SUMMARY
Are you feeling pressured to change and get rid of your Social Anxiety?
If that’s a YES, you’re not alone.
The pressure that you are feeling is causing more Social Anxiety.
In this episode, Sebastiaan will give you five things to STOP pressuring yourself to overcome your Social Anxiety.
Go check it out!
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Are you feeling pressured to change and pressured to overcome your Social Anxiety?
If that’s a YES, you’re not alone.
However, this pressure to change is adding to your Social Anxiety, which we’ll explain in a moment.
But it’s important that you overcome this if you wish to completely overcome your Social Anxiety, because if you don’t…
… YOU WON’T.
Hey! It’s Seb from Social Anxiety Solutions – where we combine the best of Traditional Psychology with Energy Psychology to completely overcome your Social Anxiety.
Now I get it, you want to change, you want to get rid of your Social Anxiety as quickly as possible. Of course, you do.
You know… I was no different.
When I suffered from severe Social Anxiety and I learned that I could do something about it, when I discovered personal development [and] self-help, I became absolutely obsessed because my pain was so big that my motivation was really strong.
And so, I was listening to self-help on loop, I was constantly researching solutions to overcome it.
I was doing affirmations.
I was listening to these programs that supposedly would help me with the anxiety.
My whole room was full of quotes on ‘facing your fear’ and that kind of stuff, which by the way, I’m not a proponent of.
You want to face your fears, but you want to face it internally in an intelligent way so you can actually overcome it completely. That’s for a different story.
Anyway, so I was obsessed with trying to overcome my Social Anxiety and that didn’t change when I found EFT tapping.
In fact, I got more obsessed because now I finally have a technique with which I could neutralize my negative emotions, to shift my limiting beliefs.
But while tapping was actually reducing my Social Anxiety, it wasn’t until I started focusing on accepting myself and accepting my emotions, and my life circumstances that I didn’t like – that I actually managed to overcome my Social Anxiety.
Until then, I felt this constant pressure to change, to fix myself, to fix the next issue, and the next issue, and the next issue.
But what I didn’t realize was that that pressure actually have an underlying message:
- “You are not OK the way you are right now.
- There is something wrong with you.
- You have to change yourself.
- Quickly, before people find out!”
And this underlying message pointed to the deepest cause of my Social Anxiety: A LACK OF SELF ACCEPTANCE
With this self-rejection going on, I could never feel truly safe being myself with others.
So what did I do?
I focused on using the tapping towards self-acceptance:
- acceptance of my emotions
- acceptance of my problems
- acceptance of the things that I didn’t like about myself
- acceptance of my challenging circumstances
- acceptance of everything
And that was the key because acceptance is a precondition for lasting change.
So while it might seem like that this pressure is motivating you and helping you to get rid of your Social Anxiety faster, it’s actually pointing to where you’re stuck.
And it emphasizes that you’re not OK, rejectable. And this worsens your Social Anxiety.
So what you want to do is look at why that pressure is there and then do the underlying healing work, and accept yourself.
Acceptance releases the pressure…
… and it decreases your Social Anxiety.
Now, if that’s something you’re willing to try out, here are 5 things to STOP doing:
1. STOP thinking you’re not where you’re “supposed to be”.
Now, a lot of people compare themselves with others.
And then they’re like, “I’m not where I’m supposed to be.”
Or they think about where other people think that they’re supposed to be or where it’s normal that you’re supposed to be in there like, “Oh, I should have kids by now.”
or “I should be married by now.”
or “I should have a girlfriend by now.”
or whatever.
This job, this far in my career, or whatever.
THAT kind of thinking hurts your self-acceptance.
2. STOP giving yourself a deadline.
A lot of clients in the past would say to me, “I’ve got this thing coming up, and I need to be socially confident before that date.”
And I would tell them, “Good luck! I can help you with that. I can help you and I’ll do the best that I can. And we will go as fast as we will go.”
Change takes as long as it takes, you cannot force it.
Acceptance is actually the thing that’s going to facilitate change the fastest.
3. STOP creating doomed scenarios about what will happen if you do not change.
Now, we can be super creative with this.
Back when I was suffering from severe Social Anxiety, I actually had a soothing thought in my mind, and that was “I wish that I was a grandpa already and I’ve got my own little garden and all the judgment of people doesn’t matter so much anymore, because I’m at the end of my life.”
Depressing, but it was actually relieving to think that.
But what other people do is they can think of “If I don’t get rid of this Social Anxiety, then I’ll never get a partner.”
or “If I don’t get rid of this Social Anxiety, then I’ll never have enough money.”
or “I’ll always have these kinds of problems.”
or “It will lead to these kinds of diseases, etc.”
4. STOP thinking about how you should and shouldn’t be.
Inside our Social Confidence Club, we spend a whole month focused on getting rid of social perfectionism.
- I should be cool.
- I shouldn’t be boring.
- I should be interesting.
- I shouldn’t be anxious.
- I shouldn’t be looking nervous to others.
- I should be cool.
- I should be etc.
All of these shoulds and should nots, NOT HELPFUL.
They decrease your self-acceptance.
5. STOP saying you’ll accept yourself after you’ve changed.
That doesn’t work, okay?
You need to accept yourself NOW.
Wow, you have the problems.
Wow, you’re suffering.
Wow, you’re not where you want to be…
… that is what leads to change.
Most people think, “Well, once I’m socially confident, then I can accept myself.”
Well, that in and of itself is the problem. You’re not accepting yourself where you’re at now.
Yes, that means accepting your Social Anxiety.
Yes, that means accepting your insecurities.
Yes, that means accepting your weaknesses, and so on.
Now, accepting these parts of ourselves doesn’t mean that they’re now going to run the show of your life.
It doesn’t mean that you don’t want to change anything inside anymore.
It doesn’t mean you don’t want to do that.
It means you’re saying ‘YES’ to the reality of what is.
It means that you’re staring reality in the face, and you’re seeing like, “Hey, this is where it is now. This is part of me. I’m making this OK.”
Now, this is, of course, all easier said than done.
It’s not as straightforward as taking on a mindset or doing a simple tap-along, but the mindset sets you up right.
And with enough tapping over time and perhaps some outside help, you will get to this place eventually… where you deeply and completely accept yourself.
And that’s what makes it possible to create a life of effortless social ease.
Now, it’s not easy to get to, but boy is it worth it.
Now, if you’d like to deepen your self-acceptance, I suggest checking out this video – Stop Trying To Be Socially Confident.
Because not only do I elaborate on the topic of self-acceptance here, I also give you a specific technique that you can start using right away in order to facilitate deeper levels of self-acceptance.
And I point to where you can get a guided experience to deepen your self-acceptance. In other words, some guided tapping.
So go check that out right now and see 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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