SUMMARY
In this post, learn seven unconventional techniques that you can apply immediately to reduce your social anxiety.
Here are some things you’ll learn:
- How to eliminate the blocks to overcoming your social anxiety
- A way to connect with your intentions about being safe socially
- A faster and more effective approach than positive affirmations
- Additional ways you can reduce your anxiety using body-based techniques
By learning these healing techniques you have more tools in your toolkit. And once you know how to use them and aim them at the right issues, you can shift negative beliefs and start to feel safe socially.
Be sure to rate your anxiety level before and after using these techniques and share how it goes for you in the comments below.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Sebastiaan: Hi, my name is Sebastiaan from socialanxietysolutions.com. I am a social confidence coach and I help people with social anxiety feel calmer, relaxed in social situations. And I do that using a variety of approaches that are not as mainstream as mainstream approaches. Right. And so, in this video I’m going to be teaching you a bunch of anxiety reduction techniques at a very simple odd looking, strange Eastern – Western combination of both of them. And they’re very effective and they’re very fun.
You can kind of use them in a row. You can stack them on top of each other. So, I’m gonna assume that you’re watching this video while you’re having some anxiety or maybe you can just scan your body and notice how you feel. And check to see if you have any anxiety symptoms in the moment right now. If so that’s great. Then we have something to measure now at this moment in the video making you remeasure it at the end of the video and see how you feel and then a report on it below to video.
So, yeah. Just so just check in with yourself. Say if zero is no anxiety whatsoever totally peace a peaceful calm at ease relaxed easygoing feeling good. You know, if that’s a zero and ten is like as anxious as I’ve ever been, panic attack, you know, the worst anxiety ever, where are you on that scale? On a scale from zero to ten? Just rate that for yourself.
And then also check what kind of anxiety symptoms you’re experiencing. Is your heart racing? Do you have a pit in your solar plexus? Is your stomach tight or is your chest tighter that are pressuring your chest, or you feel a lump in your throat or you feel that you’re sweating or is there you know, are your thoughts racing, is it differently difficult to be present? Are you watching this but you’re actually got like you know, all this noise going on at the same time? You know, is there heat coming into your face? How are you aware of the anxiety in your body? So, just be present to that. Be aware of what’s going on, rate it and then we’ll start with the first exercise.
#1: Resistance Tapping
Alright. So, when you’re experiencing anxiety there are a variety of techniques that can help you calm down that anxiety and what we’ll go over these. However, typically the techniques that you use in order to get rid of the anxiety are less effective when there is resistance than letting go of the anxiety.
Now let me quickly explain what that might be. So, let’s look at what anxiety is. Anxiety means that your system is perceiving a threat and it’s reacting to that threat by firing off the fight flight freeze response which releases cortisol into your bloodstream and adrenaline and all sorts of other chemicals, it makes sure blood go away from your digestive system into your outer limbs, goes away from your head, so, you can’t be thinking straight and be funny and in a moment and that kind of stuff. And your whole system is prepared to deal with the threat that your system is receiving.
And so, when you then try to get rid of the anxiety by doing tapping techniques or deep breathing techniques or whatever, your system is going like, “Yeah, no. We can’t let go of all that anxiety because you know, we can’t stop this survival response because there’s still a threat going on. That would be stupid to stop the survival response, we need to keep going”.
So, we first want to address that. And so, you know, what I’m talking about is actually subconscious resistance. So, consciously you want to be free of your anxiety, you want to feel calm and relaxed. But subconsciously the deeper part of you is like, “No, that’s a bad idea for a reason X Y Z”. What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna just verbalize the common reasons for why the subconscious doesn’t want to let go of the anxiety while we simultaneously stimulate certain acupressure points in the body.
Now, if you’ve never seen my videos this is gonna look a bit funny. Really quick, the technique that we’re going to use is called tapping or EFT – Emotional Freedom Techniques. And what it does is it disconnects the emotions from the problem that you’re thinking about. So, it looks really silly because you’re stimulating certain acupressure points in the body but when you’re doing that while you’re thinking about something that upsets you then the emotion actually gets disconnected from the thing that you’re thinking about. And they say that it is you know, we say that it is like acupuncture but instead of using needles you tap with the tips of your fingers on these specific acupressure points.
Now, if you want to learn more about it you can go to this link and I’ll teach it to you for free how to apply to social anxiety. But you know, it’s very forgiving, it’s very simple, you don’t have to do it perfect. It will still work. So, very easily you just want to follow along with what I’m gonna do basically. Just, it’s gonna look silly but who cares? Nobody can see you most probably. Just watching is not enough, you actually dissipate.
So, you grab your two fingers. You grab whatever, you take your two fingers and with the fingertips you’re gonna tap on certain acupressure points in the body and you’re just gonna verbalize, you’re just gonna repeat after me certain things I’m gonna say. And there’s certain things that I’m gonna say are the potential resistances to letting go of the anxiety that you feel. The possible reasons why the deeper part of your mind, the subconscious mind doesn’t want to let go of the anxiety. And by doing that you are actually getting rid of the impediment to letting go of the anxiety where we’re not eliminating the anxiety but we’re getting rid of the block to eliminating the anxiety.
Alright. So, very easy follow along, take your two fingers, tap on the beginning of your eyebrows. I’ll go a little bit closer right there. And then attempt there and simply say “I don’t want to let go of my anxiety”. Okay. And then you tip on the side of your eyes right there. And say, “It’s not safe to let go of my anxiety”. Alright, tap under your eyes. Say, “I refuse to let go of my anxiety”. And tapping under your nose, “I don’t deserve to feel calm and relaxed”. Okay. And the chin. Say, “I’m familiar with this anxiety, it belongs to me, I can’t let it go.” Yeah, and the tip of your collarbone. Just take your fist and just thump in the general area so, your collarbone and seem to stick knob. The point is actually under here, but, just take your fist and just thump in the general area and just say, “You know this anxiety is part of my identity. I can’t let it go”. Just tap under your arms. If you wear a bra, it’s where your bra strap meets directly onto your armpit. And just say, “I don’t want to let go of this anxiety for whatever reason”.
Okay, good. Now take a deep breath. Now like I said this didn’t resolve the anxiety though it might already have made you feel a bit more calm. But what it has done in pretty much you know, 95+ % of the cases it has resolved the block to letting go of the anxiety. So, the block is now no longer there.
#2 Combine an intention with Tapping
Now what I want you to do is the second exercise. It’s just thumb on your chest like this and your breastbone is actually an energy psychology quite a well-known spot as well in order to set your intentions, intention. You know, in the woo spiritual world is a something they talk about all the time. But it’s actually a backed up by science quantum physics and all that stuff. So, an intention is basically just a goal that you have, something that you intend to happen.
So, you know, your intention might be, “My intention is to feel calm and relaxed in the moment at the end of this video”. Or “My intention is I want to feel calm and peaceful”. And you can either think about the intention or speak it out loud or you can just repeat what I say. Okay. So, my intention is to feel calm and peaceful. Very good.
#3 Tapping on the Triple Warmer Meridian
Alright, next exercise. So, when you experience anxiety or stress like I said earlier the fight flight freeze response is activated and there’s particular point on your body that’s called the triple warmer meridian. Comes from China, Chinese medicine and it’s on the back of your hand. So, if you have your back of your hand, let me come a bit closer, you got the base of your pinkie finger and then the base of your ring finger. In between there’s a little crease and the triple warmer meridian is here.
Now this is directly connected to the activation of the fight flight freeze response and when you stimulate this point, but you know, jamming like three fingers in there and tapping quite hard, don’t hurt yourself but hard enough that you can actually feel it. And just stimulate this point for like a minute or something and you just kind of like observe your anxiety in your body as its as you’re doing that tapping. So, maybe it’s close your eyes and notice where you where those anxiety symptoms are going on. So, maybe notice the tightness in your chest or the lump in your throat or you know, the lump in your in your stomach or the tightness in your stomach or what however you are aware of it while your sign is simultaneously doing this tapping.
You might do that for like off a minute or a minute then you might switch over to the other one. And then by the other one I mean on the other side, on the other hand. Alright, so, you know, I probably should keep talking to keep this interesting. So, you know, I’m tapping on the back of my hand. And I used this personally when I feel myself being stressed at the end of the day just before I’m going to sleep I’m like, “Alright, my thoughts are racing. Okay, I’m just gonna tap my triple warmer for you know, minute on each hand and it already starts to calm, calm me down”. It’s very effective for that. Alright, deep breath.
#4: Tap and Breathe
Alright. So, when tapping came out, you know, it started out being EFT – Emotional Freedom Techniques, and eventually there started to be all these variations on standard EFT. And one of the things that came out was called tap and breathe or even touch and breathe.
That’s when you stimulate a particular tapping point while you breathe. And you know, I talked quite fast right now… Or I have been at least. Now, I’m kind of gonna slow things down. And so, what you’re doing here you either tapping on this tapping point or you’re rubbing it and while you’re doing that you’re simultaneously adjusting your breathing. I kind of want to give you a side view of what you’re doing because you’re breathing into your belly nothing to your stomach. So, you are breathing through your nose.
So, you’re slowly breathing into your belly not into your chest. And you’re purposely protruding and expanding your belly to get more breath in it while you’re simultaneously tapping.
And this is gonna be a bit challenging in the beginning, but you’ll get into it. And you know, you’re doing this in the comfort of your home, you practice this a bit and you get better at it. So, now, you’re tapping in through the nose, out through the nose.
Alright. And that’s quite centering. And you know, kind of already toned me down a bit as well as you might hear in my voice. So, you’re doing the tapping, you’re breathing into your belly breathing up from your belly and you’re doing it slowly. Slowly breathing into your belly, slowly breathing out, in through the nose, out through the nose while you’re doing the tapping. And you can do one breath and stay tapping on this point, one breath out stay tapping on this point.
And then go to the next point – one breath in and one breath out. Next point, etc.
#5: Slow Down Your Talking
Alright. So, the next one is actually something that you can do with your talking. So, I’ve been rambling on about going really, really quick but when you actually deliberately slow your talking down and you really go at a pace that is like lethargic and kind of lazy and you make these pauses in your speech it actually starts to calm you down. So, that’s another thing that you can play with. Alright. I Interview a NLP master on my podcast. He mentioned that technique and just cool thing that you can use. Next.
#6: The Cross Over
Now, for the next one we’re actually gonna need a chair which I’m sitting on right now. And this is something I’ve learned from my site cane workshop, psychological kinesiology which is fantastic which I highly recommend you check out. It’s a way to install positive beliefs into your subconscious mind and bypass the conscious mind. You know, if you ever heard of affirmations – “I love myself. I love myself”. Say it with conviction and emotion – “I love myself. I love myself”. You know, which is great, which I do but it takes a long time and to actually kind of convince yourself and bypass the conscious mind doing standard affirmations.
Tony Robbins talks about incantations, right? Where you use your whole body and force and emotion and that’s great and goes a lot faster but my experience… it’s still takes quite a while. And Psych-K is just a lot more fast and effective. So, but, this is not about Psych-K. This is a similar pose than the one you’re using in Psych-K. However, this is not Psych-K. Again, this is not Psych-K.
Alright, this is a pose that similar to Psych-K and it is also part of the Wayne cook pose in energy psychology or energy medicine. So, what you do is really simple. I hope you can see it because I have to be a bit creative, I’m at the the roof of my hotel here because I didn’t have a proper way to shoot this video and I’m talking bit louder hopefully you can still hear me, I hope you hopefully you can still see me.
So, what you do is you take your left foot and you put it over your right foot and you meet at the ankles. Right. So, you meet at the ankles, not on the knees. And so, my left foot is over my right foot and then you stick your arms out like this, and you put your right hand over your left hand, you lock the fingers and then you need it arrested in your lap or you do this. Whichever feels more comfortable there’s no difference between this or this, alright? And then when you sit like this, close your eyes and you breathe in. In through your nose, out through your nose. And you do that for five breaths. Three, began. I’m kind of speeding things up right now but you do that really slowly.
Alright. And then at the end, alright, you unlock everything and now you crisscross, you do the other things and before my left my right foot and now my right foot is going over my left foot and before my right hand was with my left hand… Wait. Before my whatever, whatever, it was before I don’t remember but right now because my right foot is crossed over my left foot, my left hand is gonna cross over my right hand and I’m gonna turn inwards and I’m in lock it and rested there, close my eyes and think of those graphs again. We’re going slowly in through the nose, slowly out through the nose. Alright. So, you do that for five breaths and that’s it. Next.
#7: Simple Tapping
Alright. And for this last one we just do some simple tapping. Alright, so, just follow along tap on the side of your hand and just repeat after me – “Even though I still feel a bit anxious right now and I noticed that in my body and maybe I have all these reasons for it, I want to remind my system that I’m safe here in this moment right now”.
Good. Now, tapping on the beginning of the eyebrows and while you’re tapping on the beginning of the eyebrows just notice any remaining anxiety symptoms of your body, if your heart is racing, focus on your racing hard, if there’s a lump in your throat focus on the lump in your throat, if there’s tightness in your stomach focus on the tightness in the stomach, if there are multiple symptoms going on simultaneously focus on the whichever is most strong.
Okay. Tapping on the side of the eyes. Just think about why you might feel anxious. You know, you can say it out loud or you can just think about it. Tapping is really simple, you focus on the problem, it can be a thought or a memory or a sensation in your body or a feeling that you have an emotion that you have, and you do the tapping.
Tapping under the eyes. Now I feel anxious right now. Under the nose – “It’s not safe to feel calm and relaxed completely right now”. On the chin – “I can’t feel calm and relaxed right now”. On the collarbone – “All this stress and anxiety”. Under the arms – “I want to feel calm and relaxed in this moment”. Liver point – “Lots of stuff going on in the world”. Wrist point – “But I realized in this moment I am safe”. Top of the head – “So, I choose to feel calm and relaxed”. Very good, deep breath and let go. Alright excellent.
Alright. So, now, we’ve done a bunch of exercise enough kind of rushed through them but just to show you, you know, just some examples of them and I know many more of the many techniques that are possible that are not just using you’re thinking. You know, these are body-based techniques. Some come from yogic practice, some come from you know, Chinese medicine, some come from breath work. There’s a wide variety of stuff out there which you can use to actually calm down and soothe your anxiety.
So, now, we just want you to check in with your body again. Remember at the beginning of the video I said, “How do you feel and what bodily sensations do you notice?” And now it’s maybe 10-15 minutes later we’ve done a bunch of exercises, how do you feel right now? You know, on a scale of 0 to 10 what is your anxiety level right now? Is it higher? Is it lower? Is it the same? Just scan your body, just close your eyes and really tune in.
Now, if you notice that it is higher which is uncommon, unlikely but if that happens you’ve tuned in to something which needs to be addressed. You kind of uncovered some deeper layer being attacked here. Right. But most likely what you’ve experienced this you either feel more relaxed or you feel more calm or at ease or the anxiety has reduced. Or sometimes you might start it out, you might have started out with anxiety in your throat or and now it’s in your chest. Or you might have started out in your chest and now it’s in your stomach. It’s kind of moving around, you know, if that’s the case you simply want to keep tapping, you want to keep doing those exercises. Same thing if it’s higher, is gonna keep tapping, you know, keep tapping over those points while you focus on what’s going on.
Do the exercises from scratch. Go to the beginning of the video, do it again. You know, and if you really feel bad, you need to reach out to someone to get some help get a pro… get proper help for this. You know, as I said at the beginning of the video I’m a social confidence coach.
Now what I showed you those techniques are very powerful techniques, but, they are just that – A bunch of techniques. And as my mentor Dr. Dave Blake says, psychotherapist, “These techniques are all great, but they’re not therapy in and of themselves”. So, you know, while they are great techniques to reduce your anxiety, it actually you know, the real magic comes in, the real powerful lasting results, being able to get to anxiety free, being able to actually connect with someone. And you know, getting the results that really transform your life where you can form friendships that you enjoy where you are freely being yourself with social situations where you have fun and you know, speak your mind and you know, feel free.
That inner sense of freedom, that sense of self-esteem, you know, there’s more required than just a bunch of techniques and doing a couple of techniques. But the techniques give you, you know, a bit of an idea of what might be possible. But on themselves you know, stand alone on their own, they’re just relaxation techniques. Very powerful once and you know, not just relaxation techniques, I’m saying that wrong. I mean that they are healing techniques, but you need to you know, once you know how to aim these healing techniques at the right issues, once you aim them at you know, the repetitive negative experiences, the emotions that were stuck in your past, the patterns that were formed, there’s a result of that, the beliefs that you have that caused the perception that you’re not safe socially, the beliefs that cause you to perceive a threat and the origins of these beliefs, the traumatic experiences in your past.
Once you aim these techniques at those targets and you do that properly in the right way and you neutralize these experiences you get rid of these beliefs, you get these cognitive shifts and you begin to realize that you’re actually safe, that’s when you get the real results.
So, you know, I hope that’s been helpful. These techniques are great already, just manage your emotional state a bit better to have something to calm yourself down. You know, I think I shared six or seven of these techniques in this video and you know, combine them, use them, play around with them and you know, see how it goes for you. But keep in mind, they’re just techniques and the real deal comes when you know, the real results come in when you know how to aim these techniques at the right targets. And they all be talking about that more at some point in the future.
Now, please leave a comment below this video, sharing how you felt before the videos and how you felt after the videos. Because I want to you know, get a bit of an idea of like are you actually going through these exercises or you just watching this for entertainment. And if so, what were your results? You know, how did you feel before? How did you feel after? What was your number before, what was your number after? Do you have any questions? And you know, I’ll be there chatting, answering questions. And yeah…
So, thanks. I hope this has been helpful and I’ll talk to you next week. Bye for now.
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