Understanding and Overcoming Social Anxiety: Strategies for Building Confidence

An important topic that I think a lot of us experienced or we know someone that does experience this, which is social anxiety. So I think we all know that as a general term and you hear it running around all the time of, oh I've social anxiety, or I have some social anxiety. And not to say that people aren't experiencing social anxiety, but it might not be completely diagnosable.

But again, even though that they're experiencing it, that's still really important. And what we're going to talk about is ways to manage that, whether it's minor and it comes up a little bit of discomfort, to impacting you to the point where you're really not able even to socialize. So let's start with the definition of and symptoms of social anxiety.

Understanding Social Anxiety

So social anxiety disorder is the more technical term, also known as social phobia. It's a very common mental health condition. And it's an intense fear of social situations where one might be scrutinized by others.

So there's statistical prevalence of this, pretty high: 1 in 10 people experience social anxiety at some point in their lives.

I would say it's even higher than that, but those are the numbers that the research shows. And then there's some demographic variations as well. Often people start to experience it in childhood or adolescence with a median age around 13 years old. It's common for social anxiety to develop after the age of 25.

And gender-wise, women are more likely to be both diagnosed and experience social anxiety 1.5 to 2 times higher than men.

And then there's an urban versus rural difference as well. And urban areas are higher and the possible reason for that is just there's more social interaction demands in urban areas.

Psychological Strategies

Social anxiety, like I mentioned earlier, can be incredibly debilitating. But with the right strategies, it can be managed and overcome. So that's an exciting piece.

Some very effective ways to manage social anxiety are cognitive behavioral therapy also known as CBT.

And basically what that is something in the environment happens, you have thoughts about that experience, and you have bodily sensations about that experience, and then you act in a way because of that.

For example, I'm going to a work mixer. And this would be social anxiety provoking for me, actually. And so my thoughts would be, might be, what am I going to talk about? Are they going to think I sound stupid? Do I ask them about their job? Do we talk about personal? What if there's silence? And then immediately now I'm anxious. My heart starts racing. Maybe my palms are sweating. And then my brain isn't functioning as well and I'm not able to just talk comfortably as I would with a friend.

So ways to handle that are exposure therapy. So it's gradually facing that feared social interaction. So it might be, in that example, maybe you go for 30 minutes. And before that you're talking about ways that you can, maybe you're prepping a little bit, so maybe you're saying like, you think of some topics that you can talk to people about, maybe you're doing a little role play in your house by yourself or with a friend.

And so you're getting ready for that. There's also mindfulness and relaxation techniques for reducing the symptoms. So mindfulness is you're getting aware of all of your senses. Relaxation techniques might be to some deep breathing... again, some kind of calming statements, some reassuring statements.

Lifestyle Changes

So then there's lifestyle changes as well. So regular exercise we know can be really helpful and anxiety reduction overall. Having a healthy diet.

So if you're about to go to this work event, you might not want to have a ton of caffeine, because caffeine - it helps you stay awake. If you have too much of it, it might produce some anxiety. Your heart might start racing and your thoughts might start racing and it's can be a little bit intense.

And then you also want adequate sleep. That's a really great way to manage anxiety. Often when we don't have a lot of sleep, we immediately feel anxious and out of it.

Practical Tips for Managing Social Situations

So some practical tips for managing social situations.

A little bit what I talked about before. So some preparation, planning, and maybe rehearsing what social interactions can look like. Doing again some deep breathing, some grounding techniques. And then some positive self talk and affirmations. This is all helpful and it can be helpful to do on your own.

Seeking Professional Help

If again, it's so debilitating for you that you're noticing you're not seeing friends, you're having a hard time interacting with co-workers and going to parties and all these different things, then that might be the time to consult a mental health professional. And you can look into the different types of therapy and counseling that's available.

Like I mentioned, CBT is one of the most popular ones. It's one of the most evidence based and effective ways for social anxiety of treatment. And lastly, if it's really debilitating, medication can be really helpful too. And maybe that means, medication short term until you get a grasp and you get all these tools under your belt, or it might mean medication longer term and that's okay.

We all have different chemistry, biology, and different life circumstances. And so doing what you need to help yourself is totally fine.

Building a Support System

And then, lastly, building a support system. The more comfortable you can even be with friends and family, it's like practice. And then they're also supportive of you to help you do these things.

You can join support groups. There's social skills training programs. There's public speaking programs. There's different online communities and other resources for social support.

So to sum everything up, social anxiety is incredibly common. Most of us, I would say, have some level of it at some point in our life.

So we can all empathize with someone who's really struggling with it. We possibly know someone who really struggles with social anxiety. And so ways to manage that are some of the ways I mentioned of practicing, positive self talk, maybe some CBT, doing exposure, building up to bigger events. Practice really does make perfect in this area. Having a good support group, a social community and yeah, just keep at it. It does get better over time and there's going to be, for lack of a better word, you're going to have missteps and you got to keep pushing forward and not give up for those missteps.

And like always, if it's really debilitating and these things that you can't do on your own, which for a lot of us, that's the case, reaching out to a mental health professional.

And if you're in California TherapyNowSF has many therapists who work with social anxiety. And so that's something that we can definitely help with.