SUMMARY

In this post, I’m sharing a current coaching experience that I had with a client. See how this might apply to your own situation.

Learn how you can go from despair that nothing will ever work to overcoming social anxiety to gaining hope and self-acceptance towards your situation to start seeing results.

It might make all the difference for you and it’s a perspective you’ll need to move forward towards gaining results (social confidence).

Here is what we will cover:
-How to resolve skepticism about overcoming social anxiety
-How to neutralize the true root of the social anxiety problem
-Why to stop beating yourself up about your social anxiety
-Why you might worry what others think of you
-Accepting yourself despite social anxiety

Get to where you actually believe you have a way to become more relaxed, feel more at ease, and have less social anxiety.

FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Sebastiaan: Hello, this is Sebastiaan from social-anxiety-solutions.com. I am a former social anxiety disorder sufferer and a social confidence coach. In this video I’m going to talk about a mindset or rather belief system you can get to the place that you actually believe that it’s going to help you be more relaxed, feel more at ease, have less social anxiety.

Now I cannot solve the problem for you in a video like this, but I can talk about a particular perspective that maybe likely you haven’t considered and then you can do the work in order to get and by doing the work I’ll get into what that is.

You can do the work in order to get yourself to subconsciously believe and integrate that mindset.

Resolve your skepticism about overcoming social anxiety

I tell you a story to illustrate what happen to make a point. Yesterday I was working with a pretty new client, it was the third session I was seeing him for and let’s call him Jim. Jim it’s not his real name obviously. This is a third session I saw him, and he’s been a lot better.

After the first session he came to see me he was hopeless I tried a bunch of things and nothing had worked you really think that this would happen, but he was kind of at his wits end, and shall we say desperate, which is a common place for people to be.

You tried a bunch of things and nothing works it makes a lot of sense that you’re thinking like “Well, nothing is probably going to work for me” and your brain will start to tell you “Hey, be very skeptical of certain things that might work because remember how painful it was when you believed in that thing and you tried it and it didn’t work, you don’t want that to happen again, do you?”

The more things you try that don’t work the higher your skepticism goes until you get to the point where you don’t even try things anymore which is very unfortunate because there are very powerful solutions out there. If you don’t believe me check out some of the video testimonials on my channel with the people going to work made former clients and so.

Anyway, I saw him for the first session, he was in a really bad place, helped him gain perspective and not just in talking in fact very little through talking a lot more through doing. Well what kind of doing? I guided him through particular exercises relaxation exercises is one way to see it.

Emotional release exercises are more accurate. One of these emotional release exercises that I use a lot is called EFT. It stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques and it’s a psychological form of acupuncture but instead of using needle you tap of the tips you finger the specific acupressure point in the body. I know it sounds really weird it sounds really bizarre but it’s a scientifically proven to be effective technique and there are over a hundred peer-reviewed studies done including double-blind man speech and double-blind tests, the highest or whatever the highest rigorous standard of scientific research.

As you can see I’m not a scientist because I don’t care about that as much I care about what actually works, what actually gets me to result. This technique is amazing it helped me overcome my social anxiety and I’ve helped hundreds of clients do the same using this is my main technique since 2009.

Now I started using this technique to help him get to get to a place where he was feeling more hopeful. I helped him release some of these despairs and help him gain perspective and I helped him see that maybe anxiety that’s coming up for me it doesn’t make any sense. I wasn’t born with that anxiety when I was an itty-bitty baby. I wasn’t anxious baby, so I must have learned it somewhere. What is that anxiety response really? What the anxiety response is, is your brain is receiving a threat, a danger.

Your brain then has this built-in biological response called the fight flight freeze response that reacts that perceived danger. It releases cortisol and adrenaline and not on hormones into your bloodstream your blood goes away from your digestive system and your head into your outer limbs because your brain is seeing a danger just like in the cavemen days when a saber-toothed tiger would jump out of the bushes we would have to instantly react and either fight it, bad idea, run from it probably also a bad idea or play dead. Those were the options that we had.

Our system is being prepared to either fight it, you get this blood into your outer limbs into your legs and your arms, so you can run as fast as you can at the peak of your abilities, you can fight at the height of your abilities, you’re full of adrenaline like MMA fighters. We just had the McGregor – Khabib fight when these guys go into the cage to fight they’re full of adrenaline because that helps them to perform at their best.

Anyway, I helped him see that his brain was perceiving threats and that’s why he was experiencing the anxiety and the feelings that he had on top of it shame, bit bummed out about it, frustrated nothing works feel hopeless that I can ever overcome this and the self-judgments is what we started to shift and change around – “I’m a loser because of it ; I’m weak because of it”. I won’t go into details or it will be an endless video but helped him feel better help him feel more hopeful help them be more in acceptance of himself despite having the problem that he’s dealing with.

At the end of the session he felt good and then I see my clients a week apart and so a week later I saw him and I’m like “All right so how was your week?” – It’s like “Well after the session I felt great, the first day but then after the rest of the week I pretty much felt just as anxious”.

It’s a common scenario. There’s more work to do your brain is still perceiving threats so it’s normal that you still get anxious. Any other change that you notice? It’s like well yeah actually I didn’t beat myself up so much. That’s definitely different. Okay, great, good, now what?

Neutralize the root of the problem

And then we started working on that second session on what caused the social anxiety because he had been socially anxious for about six years and so something started it, something kicked it off which is usually the case. We started using this emotional release technique to start to neutralize these traumatic experiences that happen for him and the meaning that his brain had made from those experiences.

The associations that his brain had made. Beliefs like I’m worth nothing and people don’t like me once they get to know me and I can’t trust anyone. These kinds of beliefs were the result of the experiences that he had five six years ago. There was more going on but that’s kind of what exacerbating these social anxieties.

These beliefs become neurologically hooked to your nervous system. It’s almost like they’re super glued to your nervous system with emotion and by releasing these traumatic experiences and doing the tapping we release some of these deeply held beliefs that he had.

We got rid of the superglue and then the beliefs no longer had any hold over him. I saw him yesterday, I’m like “How was your week?” and it’s like “Man, a lot better. I can definitely notice a significant change. I feel more comfortable; my anxiety is significantly decreased where I used to be a nine out of ten at work now it’s only a three or four and I’m not beating myself up so much and I’m a lot more optimistic and because I’ve noticed changes”.

That too is a very common experience because when you start to shift these patterns around you know you’re going to react differently.

Stop beating yourself up about your social anxiety

Now he’s like now I want to work on this situation that I have at work where I have a crush on this girl but every time she gets close to me and I want to start a conversation I freeze up and I can’t do anything. It’s really frustrating and I really beat myself up about it. I’m like okay, you’re adding insult to injury with beating yourself up about it. He’s like yes, I’m doing that.

I’m like well, let’s focus on this then because this is where your remaining biggest problem is. That’s what we do. That’s what I do in coaching it’s like I look for what’s your remaining biggest problem, where is your brain still perceiving threats, where is it still not safe to be you. In this case it was with this girl Brenda.

Whenever Brenda would come close to him he can feel nervous and she really wanted to talk to him. He told me like at the beginning I saw that she was looking over to me and so she might be interested in the way that I look as I’m a pretty decent guy. Whenever we would pass, and we’d start saying hi. We had been saying hi for a while already, but it never went past the saying hi and smiling face.

He put a lot of pressure on himself to start a conversation and when I asked him to imagine talking to the girl to start a new conversation, he would feel anxiety and about a 4 out of 10. 10 being the most strong and 0 not at all. But he said in real life when it’s actually happening my anxieties are 9 out of 10.

Why you might worry what others think of you

Okay, that’s quite common you don’t need to be able to access all of the anxiety when you’re just visualizing it. 4 out of 10 is fine because it gives us a measurement before and we’re getting a measurement afterwards. Let’s assess why that is 4 out of 10. Why that is a problem and I’m like what are you afraid of?

He’s like “Well, one of the things that I’m afraid of is that she won’t like me”. Okay, so could it maybe be that you don’t like yourself?

Because often that’s what we do you know we project our insecurities onto other people and then we think that they think that of us. “I’m afraid that they’ll judge me to be a loser.” – Okay, well do you maybe deep down feel that you are a loser? – Yeah. Alright some work to do there.

He said yes that could very well be the case. I’m like okay so just say after me out loud “I like myself”. It’s like “I like myself.” How does that feel? It actually feels quite true and I felt I just intuitively that was quite congruent. Let’s be more specific then what is it about yourself that you don’t like?

He said to me “I like who I am as a person. I like the way I look. I like my personality. I like my intelligence. I like my sense humor. When I’m at home actually I feel fine and I like myself but the moment I get anxious that’s when I don’t like myself.”

I’m like a-ha interesting, you just like many other people have been set up that you’re okay as long as you feel good feelings but the moments you feel uncomfortable feelings then you don’t like yourself anymore. As soon as you feel anxiety you don’t like yourself anymore. It’s like yes that’s right. Okay, let’s work on that.

Accepting yourself despite your social anxiety

Then we proceeded for the remainder of the session to get him to the place where he feels that he likes himself regardless of emotions that he’s experiencing. I like myself even though I’m feeling anxious feelings. The judgments are out of it. Does that make sense?

Then you have a lot less to fear because if you’re not afraid of feeling anxiety because the consequence of feeling anxiety isn’t that you now then hate yourself. The consequence is simply “Okay, I feel uncomfortable sensations in my body. I might still be afraid feeling those which you can also treat but that’s a different story”.

Anyway, I helped him get to that place then did some other work. One of the other things that we addressed was dealing with his fear of actually feeling no symptoms, no sensations and we did some other people work and I won’t go into much detail now, but I will in the next video just thinking of this right now. If you want to hear what we did check out the next video where I’ll go in a little bit more detail.

Anyway, we got him to the place where he was comfortable at the end of the session. What happens now when you think about speaking to Brenda? He’s like I feel calm and relax, I’m going to do it. Great, now if he’s actually going to do it? Time will tell. If I actually find that he goes into the experience and he still get triggered a bit because we might not have unlocked of are uncovered all of the threats that his brain perceives.

However, he certainly won’t have the same nine out of ten strong freeze response. It might just be before or maybe he feels totally comfortable very much possible, very much a common situation as well.

We’ll just have to see but the main point I’m trying to land here is that you want to like yourself accept yourself regardless of the feelings that you’re feeling, regardless of the emotion that you’re having. “I like myself when I feel uncomfortable, I like myself when I feel ashamed “- That’s a very interesting one. Try to get to that one. You can with the tapping. It’s amazing what it can do.

“I like myself even though I feel anxious sensations in my body”. It’s what is it really. The heart is racing, there’s a lump in your throat, there is a tightness in your chest or whatever. Different people, different symptoms. You might be sweating whatever the case may be for you, but you want to get to the place where you like yourself anyway. “I feel social anxiety and I like myself anyway” – Then you have a lot less than “I”.

Alright, that’s the quick fifteen-and-a-half-minute lesson of this week. If you want to hear the next story as to what’s actually happening or what actually did, we do to help him feel confident in that situation I’m going to get into a little bit more detail in the next video. Stay tuned, check out that next video and you can subscribe here so you’re surely going to get that video. I release videos like this every week, I’ve been doing it for a long time, first video in 2009.

If you want to learn more about the technique that I’ve been talking about that I used overcome my social anxiety and I’ve helped hundreds of socially anxious clients with and that I interview psychologists, coaches, healers, scientists, best-selling authors, psychotherapists about on my podcast where we have incorporated this technique into their practice and I’ve seen the results of their clients go through the roof.

People that used to take years now take months or weeks. People that couldn’t get any results now starting to get results. Sometimes people result in my own work working with clients thirty five percent of the people who have long-standing social anxiety resolving their social anxiety within just three sessions.

I teach you that technique on my website. You can go to social-anxiety-solutions.com and click on the overcome social anxiety button and you can get it there. Or click on the link below this video where which brings you actually do that paint on my website. However you want to go about it when you sign up for that you also get my eBook –“How to overcome social anxiety completely?” where I talk about how to use this technique how to specifically use it to overcome social anxiety so you can get to a place where you are anxiety free and you can have a good time socially and you can just relax and you can just be yourself and you can have fun. Hard to believe that’s possible when you’ve been anxious for a long time but really is possible.

Check out the podcast. If this is your first video check out the podcast, check out the other videos that I have. This is a real deal, it really works.

Alright, I hope it’s been helpful, and I will talk to you next week. Bye for now.