps towards a more comfortable response in acute situations of fear of society for you.

Fear of People: How to Use Relaxation

Social phobia is tension, first of all. Whatever you are afraid of - public speaking, meeting a new company, an exam, or someone watching you work, you are tense in all these situations.

Fear, anxiety - all of this responds in the body with certain muscle clamps. Observe yourself: what happens to your body when you imagine this unpleasant situation? Is your head pressed into your shoulders? Or is your back hunched? Or are your hands twitching nervously, trembling and redness?

If your fear of society is largely accompanied by physical symptoms, the same measures as for a panic attack will help you. You will have to master the skills of working with the body, learn to be aware of it at all (for a start), and then gradually learn to control different muscle groups, especially those that are involved in your phobic response.

What do you need first of all if your speech / interview / meeting new people / long stay in a public place is tomorrow? Start practicing relaxation the day before.

Do a general relaxing exercise: alternately, with your mind's eye, "look through" all muscle groups (starting, for example, from the tips of your toes to the very top of your head), try to feel their tension, and then relax as much as possible.

To do this, you can use metaphors of the imagination, such as, for example, imagine that muscles are like jelly, or that you are lying on a heated stone and "melt", or that you are stroked by some magic hands, or that your body is immersed in a warm water. It is important that you sit or lie comfortably and that you are not drowsy before going to bed.

The essence of this exercise is to learn how to relax, while remaining in the active phase of life, in consciousness. Your attention should be active, vigorous, closely following all the manifestations of your body, but the body itself should become relaxed.

It makes sense to work out this skill at least a little before an alarming social situation for you. When the crucial moment comes, you will be able to apply this skill before plunging into an unpleasant event for you, and will enter it already less stressful, and as a result, there will be less emotions of fear and anxiety, as well as negative bodily manifestations.

Community Fear: How to Use Non-Verbal Cues

In most cases, a person prone to social phobia is more often in his own head, in his thoughts, i.e. in an imaginary world. The most common thoughts that haunt a person in a situation of fear of people:

"They think I'm an idiot"

"Probably he considers me …."

"What if they laugh at me?"

"For sure they will decide that I …"

- and behind this there is always a fear of rejection and negative assessment.

We will talk about thoughts later, but now we will pay attention to how it is better to return to reality, in the here and now, in order to help ourselves get out of gloomy assumptions and see the world as it is.

This is where non-verbal communication can help. Non-verbal contacts are the use of facial expressions, postures, gestures, glances to establish relationships with others. Let's say you have a performance.

Look into the hall before you start. Find in your area of sight several people who make you feel unaccountable sympathy and disposition. Perhaps they have a kind look, perhaps you associate them with some nice characters, etc. And while speaking, try to make eye contact with them.

So you will achieve two goals: you will not plunge into panic, which is mainly provoked by your own thoughts, you will keep in touch with reality, and at the same time receive feedback from people, notice it.

And since many more people actually respond positively to you than you are used to thinking, your idea of universal dislike will gradually dissipate.

If you are haunted by the fear of people when you get into the company, try to take an open position. This does not mean "fall apart", it does not mean "no intersections." It is really comfortable for someone to sit cross-legged or to lean their head on folded hands. The most important thing is not to curl up into a ball, not to curl up, not to wrap your arms around yourself, as if the temperature in the room is below zero.

Ask yourself the question: how would you sit / stand in this room if there were no people there? How would you sit in this chair if no one was looking at you? And try to do just that, paying attention, first of all, to your convenience - the desire to take a comfortable position is unlikely to be judged by anyone.

Learn to connect with people non-verbally. Do a simple exercise. In the part of the conversation where you can calmly shut up and observe others, try to feel not WHAT they are saying, but HOW.

Try to attach importance not to the information that is contained in their words, but to tone, look, smile or grimace on the face, posture, gestures. I would even say - deliberately ignore the content of a person's speech, focusing on other signals.

This will ensure that, firstly, again, you will be much closer to reality than fantasies about what everyone around you thinks about you, and secondly, you will learn to recognize lies and insincerity well.

After all, a person does not control his non-verbal signals in the main. Even if he tries to smile pretensely, you will notice a sad or irritated look contradicting this, white clasped fingers, for example, or clenched shoulders and a retracted head that do not correspond to this. And therefore, in the end, it will be much easier for you to feel who really treats you and it will be easier to overcome the fear of people.

How to get rid of social anxiety: working with thoughts

By and large, social phobia is a learned, automatic habit of treating yourself badly and talking to yourself inside the way your parents and your environment used to talk to you in childhood, and then project this opinion of yourself onto the surrounding reality.

Think: whose voice sounds in your head, when inside yourself you suddenly "understand" that:

"I guess I seem to them all weak and pathetic" or

"Well, of course, a real man should be like that, and I …" or

"For sure I do not deserve this position, there are many people better than me, where am I going?" etc.

Who has consistently compared you to others? Who was constantly worried that they would think badly of you? Who spoke about who and what you owe, without substantiating it? Who has constantly suggested to you that you should be more sociable? And who has consistently denied you the right to your own experience, convincing you that “nothing will work out anyway”?

It doesn't matter who all these people were, the important thing is that it is not you. You didn’t form such an opinion about yourself. You didn't teach yourself to believe that nothing will work. Try to separate these opinions from yourself.

Think about it: do you generally have your own opinion about yourself, independently formed? Or just memorized from the words of others?

Of course, in childhood, these words sound convincing, because we trust our elders. But now you are already an adult who can get rid of social anxiety, who has the right to become such a parent to yourself, who will teach you to believe in yourself, assess yourself adequately and not suffer from pathological dependence on the opinions of others.

The most interesting thing is that the need to receive warmth, support and approval does not go away, even if you convince yourself of your own worthlessness for years. And this need plays a cruel joke with the majority, forcing them to seek approval not from themselves (first of all), but from others.

But at the same time, it is impossible to get anything from others because others at the same non-verbal level feel your lack of self-confidence, the inability to be yourself, and begin to relate accordingly. And in the end, you only get frustrated in trying to be recognized by others.

It is also interesting that trying to control the thoughts of others does not lead to anything. You may be thinking that "if I behave like this, they will think well of me, and I can get rid of social anxiety."

But not everyone likes the same people, there is no guaranteed behavior to attract attention, there are no actions that would be approved by everyone unambiguously, and no one is obliged to approve of you even for excellent behavior.

The person may start to think badly of you because they are in a bad mood today for their own reasons. And no matter how much you try to "match" - it may not touch him.

Think about this: if someone started to impose on you, what would you think of this or that person? If someone tried to get into your head to "shape" your opinion - how would you feel? How do you feel about someone who is trying to prove you "right", despite the fact that you strongly disagree and have already made it clear a hundred times?

Now think: what are you trying to do with others? Forced to change and control their opinion of themselves? And what do you think - are you yourself, with such a tense look and state, just the person, looking at whom others think: “Well, this one definitely considers everyone around as idiots”….

All your ideas about what a person should be in order to be loved and approved are exclusively in your head. Because that is how they were with your parents and those around you in your childhood.

And those people with whom you communicate now (or with whom you hardly communicate due to fear) may have other reference points. Rely on other values. Or completely rely solely on your mood, which you cannot control by any of your "exemplary" behavior.

How to talk to yourself to get rid of social anxiety

Play the movie to the end and question the familiar information.

"They will laugh at me" - and what next? What will happen next? Never again dare to take an exam? Or will you never finish your studies and get a job? And starve to death? Or will you be forever dependent on your parents?

What's the scariest picture your imagination paints? This final fear feeds the entire chain, making every step you take in the darkest tones and making people feel terribly afraid.

But go through the links and try to understand them through the prism of your own experience. Have you ever tried anything again? Have you always abandoned any action if it didn't go exactly as planned? What did you achieve, did it work out right away?

Most people, even teenagers, are able to remember many episodes when success was preceded by many attempts. When it was necessary (and succeeded!) To start from scratch. When mistakes brought not only disappointment, but also an understanding of how to proceed further, and contributed to success.

Think about why you think the mistake is fatal? In fact, only because you yourself will punish and condemn for a long time. And for some reason you think that your condemnation of yourself for this mistake is "objectively". Although in fact, others may forget about your mistake after 5 minutes or not consider it a mistake at all.

And now the main thing. You can change this. You can refuse to constantly punish and condemn yourself, and develop a different habit. And for this it is worth starting to re-educate yourself.

How would you like kind and loving parents to talk to you? What would you say in moments like this? How would you support?

Many clients have given me phrases like this:

"It's okay, if it doesn't work out, you try, because otherwise you won't learn!"

"We believe in you, not now, then another time"

"How you do it - it doesn't matter, what matters is what you like"

"We love you, regardless of whether it works out immediately or later."

You yourself are able to say to yourself these (and not only!) Words.

I will not argue with the fact that education took place, and you used to think as taught. But parents will not come and begin to correct the mistakes of their upbringing. Perhaps they believe that they did not exist.

And it's not at all productive to wait for someone to come and do something for you, if you are already an adult. Only you decide what to say to yourself and what to think about yourself. Nobody forces you to read the mantra "nothing will work out" instead of the mantra "I am a fine fellow because I will go and try, anyway I will have a valuable experience!"

Sometimes these words just need to be said and heard in order to reduce the fear of society. To say sometimes even without the mood. Don't wait to believe it right away. After all, you did not believe in parental words immediately, but only after you have experienced pain many times.

You have an inner child to whom you yourself are now becoming a kind parent and forming another habit. And the kinder you are to him, the more calm you are, the more often you say words of support and approval, the faster a new habit will form.

To overcome your fear of society, have fun

If what you are doing, you are doing only because of the result, I advise you to think carefully - do you need to overcome yourself in this way? Is the game worth the candle at all?

For example, public speaking. Are you interested in discussing a topic, generally talking about it? Do you want to share with people what touches you yourself? Imagine that you managed to get rid of social anxiety: would you do the same? Or something different?

As a rule, people suffering from social phobia are used to not respecting themselves or their desires. Their personality seems to them insignificantly small and insignificant, and therefore the whole social life is reduced to attempts to "correspond", and in this picture of the world a very small place is given to their own desires and feelings.

Meanwhile, the principle of pleasure from the process can significantly change your life and help get rid of social anxiety.

It is impossible to be absorbed by the result - the result is in the future, and this very fact causes constant anxiety: will it be possible to achieve it? And if, moreover, you are haunted by the fear of people on the way to the result, then the general level of anxiety when putting the result at the forefront will only increase.

On the contrary, if a person is absorbed in the process, then he will think less about the result, be more in the here and now and, accordingly, will be more relaxed, calm.

The pleasure principle also applies to things in which it would seem difficult to find it. For example, the fear of a public toilet. The establishment, to put it mildly, is not the most pleasant one. And the need is such, from the realization of which you rather feel not pleasure, but relief.

But the essence of pleasure is positive emotions from the realization of your desires. And the key here is your desires, which, in order for pleasure to really work out, should be in the first place for you, should be important, you should be able to allow yourself to concentrate on yourself, first of all.

And this works everywhere: in an unfamiliar company, during a speech, at an interview and in the same toilet. This does not mean to stop noticing everyone around at all. But first of all, you and your needs should be in the center of attention, then the fear of people will begin to decrease in proportion to your attention to yourself.

In addition, in any social group, positive attention is attracted by people who are passionate about their work, the information they communicate, or simply do not strain excessively in the presence of others, which is quite easily achieved by general relaxation, a sense of their own worth, the ability to be in the process and skill respect your desires.

Paradoxical reception in the therapy of fear of society

Sometimes it helps to openly voice your symptoms. You don't have to call them symptoms. But, for example, nothing terrible will happen if, when there is a hitch with the text during a speech, you voice your excitement: "Oh, sorry, I got carried away, I got excited, I lost my thought, now I will return to the topic …"

On the contrary, a person who is able to honestly confess his experiences is often much more respected and even admired for it. “I feel that I am blushing, how strange the body reacts? Probably, we have touched on some difficult topic. Is it easy for you to talk about it?"

Or: “I feel awkward in this room, I just can't find a good position in this chair. Maybe I should sit somewhere else?"

Please note: voicing your own awkwardness and discomfort may well become a reason for communication and even calm your interlocutor. After all, most people, to one degree or another, experience stress when communicating with strangers, at least for the first time.

Animals, for example, watch and sniff each other and walk in circles for a while. This stage of minimal recognition cannot but be accompanied by at least some tension: after all, you need to somehow make sure that the upcoming contact is safe.

And the faster you show that you are a living, open person, to whom nothing human, including worries and fears, is alien, the easier it will be for your interlocutors and the more they will be disposed towards you.

In addition, in our culture of social animals with a developed intellect and consciousness, the fear of society, to one degree or another, concerns everyone. It is just that for some it has the character of a temporary stress and is overcome imperceptibly to others, while for others it takes on difficult forms. But if you, in your attempts to get rid of social phobia, at the same time help others to relieve their inevitable stress upon contact, they will definitely be more disposed towards you.

In conclusion, I want to remind you of the main thing:

Social phobia is mostly within you. First of all, it is your conviction that you have something to be assessed negatively for, to be considered a failure and to laugh at you. It turns out such an uroboros: you consider yourself bad because people treat you badly, and people treat you badly because you think you are bad.

Most people, following their parents and childhood environment, make the people around them responsible for evaluating their own personality. But people basically have the same problems, and they are not at all busy trying to see reality with an open mind, but only trying to solve their problems - with acceptance of themselves, their own value, self-affirmation and self-realization.

So the only way to get rid of social anxiety is to take responsibility for your life, for self-education, for your thoughts, for whether to put your desires first and be aware of them at all. And with this you are quite able to cope.