Conquer Your Facial Twitching Problem

SUMMARY

In this post, I’m sharing all about facial twitching due to social anxiety…

…I’m getting to the bottom of this problem so you can learn more about the causes of it and how to overcome it.

Here are some things you’ll learn:

The real cause of the problem
A common solution that doesn’t actually work
What to do to really overcome it once and for all

FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Sebastiaan: Hi, Sebastiaan van der Schrier from social-anxiety-solutions.com. I’m a former social anxiety disorder sufferer and a social confidence coach. For the past nearly ten years I’ve been helping people overcome their social anxiety by combining traditional therapy with energy psychology.

Now more about what that is at some point but this video or this podcast depending on where you’re watching or listening to this I’m going to talk about facial twitching, lip twitching, neck twitching and all sorts of other stuff like that. Because I’ve worked with a bunch of people who had these problems and I happen to have spoken to two new clients at the same day who both have this problem so I thought it would be good to do a video about it.

What is it facial twitching or neck twitching?

This is when exactly what the name is so you start to twitch. This is in high anxiety situations people’s necks start starts to twitch or their lip starts to twitch or their cheek or something on their face. It’s a very upsetting thing for people.

When they reached out to me one of the first things that they said is like “If I can just get rid of this, that would be great”.

The Agonizing Paradox of this Twitching Problem

What I tell them is that the problem is not the facial twitching, the problem is rather that they have all sorts of unprocessed feelings and emotions. The facial twitching in my experience usually comes from having suppressed anxiety with all your might. It’s what many people do and what I’ve definitely doing for a long time as well and that is when anxiety comes up you want to appear normal, you want to appear like you’re fine, you want to appear that nothing is going on but in the meantime or at the same time there’s a whole show of stuff going on on the inside.

Your heart is racing, there’s a lump in your throat, there’s a tightness in your chest, your thoughts are racing and you have all this tightness and you’re trying to come across like everything is fine. Well, in those moments you’re suppressing what you’re feeling. You’re trying to push away that could be anxiety or trying to control it…

And when you do that a lot in some situations you actually can suppress it a bit. A bit in some situations.

For a fair bit of people who are able to do that, that eventually in my experience will then result in facial twitching. That’s kind of where it comes out. You can no longer control that and that’s when they really start to freak out because now it’s like “Oh, my God I’ve got this uncontrollable thing that I have to control. I hope it’s not going to happen. What if it’s going to happen? What if my face is going to twitch and everyone is going to see it?”

And that actually motivates in him to then start reaching out for help because this is not something that they have on there to control anymore any longer.

Basically, it’s just a symptom of social anxiety and sometimes a symptom of having had social anxiety quite severely or having suppressed it very strongly.

Usually perfectionism is linked to this problem as well and so then they have the facial twitching and then they have all these feelings about it.

A Common Misconception About Getting Rid of the Problem

This guy that I was speaking to this morning, I asked him what have you done to try to get rid of it and he said well I saw a counselor and I spoke with him and he said “Well, your worrying about the facial twitching is what kind of makes it happen or at least that’s the thing that kind of keeps it in place so just don’t worry so much about it”.

I kind of have to laugh at that advice because that’s easier said than done, isn’t it?

How do you stop worrying about something that worries you? It’s kind of like saying don’t think of a purple monkey with a hat on. What are you going to think of?

You’re going to think of that. You can’t stop thinking about something so what are you to do?

Well, when I’m going to work with someone who has facial twitching going on, it’s one of the things that we’re going to look on early on because it’s right there in a moment, it’s the elephant in the room so to speak.

They’ll have all sorts of feelings about that facial twitching, so think about they’re ashamed of it they’re embarrassed by it they feel humiliated if it gets pointed out. There’s frustration about it, maybe they’re angry with themselves for having it. They’re afraid that they’ll live like that forever, they have all sorts of judgments on top of that as well like “I’m a freak or something is wrong with me, I’m broken” all that kind of stuff.

Take Charge of the Problem Once and For All

It’s these feelings and these judgments that keep the twitching in place.

The first thing to actually get rid of the facial twitching is to come to a place of acceptance that that’s what’s going on and that’s challenging for people because they’re like “But this is unacceptable, it makes me stand out in a bad way” but there’s good news.

All these emotional reactions and all these judgments, judgment is just a thought but an emotionalized thought and so these emotionalize thoughts and these negative emotions are all tapping targets. They’re things that you can focus on, bring them up, bring them up in your body, think about it, tune into it, connect with it and then do the tapping and then while you add the tapping to it those self-judgments, those worries, those concerns, those negative emotions will start to neutralize bit by bit.

Sometimes this takes a bit of persistence and sometimes this doesn’t go as easily because there’s resistance to letting go of the judgement and yet that is the process, that is the process that you do.

With my new client that’s what I’ll be doing in the coming session. In fact, with both of my sessions with my new clients I’ll be doing that kind of work. Getting them to a place where they’re no longer worried about other people seeing it, they are in acceptance of it, they’re not bothered by it anymore.

Interestingly enough that is what actually makes it go away because what you resist, persists and what you accept you gain power over. What you accept can process and it can complete its cycle. That’s likely going to make them feel a lot more comfortable and a lot better about themselves to start with. Then they have the actual social anxiety themselves that still needs to be addressed and which we will do. Which is a matter simply breaking it down and bit by bit by bit working through it. Sometimes it goes really fast, sometimes that requires tapping over time but that’s for another video.

Here are my thoughts on facial twitching and lip twitching and neck shivering and all that kind of stuff. So, I hope it’s been helpful. If you have a question about this post it below this video and if you’re listening to this on a podcast just know that I have a YouTube channel as well with hundreds of videos.

On that YouTube channel where you also find videos that are not on my podcast it can be found at www.youtube.com/user/Sebastiaandoci

I’m a former social anxiety disorder sufferer and social conference coach. I used tapping EFT – Emotional Freedom Techniques and the help of some brilliant therapists to overcome my own social anxiety. I do a podcast where I interview psychologists, coaches, healers, psychotherapists, best-selling authors for their best social anxiety solutions. Most of those episodes are actually in the beginning because I’ve been a bit very preoccupied with other projects but I’ll be interviewing people in the nearby future.

Again, if you want to check out more of the interviews go through earlier at these episodes and that podcast is called Social Anxiety Solutions. It can be found in iTunes and I think where things recently on Spotify as well or you can go to my website social-anxiety-solutions.com and there click on the podcast button you can listen stream and download the podcast there further.

I run the first ever social confidence community, not open for registration at the moment but might open in a couple of months from now. I just released my new product – “Create incredible emotional control” and to find out more about that click on the link below this video or go to bit.ly/getemotionalcontrol

All right, I hope this has been helpful and I will connect with you next week. I release videos like this every week so subscribe here. All right, bye for now.

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

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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.