Overcoming social anxiety: part 1

 

While it may seem impossible to overcome a feared social situation, you can do it by taking it one small step at a time. The key to start with is to pick a situation that you can handle and gradually work your way up to more challenging situations, building your confidence and coping skills as you move up the anxiety ladder.

The topic of this blog is an overview of what I’m going to be learning over the next 4 weeks. So, it starts off with understanding your feelings better, every person is different and can have other feelings and emotions to others.

Some people can get stuck in a vicious cycle – your thoughts can trigger your emotions that lead to your behaviour changing which then causes physical sensations, it’s really hard to break this pattern and that’s why it turns into a vicious cycle that feels never-ending.

Overcoming social anxiety

Thoughts

  • Depressed
  • Feeling low
  • Low motivation
  • It’s not worth going on
  • Thinking of bad outcomes
  • Self-critical thinking – I’m a waste of space, I’m no good, etc
  • Negative thoughts about others and the world – nobody likes me, things will never change, etc

 

Emotions

  • Upset
  • Lonely
  • Tearful
  • Isolated
  • Miserable
  • Irritability
  • Easily triggered

 

Behaviours

  • Task jump
  • Stay in bed
  • Hard to relax
  • Be on our own
  • Easily distracted
  • Putting things off
  • Don’t want to socialise
  • Don’t want to do activities

 

Psychical sensations

  • Flustered
  • Sweating
  • Butterflies
  • Unmotivated
  • Hard to speak
  • Hearts racing
  • Lack of energy
  • Sleep changes
  • Hard to concentrate

Anxiety

  • What if?
  • On edge
  • Stressed
  • Worrying
  • Avoidance
  • Nervousness
  • Spiral of worry

 

Things to try

Do some breathing exercises and feel the contact between you and what you’re touching, i.e., your feet on the floor, the warmth of your hands on your legs and then switch when you’re ready, to focusing on the breaths you take and how effortlessly your body breathes for you every day without you ever noticing.

This may or may not work for you, everybody is different

Going for a walk by yourself can help with the feeling of anxiety too.

I will be following up with this at the beginning of July, if you, or someone you know has Social Anxiety tag them below or send this to them, keep an eye out for any more posts and be sure to give us a follow/like!

Remember you are not alone. ❤️

 

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