Social Anxiety: Ultimate Guide to Overcoming Fear, Shyness, and Social Phobia to Achieve Success in all Social Situations If you are suffering from social anxiety disorder, if you feel that others are judging you for being nervous, shy or fearful of a situation then you have come to the right place.
Of course, if you suffer from social anxiety, you could add to that quote by adding the words “or what might happen” to the end. Social anxiety is a highly debilitating condition, leaving sufferers as complete nervous wrecks, no matter what the situation. There are always going to be people who tell you to “pull yourself together”, without realizing exactly what it is you are going through, even though they themselves may feel of touch of anxiety when they are nervous or fearful about something. The fact is, social anxiety is a big issue, leading to far bigger symptoms and having a serious impact on life.
This book will show you how to overcome this, how to get back your confidence and how to regain the life you once had.
By reading Social Anxiety, you will learn:
What social anxiety is and how to determine if you may have that condition
The behavioral, thinking, evolutionary, and biological causes of social anxiety disorder
Four responses that prevent us from overcoming social anxiety
Eight steps to overcome your social anxiety
This book has sought to give an understanding of what social anxiety is and what a person who has it may be feeling as well some techniques on how to face it down. Please remember, these techniques are not just a one off; they are things you can do for as long as you need to, for as long as you are gaining a benefit from them.
If you find that nothing has changed that you still feel unable to face social situations without feeling socially anxious, it may be time to seek advice from your doctor. He or she can recommend other options that may be of more benefit to you.
Classical CBT based its faulty social anxiety research in early 1990s based on people with mild shyness. Thus their research was based on people who never had social anxiety to begin with and advice is misleading. One of the greatest faulty results is conviction that social anxiety means being focused on yourself and your symptoms. That is why shy people are doing. Social anxiety means being totally focused on other people - being hypervigilant about external threat and how others perceive you.
Upgraded CBT is DBT, aligned with Humanistic Therapy, humanistic psychology where you self validate yourself, where you accept your symptoms as they are, without going in civil war with yourself.
Classical CBT stifles panic symptoms - however the most detrimental by-product is fawning, people pleasing and becoming pushover, being unable to voice your opinion. Thus the book is also missing information about toxic shame, external reference locus of control, Activation behavioral therapy, trauma bonding, PureOCD and Complex Trauma. No information about Polyvagal Theory, no information about amygdala hijacking. OCD is mentioned as rituals - no intrusive worry at all information. The book mentions OCD rituals, and then later on suggest breathing rituals - teaching us to form OCD. Any response to anxiety in form of action to prevent anxiety leads to OCD. The fact you need some reaction and mechanism and rituals to calm anxiety is the problem itself. This signals the brain that there is some unknown danger and brain will create more things to be afraid, keeping you stuck in chronic worry and hypervigilance. PTSD is mentioned as there is no CPTSD.
There is advice not to intake sugar, coffee, alcohol - not taking it and still social anxiety present. So it does not help, this advice is useless. There is no information about Elaine Aron "HSP" that over-arousal may be the form of deep stimuli process - and if we label it as disorder, we create additional anxiety, neurosis and we are pathologizing our natural ways of processing reality - that are different than most, (dumb) people.
Mediation, yoga - all great - but this is not medical response for anxiety. It will create more anxiety - because if you do not calm down you will be worried you are horrible disfigured person who can't be relaxed with mediation and yoga --- and or you will waste your time, energy and money on getting resources in these - which will not help anyway, since anxiety is trauma based and stimuli based. It is not a wart you can cut off or burn and wish it will go away by itself.
ABC, thought records - tried it all out from 1996 - 2002. It does not help. It creates more anxiety and it created people pleasing and inability to stand up for myself. Since I would never tackle toxic shame that is producing all the distortions in the first place.
Physical - exercising - I have been jogging since 2012 on regular basis. It is great for body and to have some dopamine, however it does not make social anxiety go away. Trauma is being trapped inside the body. If we ignore it, it will not vanish by itself simply by ignoring or performing rituals.
"Get some help" - most medical resources do not recognize CPTSD, PureOCD and they have no idea what emotional dysregulation is. There is no help out there available.
"Read" - what I have noticed is that faulty and incomplete advice is the same as deliberate wrong advice. It leads you to nowhere and you are stuck, and you have no idea why and what is the problem. Problem is that guidance from others cannot help us. Psychology is here to instruct us how to make guidance system inside us. Piaget said if someone tells us how to do something, it takes away our ability to create it on our own. It is ok to give correct information - and the book without Complex Trauma that deals with trauma such as social anxiety is incorrect source of information that keeps you stuck in labyrinth.
"Write your goals down" - toxic shame prevents you from having self worth inside you, so you do not have goals. You have other people and their instructions, opinions and thoughts that you fix and take care of through codependency.
"Practice your social skills" People with social anxiety have excellent social skills- this is myth created by early CBT research based on shy people who never had social anxiety to begin with. Person with social anxiety would never expose himself to any treatment and evaluation. If they do - they no longer have social anxiety. Skills are buried under the surface, just like water on Mars. It is covered with toxic shame and external validation and seeking approval from others, self-censorship and shutting up (mutism).
"Stop avoiding" If you stop defense system - person with social anxiety will replace it with another disorder. Such as codependency and people pleasing. Missing red flags and entering in close relationships with sociopaths such as Borderliners and narcissists.
"Stop the negative thoughts" Mark Freeman You tube channel about OCD is great resource that tells us when we try to stop thoughts - we create them more. We train our brain to chase intrusive thoughts and to produce them more. Accepting negative thoughts is the only way out. Self-validation, being ok with myself as I am and building on that.
"Maintaining a mental sharpness " What sharpness is your amygdala is hijacked? The brain is operating from fear part of the brain. There is no way you put unreasonable expectations on person who is operating from lizard part of brain. This is such detrimental advice. Books like these about social anxiety kept me in social anxiety.
For some unknown and totally mysterious reason - this is very hard to tell about social anxiety: Toxic shame is hallucination. Burst it. It keeps your self worth external from you. Once your self worth is outside of you - you are unable to operate from within your common sense, you operate through the extension of other people around you. Google: locus of control.
Complex trauma - social anxiety is brains way to deal with narcissistic abuse and making balance with our kindness and soul inside - which results in social anxiety. Fawn is 4F response to stress. Fight or flight are not the only stress responses. Google: CPTSD.
Emotional dysregulation means there are triggers out there that will mess up with our brain and responses, putting us in chronic worry and hypervigilance. Google: Polyvagal Theory.
Doubt others. There is no absolute truth. Toxic shame tells us we are worthless and thus other people are correct and able to handle life. Wrong! People are full of biases and logical fallacies. Google: Descartes Evil demon hypthesis. Start to doubt your self and other people. We must distrust what anxiety is telling us. Anxiety has credibility of car salesman.
A book which talks about a timely subject: social anxiety. The topic is discussed from different perspectives and the many aspects of the medical condition are highlighted. From the start of the book, it strikes that there are no references to any evidence-based literature. Also, there is no bibliography which would refer to peer-reviewed literature. This is unfortunately the biggest downside of the booklet. While the lack of references triggered some frustration, the positive feeling about the book and the discussions fared in it emerged as it became evident that there were quite a few takeaways, good probably worthwhile advice, medical and beyond. It would have been a great introductory text publication while broadly discussing this important topic, if it only had attempted and achieved to show more traits common of scientific and medical literature. The concept of the book is appealing, there is surely potential to improve on the presentation and scientific referencing quality of the text.