SUMMARY
In this post, I will tell you what is the root cause of social anxiety and share some quick tips in dealing with it. You will learn what to do when you are triggered by a particular social situation and other effective methods in addressing it.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Hey, this is Sebastiaan from social-anxiety-solutions.com.
I’m a former social anxiety disorder sufferer and a social confidence coach. I help people feel relaxed and at ease in social situations. So that you can freely speak your mind and have a good time socially.
I’m answering a question today. That question is as follows. It’s from Mustaffa.
Hey Seb, I have a question for a long time now and that is – Social anxiety is caused by two things as you know: the first one is negative beliefs, and the second one is situations in the past (painful memories). What if I clean one of them? Is that going to solve for example, 50% of the social anxiety? Or is going to make a temporary solution?
Good question. In my experience, anxiety is there because your brain is perceiving a potential threat. That perception of a threat is the result of beliefs. So, someone who believes:
People are out there to get me.
I’m not good enough.
I have to be perfect.
He’s going to have a very different experience socially compare to someone who believes:
People like me.
I’m okay with the way I am.
I can mess up, and it’s fine.
The second person won’t see a threat in situation where the first person does see a problem. That is why, the beliefs need to be shifted and changed.
These beliefs come from somewhere. Often, they come from Significant Emotional Experience, or traumatic experiences in life. So, if someone believes for example:
I’m not good enough.
I can’t make any mistakes.
It might be that that person had a traumatic experience when he was 12 years old, the teacher pulled him out of the class, and he was laughed and ridiculed. Traumatic experience is what his brain is pointing to in order to predict current social situations. During that experience, he might have learned how to make out of that situations. “Hey, I can’t make any mistakes. I am not good enough. I have to be perfect.” Those are very similar and are often linked together.
However, you can also have a particular belief that you don’t get from a specific emotional experience. In fact, there are many of those. Often, the deeper beliefs like “identity beliefs”, or beliefs that start with “I am” or “I am not”, they usually come from the negative, repetitive experience that you had early on in your life.
I am talking about your relationship from your mom or your relationship with your dad. If you had a dad for example, who is critical that you couldn’t do anything right or he will explode when you do something wrong, that might be the whole bunch of little memories rather than a specific memory that stands out.
So, you don’t have a particular specific memory to address. Yet, you have that belief.
How to address that? That’s is beyond the scope of this video. That’s difficult to explain. I cannot explain that easily. There is a way of combining everything and then addressing it. I have a whole 45-minute, guided video with instructions on how to do that. So, I can’t just say how to do that here.
There are ways of addressing that. You would need to discharge, release, and let go of all the negative emotions associated with that critical behavior from your dad. In doing so, you are letting go of the emotional evidence that your brain has and is holding on to have beliefs like:
I’m not good enough.
There is something wrong with me.
I have to do everything right.
I can’t do anything wrong.
These are beliefs that you have picked up as a result of that early programming or early foundation relationship with your dad. So, you want to address both.
There are many ways to go about this. There is not one perfect way.
You can a particular belief that you start working on. That belief may lead you to a particular memory, or relationship with the parent, or relationship with a sibling, or experience with a teacher.
You might work on a feeling. That feeling might bring you back to where you felt that before. Then, you can work with memory.
There is no perfect way. A good thing to keep in mind is that: I’m getting triggered in this particular social situation. I can use this social situation as a way to start chipping away my social anxiety.
For example, maybe yesterday you got triggered when you walked to a party. You walked into a party, you felt fine (although most people have anticipatory anxiety about that but let’s make this as an easy example), but then Johnny joins the circle and now you instantly start feeling anxious. Now, that sent a particular trigger.
Now, you can look at – “How did I feel when Johnny walked to that circle?”
I felt inferior. I felt insecure. I can feel it in my chest. And now that I think about it, I can feel it.
You can tune into that feeling and ask yourself, “What does that remind you of?” That might bring you to a particular memory, or “I always felt like that when I am around my dad.” Then, you can work with that.
Or, you might go for an inquisitive route where you try to uncover the belief. So, you might ask, “What was I thinking at that time?” or “Why did I not feel safe at that situation? What is the threat there? What was I believing?”
I felt inferior to him.
You might have the belief “I am inferior.” Does that feel true to you?
Then you may say, “I feel inferior. I am inferior. I am not important. Yes, that feels true.”
Now you have the belief. You can now go and start addressing that belief. You can start by tapping on the feeling that are associated with the belief that might still lead you back to earlier experiences from your relationship with your mom and dad. That’s how you can start chipping away from it.
That’s a real quick tip. There’s a lot more to overcome your social anxiety than just this. You can try this. Try to do something.
If you want more step by step information on how to do this, check out the Create Incredible Emotional Control. It’s an amazing program that I put together where I teach you the tapping and I teach you your psychology so you can understand your problem. You understand why you have social anxiety and how you can address it. There’s super simple and effective tapping exercises to help you start feeling more comfortable and start reducing your anxiety.
Or, if you rather have a Netflix-like, therapeutic experience, I have various coaching series that I have recorded. Where I coached Masha for example, to help her overcome fear of negative judgement. I do that over five coaching sessions. They were live coaching sessions at that time.
People pay to see these sessions and they tap-along with it. They didn’t have to do their inquisitive work to find where their beliefs came from or whatever, they just watched me coached her. They can relate to Masha’s feelings on screen and it would trigger their feelings. It would help their subconscious to link with whatever is going on with Masha to their unique issues. And just by tapping along, they would start to reduce their social anxiety.
It’s amazing! It’s hard to believe that something like this actually works, but it actually works!
I have three different series for that. One is with Masha to overcome the fear of being judged. One is Damien on the fear of being seen anxious. And one is with Lea on neutralizing shame and the fear of embarrassing yourself. You can find all of these by going to my website: www.social-anxiety-solutions.com/products You will find all the details there.
So, Mustaffa, thank you for your question. Hope this has been helpful.
I’ll connect with you next week. Subscribe here. Thanks. Leave your question. Good times. Have a great weekend. I’m out. Bye.
If you experience Social Anxiety, click below to receive the FREE “7 Secrets to Social Confidence” Mini Course!
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