Social Anxiety Support Forum

Do you get a little nervous when you’re around a big group of people? That’s a natural worry for a lot of people. If your reaction extends past mildly uncomfortable and you find yourself experiencing panic attacks, self-medicating, avoiding social situations at all costs or acting in other ways that are detrimental to your health and life, then you may be experiencing social anxiety.

Exactly What is Social Anxiety?

Social anxiety disorder, as defined by the diagnostic criteria set forth in the DSM-V, is a persistent, ongoing and chronic fear of at least one social situation where you’re around unfamiliar people.  You feel embarrassed, anxious or fearful. Your reaction to the situation doesn’t change – you’re always anxious and it’s severe, up to the point of (but not necessarily always including) panic attacks.

With social anxiety disorder, you know your fear is unreasonable or out of proportion to the social situations, but you can’t manage to shake it or cope with it no matter how hard you try. You’ll go out of your way to avoid the situation or you’ll be in distress while going through it. At the same time, avoiding it, anticipating it or experiencing it is detrimental to your ability to function – you could lose your job, miss out on schoolwork, lose friends, upset family and/or disappoint yourself.

Social anxiety disorder can last six or more months and it isn’t due to an underlying medical condition, a side effect of another medication and isn’t the result of substance abuse.

How is Social Anxiety Treated?

There’s no cure for social anxiety disorder, but it is treatable. Symptoms are managed by learning coping mechanisms to lessen anxiety and fear. Cognitive behavioral therapy (“talk therapy”), dialectical behavioral therapy or exposure therapy are all used to help combat the symptoms of social anxiety or get to the root cause of it. In certain cases, medication can help you work through your fears, and when combined with therapy, can help you make progress in combating social anxiety disorder.

How Do I Get Help?

It’s extremely rare that a person is able to successfully manage social anxiety alone. If you’re looking for help, contact your local mental health care provider about your options. If you don’t currently have a mental health services provider or don’t know where to start, ask your general practitioner for a referral or advice in finding help – they should be able to point you in the right direction. It may take some work and multiple tries to find a therapist or other service provider that works well with you, so don’t get discouraged if the first provider you try doesn’t feel like a good fit.

In addition to seeking the help of a licensed therapist, counselor, psychiatrist and/or psychologist, it can help to make use of other resources available to you. Books, podcasts and social forums like SocialAnxietySupport.com can all be valuable tools in learning to live with and work through social anxiety disorder. While resources are not a substitute for qualified professional help, they can give you some insight into what coping mechanisms may work for you, ways to deal with your anxiety on a daily basis and a gentle, non-triggering way to connect with others so you feel less alone – all of which are important when you’re living with social anxiety.

When is it time to seek help for social anxiety? Conventional wisdom would say that if you’re asking, it’s time. Because everyone’s situation is different — from the specifics of your anxiety to the providers available in your area to whether or not you can afford to see someone based on your insurance – there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. If you’re wondering whether it’s time to seek help for social anxiety, there are a few things to consider.

What Do You Hope to Accomplish?

If you’re considering seeking help for your social anxiety, ask yourself what goal you have for doing so. There’s no magic cure for social anxiety, but you can learn new coping mechanisms or give yourself a refresher on the skills needed to forge through life in spite of your anxiety. If you find your coping mechanisms alone aren’t enough, you may be considering medication to be better able to use them.

Have a goal in mind for what you’d like to accomplish when seeking the help of a professional to deal with your social anxiety – you’ll be that much more prepared and more likely to get results.

What Are Your Limitations?

It’s unfortunate, but life can interfere with seeking help in a number of ways. Even though you really want or need the help, your schedule and finances may not allow you to commit to a weekly therapy session. Be upfront with the professionals you meet, regarding what you can and cannot do.

For example, if you need a professional who will meet with you after work, you’ll need to seek one out who offers extended hours. If your schedule is jam-packed because of work, family obligations, and school, you and your professional may need to work together to figure out a time that works for both of you – or meet less frequently than would be ideal.

Financially speaking, it helps to explore the options that are covered by your insurance if you have it. If not, most health departments can point you in the direction of clinics or providers who offer a sliding scale fee, payment plans or who accept credit lines like Care Credit.

Will You Stick with It?

Getting set up with a professional for your social anxiety takes a lot of work. The process can sound daunting – and sometimes finding the right fit can be overwhelming. If you think you might need help tackling your social anxiety, be sure you’re ready to commit and really stick with the process. It’s one thing to go through the initial process of seeking help and have to switch providers because they aren’t a right fit for your personality and needs, but it’s another entirely to “drop out” because you just can’t stick with it.

If you feel like your anxiety might prevent you from staying compliant with the course of treatment you and your provider agree on, mention it! They’re there to make sure you succeed and work through your anxiety – even if it means finding a way to get you into the office for your appointments.

Is it Time to Get Help?

Admitting you need help for your anxiety can make you feel depressed. One of the toughest things you can do is say “I can’t handle this by myself.” But you shouldn’t feel that way about getting help for your social anxiety. Remind yourself that you’re strong enough and smart enough to admit that you need a professional to tackle the job.

You wouldn’t try to take out your own appendix if it ruptured, would you? Just like physical health issues, it pays to be wise enough to let a professional help you sort through your emotional hurdles. Knowing what you want to accomplish – or at least having a vague idea – and communicating openly and honestly with service providers will set you up with the best possible outcome.

Social anxiety can have a major impact on your life. Depending on the severity of your anxiety, it may prevent you from socializing with friends or pursuing new opportunities. Can you overcome social anxiety and stop these negative effects? In most cases you can, though it may take multiple attempts to find the approach that works for you.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is no one-size-fits-all way to tackle social anxiety. If one attempt doesn’t provide results, some other method of overcoming social anxiety may work better. As difficult as social anxiety is, with perseverance, you can still come out on top.

Therapy Options

One of the primary methods used to overcome social anxiety is cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. This therapy looks at not only the actions you take but also the thoughts associated with those actions. It’s effective against social anxiety because it helps you isolate your fears and avoidances, letting you approach them from a more logical angle and find ways to deal with each issue individually. The therapy may help you challenge your negative reactions to social situations and over time, should help you to overcome the hurdles in your life caused by social anxiety.

A Self-Help Approach

Therapy and routines can go a long way toward overcoming social anxiety. In some cases, medication is also an option. Don’t overlook the benefits of self-help books, apps, and videos, however. While these should be seen as more of a supplement to other methods than a primary form of dealing with social anxiety, even a little help is better than nothing. You may learn valuable techniques for dealing with stress and anxiety from self-help resources and they have the benefit of giving you a source you can go back to again and again when it’s most convenient for you.

Exposure Hierarchies

You may hear this referred to as an “exposure ladder” or a “fear hierarchy.” Regardless of the name, however, this tool may help you overcome some of the worst stresses brought on by social anxiety. Look at your day and pick out the 5 to 10 biggest potential triggers that you’ll face. Write each down, then rate each with a score between 0 (indicating that it is unlikely to cause any anxiety) to 100 (indicating that it is almost certain to cause severe anxiety.) Reorder the list from lowest score to greatest, giving you an order in which you can gradually build up to the bigger causes of stress and anxiety while still getting things done. As you check some items off of your list you’ll likely find more confidence to tackle the bigger triggers, as well.

Break Down Your Day

Another way to overcome the social anxiety you face each day is to break down your day into a series of achievable milestones. Each morning, create a list of your goals for the day. From there you can break each goal down into a series of smaller accomplishments, making the goals less daunting and reducing your anxiety about each in the process.

Practice Makes Perfect

If your social anxiety seems overwhelming in certain situations, try practicing or acting out those situations to make them seem more commonplace. The more you practice a potentially anxiety-triggering event, the more used to the event you will feel and the less likely it will be to trigger a severe anxiety reaction. You can also practice ways to cope with the anxiety such as deep breathing or other calming exercises; this will help you associate the calming exercise with the event, making it more effective if your anxiety does get triggered.

There are a lot of things that can trigger social anxiety, and it may take a combination of techniques to face them all. Even if you still feel some anxiety, it’s important that you focus on your victories rather than the moments where anxiety seems to take over. Even when it seems like an uphill battle, it’s still one that you can win with time.

 

 

At first glance, you might think that having a drink or two might be a good way to deal with your social anxiety. After all, using alcohol is considered by many people to be a good way to unwind after a stressful day. Before you reach for that bottle of wine, snap the cap on that beer or start lining up shots, you need to consider something else: Bending the elbow to control your anxiety can backfire on you and make you feel more anxious the next day.

“Hangxiety”: When a Hangover and Anxiety Meet

If you have ever woken up the morning after drinking feeling stressed or guilty about things you said or did the night before, then you experienced what is commonly called “hangxiety.” As if it’s not bad enough feeling dehydrated, headachy and generally like you’ve been hit by a freight train (the hangover), you get to deal with anxiety as well. How exactly does this double whammy occur? [Hint: It’s not just the result of being dehydrated because of alcohol use.]

How Alcohol Use Leads to Anxiety

Step 1: Alcohol Calms the Brain

When you first start drinking, alcohol interacts with the Gaba receptor. This receptor sends chemical messengers through the brain as well as the central nervous system to slow down nerve cells’ activity. As a result, you start to feel relaxed and in good spirits (no pun intended). This stage lasts for the first couple of drinks.

Step 2: More Inebriated, Even Less Anxiety

Once you get into your third or fourth drink, the alcohol is actively blocking glutamate. This is the brain’s principal excitability transmitter.

As people continue to drink alcohol, they tend to become less anxious. Someone who is very drunk is even less anxious than a person who has only had one or two drinks. The endless trains of thought that go along with being anxious are pretty much shut down. This may sound like it’s a desirable state of mind, but it isn’t exactly as advertised.

Step 3: Body Tries to Correct Imbalance in Brain Chemistry

You know that your body works like a very-complicated machine, right? When something is even the least bit out of balance, it tries to correct it and put things right.

When you get drunk, your body knows that its Gaba levels are out of whack. It goes into overdrive to bring them down to normal levels. At the same time, it’s trying to get the glutamate back up.

Step 4: Hangxiety Can Occur

At the point where you stop drinking, your Gaba function is really low and your body has caused your glutamate levels to increase rapidly. This creates the perfect situation for you to feel very anxious. It’s also the reason why some people experience seizures while going through alcohol withdrawal.

The anxiety starts while you’re sleeping off the alcohol you consumed. You wake up feeling jittery and your “fight or flight” hormone (noradrenaline) levels are higher than usual. Alcohol consumption causes them to increase slightly, then they rise as the alcohol wears off. The surge of noradrenaline in the brain can cause severe anxiety.

Who is Affected Most by Hangxiety?

Not everyone feels the effects of hangxiety to the same extent. The results of a study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences found that hangxiety effects people differently. Researchers asked a group of participants about their anxiety levels before, during and then the morning after they consumed alcohol. They found that people who were more shy had much higher anxiety levels the day after drinking than the participants who weren’t as shy. The researchers also found a link between those who experienced significant hangxiety and those who had a problem with alcohol abuse.

Social anxiety can affect you in any number of surprising ways. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on things, another social occasion pops up that you can’t figure out how to deal with. Going to a restaurant can be like running through a minefield of anxiety triggers: step in any direction and you might find a situation that sends you spiraling into a panic. In the best of times dining out can make you uncomfortable, but with some smart planning, you can get through a restaurant dinner without feeling embarrassed, guilty or anxious.

Do Your Research

The internet is your best friend when it comes to working out this problem. Almost every restaurant around posts their menu online, plus loads of review sites offer descriptions about the restaurant itself. Check out everything you can find about the restaurant you’ll be going to. You’ll know what to wear so you know you’ll fit in, how large the place is so you’ll know if it’s noisy or quiet and what’s on the menu that you like. Choose your meal ahead of time and you won’t have to deal with the stress of reading a menu and having everyone watch while you try to make a decision. You’ll sit down already knowing what you’re going to eat and you won’t even have to read the menu.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Once you know what you want to eat, you’ve still got to deal with ordering the food. Rehearse exactly what you’re going to say to the waiter. Pretend you’re a character in a TV show and play that part. It’s not you who’s ordering the food, it’s them. Say your lines until you’ve got them memorized.

Always have a backup plan that you’ve practiced, too. Sometimes restaurants run out of certain items. If they’re out of the avocado toast, will you choose garlic bread, instead? Practice until you’re comfortable with all of your choices.

Try a Buffet

If your main anxiety revolves around making food choices and ordering from a menu, try to influence the restaurant choice and go to a buffet. There’s no choosing involved! Just take a plate and grab a small spoonful of everything that looks good. If there’s a large crowd around the buffet, sit and sip your drink for a bit until there’s a bit more room to move. You won’t be the only one in the restaurant waiting to avoid the rush.

Pick a Helpful Dinner Companion

You know that wonderful friend who spends the entire meal just chatting away for an hour at a time? She never suffers from awkward silences, because she fills them in by herself. She’s also great at asking for more water, sending back overdone fish or getting the right sauce on her meal. This should be your go-to dinner companion. She probably considers you a great listener, making you the perfect dining pair.

Use Helpful Self Talk

Fight your social anxiety by using logic and reasoning with it. Keep telling yourself how good you’re doing, and how well the dinner is progressing. Tell yourself that people really aren’t looking at you, they’re just looking around normally. If you really need it, excuse yourself and go to the restroom for a little bit of air and self-talk away from prying eyes. Pretend you’re talking to someone else who has the same disorder. What would you tell them? That’s what you need to tell yourself.

How have you overcome social anxiety when going out to restaurants?