Overcoming social anxiety generally involves exposure to situations one is afraid of, plus specific psychotherapeutic techniques. Many people are often too afraid to seek outside professional help. Social anxiety is a common condition where people fear being scrutinized, judged, or humiliated in social settings. It can be debilitating if not addressed. Here’s how you can detect social anxiety, why it occurs, what it feels like, and how to overcome it.
There is that dreadful feeling of preparing a speech in your head for hours before saying it out loud and spending another endless amount of time afterward ruminating on everything that could have gone wrong. Social anxiety can turn regular everyday interactions into terrifying encounters. Good news – social anxiety is very common and very treatable.
Do I Have Social Anxiety?
Social anxiety is characterized by a fear of social or performance situations in which people worry that they will feel embarrassed, humiliated, or judged. The fear must persist and be severe enough to cause a person to either avoid social situations or suffer from distress that impairs their ability to function normally.
Some signs that you or a loved one may be struggling with social anxiety rather than general shyness include:
- Avoiding social situations or enduring them with significant distress
- Worrying excessively about upcoming social events
- Feeling extremely self-conscious with intense fear of embarrassment during social interactions
- Extreme fear of scrutiny for things like blushing or shaking
- Difficulty speaking up, making eye contact, or participating in conversations
- Spending hours analyzing past conversations or social interactions
A mental health professional can help sort out the difference between social anxiety and other issues like generalized anxiety or introversion (which are normal personality traits).
Why Do I Have Social Anxiety?
The roots of social anxiety run deep and complex, stemming from a combination of personality type, conditioning, and acquired learning, but very rarely does it come from one exact source. Some people are born more sensitive and shy, which can predispose them to social anxiety. Others may have had negative experiences in the past, such as teasing or humiliation, which can lead to them fearing future social interactions.
Social anxiety can also be fostered by family dynamics and the environments people grow up in. If a parent or caregiver struggled with social anxiety themselves, they may inadvertently pass it on to their child. Similarly, children who are raised in overly critical households may develop social anxiety as a coping mechanism.
What Does Social Anxiety Feel Like?
Social anxiety generally involves various unpleasant physical and emotional sensations that are intensified and prolonged in social settings. These can include:
- A pounding heart and shallow breathing
- Nervousness and tension
- A knot in your stomach or a heavy feeling in your chest
- A sense of self-consciousness or fear of being judged
- A blank mind or racing thoughts
- Feelings of panic and a desire to escape
- Worry about the feared social interaction for days or even weeks after the fact
These feelings often range in intensity from person to person and often depend on the situation. For some, social anxiety may be limited to specific, dreaded scenarios such as public speaking, whereas for others, any social interaction can be an ordeal.
How Do You Overcome Social Anxiety?
Generally, social anxiety is best treated through gradual exposure to feared social situations paired with cognitive-based techniques. Below is a brief overview of some anxiety management options that you and a therapist might explore:
- Gradual exposure: Slow, but intentional behavior of going towards the fear and facing the fear. This would mean immersing yourself in the feared social situation, but in manageable steps. The goal is to reduce avoidance behaviors by going towards what makes you anxious and this can in turn reduce the anxiety response.
- Cognitive restructuring: Exploring, identifying, tracking, and challenging distorted thoughts, such as assuming others are constantly judging you negatively, that you are always under the “spotlight,” and that everyone is paying attention to every mistake you make. Being able to process these thoughts and beliefs can eventually reduce the intensity of anxious thinking.
- Reducing avoidant, escape, and safety behaviors: In anxiety management, we look for avoidance, escape, and safety behaviors that maintain the status quo. Such behaviors like avoiding certain places, escaping certain social situations by leaving early, avoiding eye contact, rehearsing exact scripts, staying quiet in groups, and declining invites to social settings can unintentionally reinforce and worsen anxiety rather than relieve it
- Building social skills through practice: Repeated, low-stakes moving to more high-stakes social practice can rebuild confidence gradually. Practice is reframed as success, where the more you practice, the more you are successful, regardless of how the social situation turned out.
- Working with a therapist who specializes specifically in treating anxiety: Many therapists include anxiety among a long list of symptoms that they treat in general. However, when the approach relies solely on traditional talk therapy, this can sometimes make anxiety worse rather than better. Most of our clients have worked with another therapist before coming to us, and a common theme often is that they liked their previous therapist as a person and that the sessions felt validating, but they also felt the sessions were repetitive and their anxiety never actually got any better.
Social anxiety rarely gets better on its own without professional intervention. Avoiding dreaded social situations only serves to reinforce them in your mind, making it much harder to face them in the future. Psychotherapy with a anxiety therapist can provide you with the necessary tools to confront and manage social anxiety in a healthy and effective manner.
