Social Anxiety is really tough to deal with, but another big challenge is just realizing if you have it or not. Almost everyone feels uncomfortable to some extent in social situations--this is because as humans, we have a deep-seating fear of looking incompetent or silly in front of our peers. This is actually people's #1 fear--ahead of dying and public speaking. That statistic surprised me, but it makes sense. The thing we want most is to belong and be a part of a group. Being seen badly by our peers would lessen that sense of belonging.

So, because we all want to belong and fear not belonging, how can we tell if our social anxiety is common, normal fear of being embarassed and what is too much? To begin with, let's consider what social anxiety is all about.

Anxiety in general is not truly fear of the thing we thing we are afraid of. Anxiety is actually a fear of our reaction to a stimulus. Consider social anxiety. Here is what is really happening--we walk into a social situation and begin to feel fear and/or panic. Immediately, we begin to focus on this feeling and begin to pay more attention to it than to the social situation. This increased attention causes us to feel more apprehension. Soon, our panic is running away from us. But, did we even talk to anyone, get laughed at, have any interaction that caused the fear? Not necessarily.

This is why anxiety is not really about the situation. We imposed a reaction on ourselves based on a stimulus that we believe to be a trigger. Next time we walk into a social situation, we will remember what we did to ourselves last time, and do the same thing again; maybe even to a greater degree. But it is not the social situation, except possibly by way of association. We did not need to have any interaction with another person to set off this chain of events.

So, we can see from this that when we are afraid of the social situation, we are not actually trying to avoid people--we are trying to avoid the stimulus that causes us to become nervous. As I mentioned, social anxiety is one of the most common types because most people have some apprehension about social events. This means these types of events can become triggers for many people.

How do you know if you need treatment or if this is completely normal? This is actually a pretty simple one to answer. If you notice that your anxiety changes whether or not you take part in social events--in other words, if you avoid making plans with people or going out when you have a chance to avoid the stimulus--you would do well to seek treatment of some kind. As I mentioned on the home page, some people require medicine to deal with a chemical imbalance and nothing else will really help. However, most people respond well to finding good techniques to simply deal with their anxiety and remember that their fear is not real.

If you recognize yourself in any of the statements above, I urge you to get some kind of treatment. Trust me, you will not believe how wonderful your life can be, you just have to take the steps to get yourself to a better place.

I Wish You The Best Of Luck!

John Tavern