SUMMARY
Happy New Year!!!
In this post, I’m sharing some perspective for you about your social anxiety and other life challenges.
I’m sharing why you want to accept your social anxiety situation in order to change it.
And lastly, what you ultimately want to do to completely overcome social anxiety so you can be yourself in social situations.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Sebastiaan: Hello, this is Sebastiaan van der Schrier from social-anxiety-solutions.com. I’m a social confidence coach and I help people go from social anxiety to relaxing at ease in social situations. And on this day, it is New Year’s. I mean when you’re seeing it it’s New Year’s and this is old Year’s Eve for me. I’m about to go play some football and want to shoot you little message as a little hi and good wish for the new year.
So, I was thinking of what I was going to say and I was thinking what would I want to hear that is actually true when I was still suffering from social anxiety. So, a couple of things. I didn’t think this through I’m just doing this off-the-cuff.
Perspective on life’s challenges (like social anxiety)
First of all I’m dealing with quite an annoying difficult problem myself at the moment and that kind of helped me to tune into a lot of the things that I’ve learned over the years overcoming my own social anxiety because those principles that I’ve learned apply not just to overcoming social anxiety but they apply to overcoming any kind of big issue that you have.
And starting out with when you have a big problem that means there’s tremendous relief to be gained.
Now my coach once said when one’s having a particularly tough time, life’s biggest challenges hold life’s biggest rewards. And that was so reassuring to hear.
So, as I work through this even though the going is really tough now and it’s a tough time and I don’t like where I’m at, there’s the most growth and resilience and beauty and love and acceptance and peace and harmony and all that good stuff connection that is hidden within this issue that I’m struggling with right now.
So, that’s one, a bit of perspective.
Coming to terms with where you are
Then two, is coming to terms with where you’re at I’ve mentioned this before many of the things I’m saying I’m saying over and over again because repetition as they say repetition is the mother of skill but it’s also of understanding if it’s not, I just made it up so let’s go at it.
Anyway, the other thing aside from having that perspective is coming to terms with where you’re at. What does it mean to come to terms with where you’re at?
Well, it means saying yes to reality as it is. Now, I have a problem right now and I don’t like having this problem at all. It’s a big bummer, it sucks and I’m kind of laughing at it now while I’m doing video but I have moments where my thoughts are playing tricks on me and I’m like “Oh, my God, no” but I know that I’ll do the work, I’ll see the people that I need to see to work through it and like any problem it will shift and it will start to change and everything will be alright.
It might take a day, it might take a month, it might take a year, it might take 10 years. It’s unlikely takes 10 years, it’s unlikely it even takes a year, but I’ll do whatever it takes in order to get to the other side to where I want to be, and you can do the same.
Now you can do that in a way where it takes a long time and you struggle a lot and that would be the path of resistance and non-acceptance, but you can also do the work to come to terms like I said which means accepting reality as it is. Saying yes to it.
It doesn’t mean that you appreciate where you’re at or that you don’t want it to change or that you prefer the problem being the way it is.
It just means that you say, “Okay, I have this problem. It sucks that I have this problem, but my feelings about it and my judgments of myself because of it are not helpful so I’m going to do the work to get to acceptance of the problem and acceptance of myself while I’m dealing with this problem that I have because acceptance is actually a precondition for change”.
So, in other words if you don’t come to actual acceptance that change is going to be very hard. So, that’s the work you’ve got setup for yourself so that would be my recommendation.
So, have perspective, come to terms with where you’re at and that would be a fantastic first goal.
Eliminating the emotional roots of your problem
Then once you’ve achieved that then you can start looking at “All right, well, why do I have this problem?”
I’ve gone over that countless of times. Your brain is perceiving potential danger, it’s seeing threats socially and that can be because you might get rejected, you might get made fun of, you might get criticized, you might be caught off guard, you might whatever could be many things or could also be because your brain believes that it’s not safe to be you, it’s not safe to be yourself, it’s a threat to be yourself because if you’re yourself then you won’t be accepted or you won’t be respected or you won’t be appreciated or you won’t be liked.
And so, you need to put on the show and you need to do things right, you need to please people and you can’t say no to people and all of that kind of stuff.
And so, that’s the work you got to do. You’re going to shift those beliefs, shift and change them around and beliefs like I’ve said they’re just emotionalized thoughts. Thoughts that you believe to be true. Why do you believe them to be true? Because it feels true. Why does it feel true? Because you have emotional evidence to support to back up those beliefs.
If you believe “I’m not good enough” you have some evidence that indeed you’re not good enough. Maybe your dad was very critical of you or maybe you didn’t ever do anything well enough or maybe you had perfectionistic parents, or they had high expectations on you or whatever the case may be, and you learned that you weren’t good enough.
So, the emotional pain from back then is the emotional evidence for that belief that you’re not good enough. Maybe you had other reference experiences, other proof that you’re not good enough. Maybe you got rejected, maybe you didn’t make it into a particular school, maybe you were bullied or made fun of or whatever.
And it’s these reference experiences that hold those beliefs in place. When you start using tapping, tension-based energy process, Logosynthesis, Psych-K, TAT and various other energy psychology tools to actually shift and change those beliefs around by eliminating the emotional roots of them then the perception that there’s a threat will start to dissolve.
And then you can just be relaxed and then you can just be at ease and then you just have a good time and then you can just be you.
Say whatever comes to mind feel free, step on people’s toes and say sorry. Don’t make such a big hairy deal about everything and just enjoy connecting with other people because you’re comfortable with you. You’re comfortable sharing you and that’s what I wish for you.
So, that’s my aim for you, my intention for you to get to that place and I’ll do whatever I can to assist you in that. And I’ve got something cool coming up. Well, I’ve got a couple of cool things coming up. I’ve got some free stuff coming up and I’ve got some paid stuff coming up as well and I think the free stuff will come first. We’ll have to see but it’s going to be really cool and it’s going to probably be on the podcast.
Anyway, what I want to say to end this is drumroll… Happy New Year! Awesome 2019 for you and I’ll talk to you soon.
All right, I’m going to play some football and then I’m going to dance. I’m going to dance some salsa and bachata. These are the dances that I’m into and then we’re going to celebrate the New Year’s. I’m going to call a bunch of people and it’s going to be a good time. All right, so, wish you happy New Year and I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
If you experience Social Anxiety, click below to receive the FREE “7 Secrets to Social Confidence” Mini Course!
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