Overcoming social anxiety involves breaking the vicious circles of negative thought that maintain the problems. These methods include changing patterns of thought.
Social anxiety focuses on worrying about what others are thinking and adding negative thoughts of one's own. It is helpful to learn how to recognize and re-evaluate negative current thinking, such as:
- Rejecting positive feedback from others. This means that compliments are discounted as untruthful. (Eg. thinking that a social invitation was made because the person was feeling sympathetic.) In contrast, any negative statements from others are taken to heart and analyzed in detail.
- Filtering. This involves thinking that people must be thinking negative thoughts, even when there is no evidence for this. (Eg. assuming that others are thinking how awful one’s rash looks. These thoughts often contain extreme language, such as always, never ever, nobody, totally.)
- Self-blaming. If someone behaves badly, self-blamers consider themselves to be responsible. (Eg. if someone leaves a meeting suddenly, self-blamers considers that this must be due to something they did.)
- Making a catastrophe out of a challenge. This means predicting a complete disaster will follow a setback. (Eg. people may think that if they perform badly at a specific work presentation, they will never be able to show their faces at work again.)
- ‘If only’ thinking. It can be tempting to imagine that if only a particular problem - acne perhaps – did not exist, then life would be perfect, with a top job and the partner of one’s dreams. No. Beautiful people are not guaranteed to feel confident and happy.
Finding positive ways of reconsidering the self is important in order to strengthen self esteem and self-confidence.
Instead of jumping to the conclusion that everyone is thinking about how bad one is looking or behaving, it is better to realise it is impossible to know what others are thinking. Guesswork often involves bringing one’s own self doubts into sharp focus. More truthfully, it is possible that usually, one is no more or less acceptable than anyone else. Also, it is possible that people are not judging, evaluating or even noticing the behaviour of others too much. Perhaps they are considering the appropriateness of their own behaviour and appearance.
Feeling positive about oneself involves recognizing the vicious cycles keeping the problem going, checking thought patterns, and addressing easy challenges first. Looking for alternative ways of thinking will eliminate these negative patterns. Good alternatives can usually be expressed in balanced or moderate terms. One tip to do this is to use the kind of compassionate, understanding and encouraging approach that could be used when approaching another person. Concentrating on strengths as well as perceived weaknesses can add social confidence, as well as attending to what is happening outside oneself, as opposed to what is happening inside.
Ultimately, the reduction of social anxiety involves working out the effects of self-consciousness, deciding not to dwell on unpleasant experiences and filling the mind with positive thoughts. Self-consciousness influences what people perceive, how things are interpreted and what people remember. Broadening the range of attention changes perceptions, and instills confidence, replacing social anxiety.
Iona K Lister - Based in the United Kingdom, I have written four published books and hundreds of articles. Subjects cover a wide range – including ...
