Social anxiety can be difficult to overcome. From the comfort of your living room, you are calm and confident. You can imagine yourself being socially successful and navigating social situations with ease. All of that changes when you go to work, or are invited out to dinner with a group of people. It’s like stepping through the looking glass into a scary world. You might begin to experience physical symptoms of anxiety including a racing heart, rapid breathing, numbness and tingling in your extremities, sweating, and difficulty swallowing or speaking. You may think that you can’t get through it, that you want to leave the situation, and that your experience of anxiety is so overwhelming that you will never come back.
Some people do leave social situations when they are uncomfortable. Avoidance is a key driver of anxiety, and when we avoid our anxiety, we teach our brains that there really is a reason to be alarmed. We don’t let ourselves test out the hypothesis that we can get through the anxiety-producing moments. Similarly, people might engage in safety behaviors which prevent them from breaking the cycle of anxiety. A safety behavior might include drinking a glass or two of wine before a social event, sitting closest to the door in case you want to make a quick escape, or talking with one person who you feel most comfortable with. These behaviors lead to continued anxiety and more avoidance and safety behaviors.
Why is Social Anxiety so difficult to overcome?
When we feel anxious, we overestimate the threat that a situation poses to us and how bad it will be. We underestimate our internal and external resources. Internal resources include things like intelligence, street smarts, and coping skills. Your external resources are the people and places that you can go to for help, like a therapist, a pastor, a library, or a physician. These thought processes can be engrained and take effort to change.
One key to change may lie in asking yourself a series of questions. You may wonder what the worst case scenario is and how likely it is to happen. Ask yourself how you would cope if the worst did occur. Other questions include:
What is the evidence that my feared situation will occur?
How do I know it will occur?
What is the evidence that disproves my fears will come true?
What are other ways of viewing this situation?
What is a more balanced thought?
Challenging your anxious thoughts is a great first step. Another thing you can do to manage social anxiety is to stop avoiding the discomfort of anxious situations by engaging in them and allowing the anxiety to rise and fall. It will fall. You can help yourself overcome anxious feelings by using 4-2-6 breathing or other relaxation exercises as long as they serve the purpose of helping you stay in the social situation while your anxiety is high, and don’t serve as safety behaviors that you depend on.