SUMMARY

In this post, Jamie Dougherty gives a genuine review of Social Anxiety Solutions and I provide a response.

I really appreciated the feedback and here are some of the things Jamie shares:

• his experience with the Social Confidence System,
• how he feels about his one-on-one coaching session with me,
• specific tools he found extremely useful,
• what tools he didn’t enjoy as much and what could be improved.

I give my response to the review and appreciate the honest feedback.

FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Social Anxiety Solutions Reviewer Feedback

Jamie: Hello, my name is Jamie Dougherty, and this is my review experience on the Social Confidence System and working with Sebastiaan van der Schrier from social-anxiety-solutions.com. So, I got the Social Confidence System about nearly two years ago now. So, it’s taking me a long time to do a review of it but you know… so I got it and I was very skeptical. I thought oh, you know, yet another thing because I’ve done some self-development stuff previous to that and you know I paid for things, I tried some things out. Some things were alright, but you know, a lot of them were just scams. So, naturally I thought oh this is this could be yet another thing, it’s gonna be yet another I don’t wanna get my hopes up in case I get disappointed which you know, is a valid concern but I like to report that it wasn’t the case. I feel like I did get my money’s worth.

Social Confidence System Review

So, the Social Confidence System is a one-size-fits-all way of trying to get, try to reduce the chunk of your anxiety and the way it does this is by a mixture of different things. It uses certain questions and writing exercises, it’s about getting clear on the origins of why you feel that way. You talk about beliefs, talk about self-acceptance. It even goes into memories and how to release them using mostly EFT. But there’s also a little bit of Logosynthesis in there which is witchcraft as far as I’m concerned. That stuff did… I don’t… I don’t know how it works and why should work but it kind of does. I found that brilliant I want more of that.

So, a big chunk of the system is finding the origins of your anxiety. Or you can use it for other stuff as well like you might find that your depression or lack of self-worth and your views on the world are all tied into past experiences. So, as you work through your past experiences for your social anxiety you also help with a lot of other things that are attached as well, which is great. I mean you’ll be surprised at what actually caused your social anxiety and how that affected other things as well.

One thing I found very helpful was working through past memories. I still use this today… I still I’ve got a huge list of all these memories I’ve been working through and I’ve been trying to reduce the emotion, my emotional response to them to be more comfortable about trying to reassess what happened and to give me a better idea of how to act in the future. I really got a lot out of this. It’s probably the scariest part because not everyone likes going back to the past memories. Some for very good reasons, some people got just super traumatic things happen to them, but everybody has a lot of little things you know, and so, having a safe and easy way to make sense of them and to move on from them is big.

I would definitely recommend this system to anybody and some of the criticisms I have are quite nitpicky. One being that a lot of the videos and audio files. A lot of them have seem a little bit out of date you know because you see Sebastiaan doing… I mean the content is good and, but the video quality is like you know, from the eighties and then you have the next video which is more recent. It’s like I’ve… I’m gonna be a bit pedantic and say you know, lack of consistency in quality but yeah, you know, whatever. As long as the content is good that’s fine and I thought the content was very good.

It’s very much about… it’s very focused on your past and why you believe things which yes, that is a huge chunk of it. I would like to see more about what’s to do in the future. It kind of does that a little bit, where by you getting clear on what you don’t want and what you do want in the future, because that’s very important. But it’s kind of like you know, say you have done it, done the system for a while and you don’t feel a lot more comfortable with yourself, what things can you do to you know, to start getting yourself out there start being more sociable? I think it kind of lacks a little bit there. It gives some stuff about why you know, try this and that but I don’t think that advice measures up to the quality of the previous things in the system. But overall, I really like it. I still find myself going back to it sometimes.

I would like to see… I’d like to see some updates you know. It seems pretty easy to do because it’s not a product necessary. You get… you are paying for a login for a site, so you don’t have to wait for DVDs or eBooks or stuff. It’s just all there, you can book more site, you’re on your computer anyway because everyone’s on the computer read anyway nowadays. So, there it is. It’s all just there. It makes sense, it’s organized.

So, now I’m gonna talk about my experience having a session with Sebastiaan himself.

Social Confidence Coaching Review

So, I done the social confidence system for a while and I’ve got pretty far in and I saw quite a lot of lasting results. I’ll give you one example.

So, I… whenever there’s like it’s someone who looks a bit rough coming down the street, I always cross the road you know but I’ll work through some of the memories and to why I think that might be the case and then I was walking down the street one day and I saw someone, a rough looking person, coming towards me but I don’t really have the same reaction, it’s kind of like although they’re the type of person that would I don’t know… being an asshole to me and whatever. I walk past them, and nothing happened. You know, I didn’t feel one way or the other.

That is like all that’s done now. It’s just that those memories have been put to rest. So, I’ve been doing this Social Confidence System for a few months and I was getting a lot out of it and… but I felt like I wasn’t getting I wasn’t doing enough, alright? And what I later learned in the session, but I’ll get there in a minute. So, I thought wasn’t doing enough, so I thought oh I’ll reach out to the man himself and do some actual one-to-one sessions, you know, that wall that’d be really helpful. And they were.

I reached out to him. I was bit nervous reaching out to him. And one, well… a couple of reasons. One, the money. I’m already get my money’s worth, but I had that worry with the well of anything so, yeah, whatever. But another reason I didn’t reach out or was preventing me from reaching out was I actually felt a little bit starstruck by him. Next, I seen him in all these videos and the thought of like “Oh, the little man on the screen is talking to me, huh? I know all about him, but you know, he knows nothing about me”. You know, there’s like this disconnect there which isn’t the problem because I mean he’s not a celebrity or anything.

So, I reached out to him. It was very nice very, he was actually very nice, so I don’t know why I thought it was gonna be mean or anything but social anxiety so, of course it would. Very friendly, he knows, he gets it. He’s somebody who’s been through it all. He knows what it’s like to be socially anxious, he’s worked with tons of people. You know, he knows how to talk to you.

Now that seems like kind of an odd thing to say but it really does make him. One thing about social anxiety is that you feel like you’re the only one and no one else gets it but with Sebastiaan I felt like “Yeah, he gets it. You know, he knows how to handle it. You know, he will know how to handle me”. I thought that was the best way putting it but that’s what I… that’s the impression I’ve got.

So, I reached out to him he was very friendly, he… very helpful. He said you know any questions, anything, let me know. I had a session with him and I was nervous to say the least. Always anxious about my session about social anxiety but of course it would have been because I was socially anxious so yeah.

Since then and incidentally I work, I’m trying to be an EFT practitioner. So, I’ve actually had to have one-to-one sessions with people, so I provided sessions with other people and about you know, to help other people as well. So, up on the other side you know, so, that’s a testament to how well it worked I suppose.

So, when I met Sebastiaan he was… he’s done this before and it’s kind of obvious that it’s a weird situation and it’s you know, it’s very nervous and you’re a nervous person so yeah, and he knows how to handle it. And after we after like five minutes I felt pretty comfortable, I felt okay, and we were able to work together.

For the most part an EFT session. That’s the main technique but yours but Sebastiaan also incorporates other techniques like Logosynthesis. I think he’s done some NLP stuff well at least I got the impression that he did NLP stuff. So, he was able to incorporate all these techniques into one.

One criticism I have about my session whether or not Sebastiaan does this because it was two years ago or not I don’t know.  He uses a lot variety of different techniques, but he uses these other techniques which are like energy techniques. Now EFT is an energy technique but with EFT you focus on the problem and you try to make sense of something as you’re working through these meridian points, but these other energy techniques are not really based on your problem. It’s more like this idea you have this aura around you and you’re trying to rebalance the chakras and things like that. And honestly, I didn’t find them very helpful. I would much rather have continued on doing more EFT stuff and talking about it. Just talking to someone about it. That in itself was helpful. Sebastiaan does do that. I mean we were talking, getting you know get to know each other a little bit.

But these are the techniques that were like I don’t know what… I always call one that you have to like hold like that and then cross your legs and think about, I can’t remember what I thought about now. Like I don’t really find that very helpful. I didn’t get much from it.

And another one was like I can’t remember what it’s called but like maybe like do this over my head what… because of rebalancing energy or something I thought. I didn’t get much out of that to be honest with you. But the EFT and the Logosynthesis. That I keep going on about Logosynthesis that stuff is just I really liked that.

Anyway, so, through these sessions I realized that I was too hard on myself. In other words, I didn’t accept myself but specifically I was too hard on myself. I was playing the comparison game inside my head about I’m this age and at this age I should be doing something like this or I should be here, or I should be doing all these “should’s”. And they weren’t helpful and the fact that I was… I felt I had this unmatched potential and I’m not getting anywhere. You know, I’ve sort of felt like I was in a rush.

After that I realized that I needed to give myself a break. I needed to slow down a bit. You know, I needed to sort of take things in smaller chunks and I’ve got a lot out of that. I don’t think I would have realized that if I’d done more work by myself. It really did speed up my personal development having a one-to-one session. Sebastiaan was very nice. In between sessions he said you know, look let me know how you get on any questions you know, let me know.

Overall, it was a very positive experience. I got a lot out of it and I would absolutely recommend having a session with Sebastiaan. I say that was my experience with Social Anxiety Solutions. I highly recommend it. They’ve got a show, a podcast. I don’t know much in the way of podcasting, but they still point out content. The Social Confidence System up I love that thing. I think it’s the best thing I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a lot of things. I really got a lot out of sessions with Sebastiaan. He knows ways talking about, he’s not… he’s somebody who’s been there and done that and is able to help people effectively.

Response to Reviewer Comments

Sebastiaan: Alright, I thought I’d give a little bit of a reply. So, first of all thanks Jamie that’s really awesome. I appreciate you sending that over and I think it’s gonna be helpful for other people seeing that. I have a… I just watched it for the second time so I’ve some comments about what you said.

First of all, Jamie said he was very skeptical and he said he didn’t want to get his hopes up and then get disappointed again. Yes, very common. You know, if you’ve tried a lot of things in vain and you’ve put in your effort your brain is like “Well, the next thing is likely gonna suck as well”. And that disappointed feeling that’s really painful – Do you really want to get your hopes up? And so, a lot of people become very skeptical which makes sense. However, your skepticism can stop you from trying new things and then you just stay stuck because of your skepticism and that’s where your skepticism is actually maybe not that smart.

Anyway, that’s a quick thing I wanted to say. Further he mentioned he had a huge list of memories that he was gonna go through systematically which is one way of going about things and I just wanted to say for someone who things like “Oh, my God I’ve got thousands of memories to go through. This will take forever”. No because there’s something called a generalization effect. So, when you have a whole bunch of memories around a particular theme, say you have hundred memories of rejection you know, then if you treat the first one the worst one the most recent one and maybe feel more you generate the healing from those that the releasing of that stack energy in those memories will release all the other ones as well. It’s called the generalization effect and that’s because it’s all energetically linked or if you don’t believe in energy, it’s emotionally linked to your subconscious. So, that’s that.

And it’s not just any memory that you go through. There are specific memories related to your social anxiety in the social confidence system is one way to uncover what the right ones are. That’s part of what the questions are about to help you get clear on the right memories and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, the video files are outdated, it’s true. You know, some of them are shot from when I was still living in Chung Mai Thailand like six-five years ago and so they’re shot with will my notes and in the background and that kind of stuff, so the quality isn’t great, but you can hear everything, you can see everything. So, I’m with you, it’s not super consistent. More on that in just a second.

Yeah, things about the future that we’re not really included. There are a few things about the future but not too much, I’ve done that on purpose because for the most part you’re reliving emotions from the past and there’s not that much that you need to do when it comes to forcing yourself to get out there. There are a couple of things that you want to do, and I do talk about them and they’re… let’s just say I’ll get back to this as well.

Like some updates. Alright, well, let’s just bring it all together here. So, not necessarily an update but something else is coming up and that’s it’s making the social confidence system that is currently out there which by the way is a product that I’ve redone nine times. So, there have been nine revisions off the system since I brought it out which I did I think in 2009 or 2010. Was it that long ago? Likely that long ago. So, there have been about nine revisions of it.

And that said what I’m bringing out now is something you know, it’s different and it’s like incomparable to the system, it’s a lot better. So, if you’re thinking after this testimonial “Wow, I’m gonna get the system”, you can but I’d say wait a little bit longer there is something much more exciting coming up and I’d say that the new thing that’s coming up is like the iPhone 10 whereas the social confidence system is like the iPhone 1. Still awesome, still great but comparably it doesn’t measure up.

Then yeah, the whole thing about being starstruck. I loved it thanks for sharing that. That’s funny. Yeah, I’m obviously just a dude who’s uh was a step behind a camera all whole bunch of time. We’re all in the same boat here. So, yeah, there’s not much where I can say is utter than you and me, are the same so that’s it. And yes, the whole idea that you are starstruck with some people means that you’re well you know, not talking to you necessarily Jamie but when you have that particular problem and you’re looking up to other people and they’re like “They’re better than you. You’re not on their level”, that just means that you’re running a belief such as “I’m not good enough” or “I’m inferior” or “I’m less than others, I’m not important, I don’t matter”. Something along those lines.

And that’s sabotaging the show for you and that in and of itself is causing you did not feel safe to be yourself because who are you after all? You’re just is not important person, so you don’t really deserve to just speak up and say what you want to say, and you know, say your jokes, be load or whatever you want to do.

And then yeah, Jamie mentioned that he was anxious about the social anxiety session which is common, and I’d say about you know 80% of my clients is anxious at the start of the first session and that’s something we address right there. Because what the session actually does is it brings up the problem right there for you. So, right now when you’re talking to me or any practitioner that you work with, you’re bringing the problem into the room. So, now you have your social anxiety right there in front of you and a good practitioner will know how to work with that. So, and like he said you know, in most cases you’re calm down in a couple of minutes. Yeah, and in case you’re not that’s also good news because then we can look at why not and we’ll address that, but you know there isn’t a single person anymore that I work with these days that doesn’t feel great at the end of a session or at least feels that something significantly has been shifted. You don’t feel the same after 90 minutes of all the all the weird stuff that’s going on.

Speaking of which… So, Jamie talked about EFT. Well, that’s the tapping thing and I don’t think that people need to know what you know I need to elaborate on what that is. It’s a technique to get rid of excessive negative emotions, stuck negative emotions, beliefs that are in the way of you feeling at ease socially. It looks weird because you’re tapping in your face and your body and it’s quite out there but it’s amazing and it’s really effective and its leading-edge stuff.

And he mentioned Logosynthesis. Logosynthesis is an intention-based technique which is like he said witchcraft. It is bizarre but basically you aim those phrases at particular memories fantasies worries concerns and you say these phrases, so you tune into a particular memory, you feel upset, you say those phrases and the upset goes away, the energy gets rebalanced, it’s weird but it works. So, I used that along with tapping and he said you mentioned he was referring to two other things. One is psyche. A psychological kinesiology which I do still use frequently that is incredible and it’s a way to install positive reliefs directly into your subconscious mind. So, if you ever heard of affirmations you know, “I love myself, I love myself”. Say it harder with emotions “I love myself”, yet that stuff that takes forever only to work a little bit.

Psych-K is a way to put information’s on steroids and it does work and it work amazingly well and, in my experience, and I use it pretty much with all of my clients and most of my clients. It’s a fantastic way to override negative beliefs. So, if you if you don’t love yourself for example you could install a belief such as I’m worthy of being loved or I love myself and that will overwrite the previous programming that is there. It’s spectacular.

The other one that he’s referring to where you’re doing this is indeed very weird and usually I only pull it out after a couple of sessions when my clients have already noticed significant changes in their life because most of the time I’m just talking about tapping and I’m not talking about these other things because they’re so weird and out there. And so, if I start promoting these things also I just lost all credibility. So, that’s why I don’t promote those so much. But Emotion Code is also an amazing technique that the challenge with it is that it’s so weird and when you’re what it is it’s a way to uncover and release trapped emotions and it’s based upon muscle testing. I won’t go into what exactly it is if you know, you can listen to the interview with the founder of the technique as well as the font as a leading voice in the psychic community as well as the founder of the Logosynthesis podcast and I’ll link that somewhere under here. Rachel will link that under here.

But Emotion Code is a way to uncover trapped emotions and then release them by making this motion. The challenge with it is that you don’t feel anything shifting in the moment usually and with Psych-K you usually feel a shift with Logosynthesis you’ll feel a shift. With tapping you’ll feel a shift but with emotion code this shifts usually are come like in a day or two so, but I still use that because it’s very powerful and its rapid quick you know. If I do that in a session it might take up two or three minutes of our time and I find it very valuable.

So, and lastly… no that was about it. Alright, so, Jamie thank you very much. I hope this feedback has been helpful. I’d say keep an eye out on what’s coming. It’s very exciting, I’m very proud of it and you’re gonna hear more about it soon. I’m gonna go back to sitting at my desk and getting some, getting some stuff done for that project because it’s almost done but not completely. Alright, thank you very much. I’ll talk to you next Thursday. Bye.