Are You Afraid to Get Anxious (in Social Situations)?

SUMMARY

Do you have an upcoming social event that you are anxious about?

In this post, we’re doing a tap-along addressing anticipatory anxiety.

Follow along in the guided exercise to experience relief from your dreaded upcoming social anxiety event.

Worst thing that happens is nothing. Best thing that happens is you’re going to decrease your negative emotions.

So, why not feel a bit more relaxed, a bit less upset about the thought of becoming anxious. Get a taste of what is possible!

FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Sebastiaan: Hello, this is Sebastiaan from social-unxiety-solutions.com. I’m a formal social disorder sufferer and a social confidence coach. I help people overcome social anxiety – Hey, hey, no surprise there. I’ve been doing it for a long time since 2009 in the past nine years and I’ve worked with hundreds of people and a lot close to 5,000 hours.

Doing that work I’ve come to quite some conclusions and one of the problems that a lot of the people that I work with and that I have faced myself is the fear of anxiety symptoms and a fear of becoming anxious. That anticipatory anxiety is quite bothersome.

Now it’s not as easy to overcome when for one it’s not as easy to overcome when you just use a thought-based approaches because social anxiety is an emotional problem and not just a thinking problem. You can’t think your way out of your anxiety if you could you’d be free of your anxiety by now.

What I’m going to do is I’m going to guide you through a little exercise and that exercise is called tapping or EFT. It stands for Emotional Freedom Technique. It looks really silly because you are tapping in your face and body and what that does is it starts to disconnect the emotions from the thoughts that you’re having. It starts to decrease the excessive emotions that you’re having about you feeling anxiety.

This won’t resolve your social anxiety, but it might reduce it a bit. You can solve your social anxiety completely when you apply this technique that I’m guiding you through in the right way to the right targets. How to do that is way beyond the scope of a simple video like this.

This is just to give you a bit of a taster of what is possible when you actually learn all you can about this technique and more specifically how you learn to use this technique to overcome your social anxiety, which is what my work is all about, which you can find out a whole bunch of stuff and free stuff and on my website which is social-anxiety-solutions.com.

I’m going to guide you through this experience now.

Now it’s very simple even if you’ve never heard of this technique you can just follow along with me. It’s like “monkey see – monkey do”.

I’m going tap on certain places on the body, guess what? You’re going to follow along and nothing bad will happen. You just might tune into some emotions and as we do the tapping that will settle down the emotions.

Hard to believe I know but if you just watch me do this, that’s not going to give you much benefit. If you actually follow along, worst thing that happens is nothing. Best thing that happens is you’re going to decrease your emotion.

If you watch any of the tons of videos that I have on my channel, you’ll see that many people have commented under these videos that this stuff actually works.

Follow along…

Tapping on the side of your hand karate chop point and just repeat after me out loud. Deep breath.
Just close your eyes first off and I want you to think about an upcoming social situation that you’re afraid of, that you’re worried about, that you have concerns about because you’re fearing that you might become anxious. Maybe you’re fearing that other people will see it and just tune into that fear and try to get it as strong as you can possibly can right now.
Then rate the fear or the anxiety about becoming anxious – The fear of becoming anxious on a scale of 0 to 10. For example, I fear becoming anxious is an 8 out of 10 strong. 10 is the strongest fear you can feel zero is like I’m totally calm about it. If you don’t know your exact numbers it’s not a science, just guess.
Now open your eyes and just tap along with me. Here we go.
“Even though I’m afraid that I’ll become anxious I shouldn’t get anxious. I’m afraid of feeling that way. It stops me from being myself. I’m scared of feeling anxiety symptoms because whatever they’ll see it I don’t want to feel that way. I want to try to accept myself anyway”.
Good, tapping on the beginning of your eyebrows. “They say I’m afraid that I’ll become anxious.
On the side of the eyes, “It’s not safe to let go of that fear”.
Under the eyes, “I don’t deserve to let go of that fear”.
Under the nose, “I refuse to let go of that fear”.
On the chin, “That fear is part of my identity”.
Collarbone, “I don’t want to let go of that fear for whatever reason”. Good, now
Tapping under the arms, directly under the armpit roughly if you had to bra, if you’re a lady, where the bra strap meats under your armpit. If you’re a guy you have it to wear one. Right there under your armpit. Okay, to follow it nipple under the arms, right there. Just say “I’m afraid I’ll become anxious”.
On the liver point, “I’m afraid to feel those sensations”.
Wrist point, “What if my heart beats so fast other people can see it?”
Top of the head, “What if I get a lump in my throat?”
The beginning of the eyebrows, “What if my chest gets so tight again?”
Side of the eyes, “And I can’t properly communicate?”
Under the eyes, “What will they think of me if they see me anxious?”
Under the nose, “I have to make a good impression”.
Chin, “I can’t look uncomfortable”.
Collar bone, “Yes, I can”.
Under the arms, “I’m really good at looking uncomfortable”.
Liver point, “A world-class at looking uncomfortable in fact”.
Wrist point, “But I shouldn’t look uncomfortable”.
Top of the head, “But I might”.
The beginning of the eyebrows, “I’m afraid of feeling anxious”.
Side of the eyes, “I’m scared of it”.
Under the eyes, “I don’t want to let go of that fear”.
Under the nose, “I need to optimally prepare to avoid it.”
On the chin, “This is just a question but based upon results how well is that preparing going for you? Is it decreasing the anxiety or not?” For a speech maybe. For social situation with a lot of uncertainty you can’t really prepare.
On the collarbone, “I should prepare”.
Under the arms, “Or maybe not”.
On the liver point, “I’m afraid I’ll become anxious”.
On the wrist point, “I might very well get anxious”.
On the top of the head, “What if I accepted that?”
Beginning of the eyebrows, “I don’t want to accept that”.
Side of the eyes, “But if I don’t accept it, it’ll happen anyway”.
Under the eyes, “In fact not accepting it makes it worse”.
Tap under your nose.

You don’t have to repeat this – Have you ever noticed this? That you get anxious, you experience these anxiety symptoms, they come up for you and then you try to push them away and you’re not happy with them and you’re frustrated about them, you get angry, you feel ashamed and that actually makes the anxiety get worse. You try to hide it, but it just grows. What if instead you accepted them?

What you resist, persists. What you accept starts to settle down.

It is hard to get you to wrap your mind around if you hear this for the first time but when you actually say “Okay, alright I’m experiencing these symptoms and I’m okay anyway”. Try and see how it works.

Collarbone, “I want to accept these symptoms”.
Under the arms, “No, I don’t”.
Liver point, “But I’m willing to give it a try”.
Wrist point, “What if I’m okay just these symptoms suck?”
Top of the head, “I’m okay, it’s just uncomfortable”.
Beginning of the eyebrows, “I want to release this fear of the anxiety symptoms”.
Side of the eyes, “No, I don’t”.
Under the eyes, “Yes, I do”.
Under the nose, “I want to be calm about my anxiety”.
Chin, “No, I don’t”.
Collarbone, “Yes I do”.
Under the arms, “I am not the anxiety that I experience”.
Liver point, “I’m the experiencer off the anxiety”.
The wrist point, “And what if it doesn’t mean that I’m a loser and weak and inferior?”
Top of the head, “I want to soothe this fear”.
Beginning of the eyebrows, “I might very well get anxious”.
Side of the eyes, “I want to accept myself anyway”.
Under the eyes, “No, I don’t.
Under the nose, “Yes, I do”.
Chin, “Judging myself for anxiety doesn’t help me”.
Collarbone, “What if I was more compassionate with myself?”
Under my arms, “It’s a hard time to feel so anxious”.
Liver point, “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone”.
On the wrist point, “So, why blame myself?”
On top of the head, “I choose to treat myself with compassion”.
Beginning of the eyebrows, “Especially when I feel anxious”.
Side of the eyes, “I am afraid of becoming anxious”.
Under the eyes, “And that’s okay”.
Under the nose, “I’m accepting that fear”.
Chin, “I’m accepting the fact that I get anxious”.
Collarbone, “No, I don’t, I will fight it”.
Under the arms, “That’s what I have been trying. I’m starting a different strategy”.
Liver point, “I’d like to accept my anxiety”.
Wrist point, “It doesn’t mean I’m throwing in the towel or that I agree with it or that I want it to stick around or did I approve of it”.
Top of the head, “Just means that I’m coming to terms with reality”.
Beginning of the eyebrows, “My social anxiety sucks”.
Side of the eyes, “It’s really difficult”.
Under the eyes, “It makes my life a living hell”.
Under the nose, “I’ve been fighting it”.
Chin, “Trying to hide it”.
Collarbone, “And one of that is what has made it worse”.
Under the eyes, “That strategy hasn’t worked”.
Liver point, “I choose to accept it and see what happens”.
Wrist point, “Still a bit afraid of becoming anxious.”
Top of the head, “I accept that fear and I choose to accept myself anyway. I’m not my anxiety. I’m okay. Social anxiety just sucks”.
Deep breath. Good, now close your eyes and imagine the same thing that you did ten minutes ago and see how you feel now.

Great, like I said this is just a taster, just a small bite of the whole meal when it comes to overcoming your social anxiety but likely you feel a bit more relaxed, you feel a bit less upset about the thought of becoming anxious and that’s for me to give you a taste of what’s possible.

Now if you actually want to overcome your social anxiety go to my website social-anxiety-solutions.com, sign up for the free social confidence starter kit that you get when you click on the button that says, “overcome social anxiety” and I’ll send that over to you. You get a bunch of videos from me, you hear how I overcame my social anxiety and how you can do the same. We’ll take it from there.

I hope it’s been helpful for you. If you have any questions or comments, please post them in the video below and I’ll be there in the comment section. Ask me a good question and I’ll be there to assist.

Alright, this is Sebastiaan from social-anxiety-solutions.com. Subscribe here. I release a video like this every week. Alright, talk to you soon. Bye-bye.

If you experience Social Anxiety, click below to receive the FREE “7 Secrets to Social Confidence” Mini Course!

September 13, 2018 #SASBlog

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Sebastiaan

Sebastiaan van der Schrier is a Social Confidence Coach and ex social anxiety sufferer. He helps socially anxious people become confident using a unique and painless approach. He is the host of the Social Anxiety Solutions podcast show and runs the first ever online Social Confidence Community.

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