Overcoming Social Anxiety

It is not unusual to feel anxious or nervous in social situations. It is often a normal response to new external stimuli such as meeting a stranger for the first time.

However, for those who suffer from social anxiety these worries can become so deliberating and overwhelming that it can affect your ability to live your life. It is important to know there are treatments that can help you manage it.

What is Social Anxiety?

Social Anxiety is a mental health disorder (SAD) and is common in many people. It is a long term social phobia with intense fear of social situations. Such as dreading social events and avoiding eye contact. Suppose people with social anxiety do not worry about the social situation itself rather the response of others to their presence and behaviour as they believe they will be judged or humiliated.

Symptoms of Social Anxiety

Symptoms of social anxiety can affect you emotionally, behaviourally and physically. You may have social anxiety if you worry about speaking to people, and have low self esteem. There are many factors that are considered to label social anxiety. And may be diagnosed if these symptoms occur everyday.

Physical Symptoms include:

  • Rapid heart beat

  • Shortness of breath

  • Sweating

  • Upset stomach

  • Dizziness and unsteadiness

  • Trembling or Shaking

  • Blushing

  • Muscle Tension

Emotional Symptoms include:

  • Fear

  • Low self esteem

  • Negative thoughts

  • Self conscious thoughts

  • Thoughts of inadequacy

  • Predicting the worst consequences

  • Depression

Behavioural Symptoms include:

  • Avoid meeting new people

  • Avoid eye contact with strangers

  • Habitual avoidance

  • Fear based decision making

  • Not eating or speaking in public

  • Repetitive muscle movement

Overcoming Social Anxiety and Treatment

Finally, overcoming social anxiety can be difficult yet rewarding to benefit an individual's well being and improve the impact on their lives. It may take an extensive and long time to solve anxiety, but many learn to live with their social anxiety.

There are many ways to get the better of social anxiety with guidance, approaches and practices.

Therapies are the best way to attack social anxiety, having a psychologist or specialist help an individual. Specifically cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is the best method as they help identify negative thought patterns and behaviours, and change them with more realistic ones. Thoughts, emotions and behaviour are linked therefore we can change the way we feel and behave. Because your brain thinks negatively in social situations, it needs to be trained to think in a new way. Challenging your thinking process and negative thoughts into positive ones.

CBT includes finding the cause of your social anxiety and working around the problems including overcoming past situations, dealing with procrastination and tackling perfectionism. We want you to know your self worth and abilities are better than what you think. The therapist will take the role of a teacher helping you learn and give you homework to do to make progress yourself. Overtime, your thinking process will be different to change the symptoms of social anxiety.

Gradually, you need to face your fears, the experimental approach of graded exposure is best, says CBT experts. This means when approaching a social situation do it with an experiment and curious attitude as it would give a new experience. While doing so your therapist will guide you in small steps to practice small actions, such as by starting to greet people like a neighbour and slowly increasing to bigger social activities.

Medication is another way of treating social anxiety. Medication prescribed like Sertraline (Zoloft) is just one example of an antidepressant or serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), such as escitalopram or sertraline.

Self-care techniques and mindfulness techniques such as deep breathing or yoga can be beneficial. They can include exercise, meditation and muscle relaxation.

It is effective to contact a specialist, if your social anxiety is affecting you on a daily basis and well being. We are available to support you around your needs and would be happy to talk to you to give the best support.

Overall, overcoming social anxiety can be long term and scary, however having the support of CBT experts to coach you throughout or self teaching you can believe in yourself you will make a change in your social processes.

Need our help

We are here to help you with any concerns. We are available Monday - Friday 9am to 8pm.

Email: info@harleystreet104.com

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7935 6554

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