Social Anxiety Basics

You mean That’s Social Anxiety too?!? How to beat social anxiety symptoms

If you consider yourself to be shy, or if you get tired of other people telling you that you are shy, you may benefit from spending some time learning some tricks and techniques on this site. Before you click on Using Games to Beat Shyness and Appear Outgoing, you should read the following info about social anxiety, which is what causes people to be shy. Everyone has some level of social anxiety symptoms (except sociopaths who lack empathy). Social anxiety (commonly referred to as shyness) occurs on a continuum, similar to height. It’s not an all-or-nothing trait like dwarfism, so you may have areas of your life where you experience social anxiety symptoms, and others where you don’t. Read on. 

Many people who are diagnosed with social anxiety for the first time are very surprised to learn just how many symptoms and life experiences are caused by or related to the personality traits that emerge from living with social anxiety. Social anxiety is simply the technical lingo for people who are very shy. But some social anxiety symptoms go beyond shyness. While you will always be a person with a socially anxious brain, the social anxiety symptoms are not impossible to overcome, so spend some time learning what has worked for others as you read more information on this site. You may also wish to join the tips and tricks email newsletter by clicking the appropriate link to the left.When you were a child, you may have been very outgoing. Not all people who develop social anxiety symptoms were born with an anxious or shy temperament. But you should know that social anxiety is highly heritable (i.e. caused largely by genetics). There is a stronger genetic component to social anxiety than there is to depression. Many of the symptoms that we develop from social anxiety begin to show up around age 16 or 17, when social anxiety tends to kick in as your genetic code unravels itself. Other symptoms develop over time as a reaction to your attempts to avoid the discomfort of anxiety stemming from the traits that make you hypersensitive to the evaluations and thoughts that others might be having about you. 

Here are a few social anxiety symptoms that may emerge: 

  1. Fear of public speaking
  2. A preference to eat alone rather than in cafeterias or restaurants.
  3. Trouble relaxing your bladder enough to pee in public restrooms (especially when someone is waiting behind you).
  4. Blushing a lot (actually research on this suggests that you probably blush a lot less than what it feels like to you. That’s because you become hypersensitive to the blushing sensation once your mind labels it as a threat).
  5. A tendency to talk in a quiet voice.
  6. Having a reputation of being “quiet” when really you are a person who loves fun and loves acting crazy and living life to the fullest.
  7. Worrying about writing or signing a check while someone is watching.
  8. Finding that others are surprised that you are not more confrontational when your neighbor’s music is too loud or when your steak was served wrong.
  9. The list could go on and on. I plan to address each of these issues as I have time to add more to this social anxiety website. Till then, practice facing the situations that make you nervous. Remember that with anxiety, only facing it down (with an attitude of acceptance toward your anxiety) will cause the anxiety to diminish (and cause your life to feel more free).

If you want to seriously jump start your progress in reclaiming your life from the grips of social anxiety symptoms, consider an excellent set of techniques that you can learn from a program detailed at this link: Beat Social Anxiety Symptoms!