How do I stop shaking?

That’s the question that I am going to answer in this video.

Hello, my name is Sebastiaan van der Schrier. I’m a former Social Anxiety Disorder sufferer and a Social Confidence Coach.

I specialize in using a combination of Energy Psychology and Traditional Psychology to overcome Social Anxiety completely.

And I had a question that was sent to me, and it goes as follows:

“Hi, can you do a video about how to stop your hand from shaking? When I’m told to talk in front of people, my hands tremble, my face twitches really bad, and I have this terrible feeling in my body.” 

Alright. So, how do you stop shaking?

I wish there was an easy answer. But unfortunately, there is no easy answer; no easy solution rather.

But I’m going to give you a perspective and an idea about what to do about this.

First of all, what you’re describing (your hands shaking or your face twitching) are actually anxiety symptoms.

And so, they are the result of your brain is perceiving a threat. It activates the flight-fight-freeze response (your natural response to threat) and chemicals are released into your bloodstream. Your adrenal glands start producing a lot of adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol. And your heart starts to race like crazy; and your whole system is being energized to deal with the threat that your brain is perceiving.

However, there is no real threat.

But, your system is reacting as if there is a real threat.

That’s what you are dealing with. That jitteriness.

Now, when you’ve experienced this for a long period of time, which is usually the case when people start obsessing over symptoms. The social anxiety symptoms themselves have become a trigger for an even stronger flight-fight-freeze response because the experience is very uncomfortable to have the experience of anxiety. Right?

It makes it nearly impossible for you to actually do that speech, or socialize, or listen to a conversation. It takes away all the social skills, it’s a very uncomfortable situation.

And so, the social anxiety symptoms themselves (your heart racing, or noticing that your hand is starting to tremble) get you to freak out about that. About that symptom.

“Oh, my God, my heart’s racing, I’m starting to get anxious”; “Oh, my God, I’m starting to shake.”

And that triggers an even stronger fight-flight-freeze response. So, the social anxiety symptoms have been labeled as a threat themselves. And now it’s just a loop. And it just keeps going.

On top of that, when you’ve had that for a long time, you do not want other people to see it, and you’re freaked out about what’s happening to you because you don’t know what’s going on. Now, you’re trying to suppress your feelings. And maybe you’ve even learned early on in life or through the society that you live in that you should never let them see you sweat. And you’ve got to be tough, and you can’t show any weakness and so on and so forth.

Now you’re trying to suppress the feelings and push down the feelings that are underneath there.

You’re trying to control things that you actually do not have control over.

This is just my theory. That can start to lead to shaking.

Alright, so pretty messy situation.

However, you can do things about it.

What you want to do is…(this sounds counterintuitive)

You probably don’t want to do this logically. But getting to this place is more of an emotional journey rather than just logic.

But the outcome that you’re looking for is coming to terms with the fact that you’re shaking.

So, actually accepting and allowing the shaking is going to bring a ton of relief for you.

In fact on the matter is that some people shake. I had a buddy of mine, his name was Paul. He had social anxiety but it wasn’t so bad. But, whenever he would pull out his wallet, and he would pay with something (this is a long time ago, This is instead of using your card all the time, we would still use like I think even guilders at the time, I’m not sure), he would put his hand and he would shake like crazy, and I always observe that.

I thought that was interesting. But I don’t think it was a very big deal to him. I don’t know of course.

But anyway, you’ve got this issue going on.

This is the status quo.

This is how it is for you right now.

And you want to do the work to come to terms with that.

Just to start reducing your suffering, and to get to the place where you can actually start working on the root causes of why the problem is there in the first place.

Now, it’s helpful to know that the problems that you’re dealing with are actually, in most cases, 95+ percent of the case – the result of trauma, unresolved traumatic experiences,  stuff that happened earlier on.

It doesn’t make sense for people when they hear this initially, for some people it does, but other people don’t, especially if this is new to trauma, what is that?

Well, it’s when you have such an overwhelming experience that your system cannot deal with that experience.

It might be being slap by your father in front of a family member.

It might be getting a report card, and you’re normally a straight-A student, and now you’ve got B on it, and you show it to your parents and they show a look of disappointment – that can give you such a feeling of pain, the pain of your stomach that you’re talking about, that can be that pain from when you were 7, and your dad gave you that look of disappointment where normally he’s proud of you.

Or it can be when you’re doing your homework, and your dad or your mom gets really upset with you that you’re not getting it, or whatever.

It could have been the case that you’ve been bullied.

It could have been the case of your parents were very critical.

At least there’s something that happened, either a specific experience or a bunch of specific experiences, or repetitive negative experiences over time: alcoholic parents, critical parents, overprotective parents that don’t allow you to become independent.

Lots of things can have happened.

But there’s something there. You’re not born a little baby coming out with shaking hands. This is not a genetic condition. This is something that you’ve learned. And that’s something that you can unlearn.

But you got to come to terms with the fact that you’re dealing with a problem. And it’s very difficult to deal with this problem.

It makes it so hard to socialize, to do presentations, to be your authentic self.

So, you’re suffering. And I feel for you, I’ve been there.

You’re in emotional pain, and you’re having a really tough time and it’s affecting your life really, really badly. And so, you want to have some compassion for yourself. Rather than be really hard on yourself.

“Look at me, I’m shaking, what’s wrong with me, it’s ridiculous. I’m supposed to have my act better together, I’m supposed to be tough, I shouldn’t have this weakness” — That actually makes it worse.

Okay, so the solutions that I’m giving to you are, unfortunately, not the, “Oh, let’s go to WikiHow and get this three-step solution for stop shaking my hand” — doesn’t work.

You’ve got a problem that you’re dealing with. And it’s going to take a bit of time, and maybe a significant amount of time to deal with this problem and it resolve and completely.

But that sounds like bad news. “Oh, my God, it’s going to take time.” — Yes.

But everything good in life. I shouldn’t say everything. But a lot of things that are really, really good in life, take a bunch of time.

If you’re really out of shape, and you want to get into great shape, going to the gym one time is not going to give you that six pack that you want.

If you want to have a successful business, you’re not going to be having a successful business in a week. Don’t believe that, that’s nonsense.

It’s going to take a period of time, of dedicated effort, focus, working on it, etc.

So, it’s like that with this as well.

And so, it’s going to require you to do this inner work, this inner healing, applying the tapping to these painful memories, shifting your perception, updating old belief systems, working on yourself, improving your relationship with yourself, coming to terms with who you are, feeling more comfortable in your own skin, accepting all parts of you.

Now, when you start doing that work, even though it takes time, you start making progress.

You start getting relief.

You start feeling better about yourself.

And the really cool thing about this is…

…is that you have no idea about how good you can actually feel, and how great your life can actually be. Because you’ve not experienced it yet.

This is really a beautiful journey of self-acceptance, of increased self-awareness, of getting to know yourself, of becoming more aware of your emotions of you!

You’re getting to become buddies with yourself on a profound level. So that eventually you get to the place where you enjoy being you with others, sharing yourself with others, giving that speech to others, and feeling at ease doing so.

So, this is a longer answer, and maybe not exactly the answer that you were hoping for. But I hope this gives you a bit of an idea.

Not sugarcoating anything. I’m telling you the way it is. So there you go. Bit of Dutch honesty for you.

I hope this helps.

And if you have any of you’re watching this and you can relate to this, tell me in the comment section how you can relate to this.

Is this a problem for you?

How does it show up for you?

What are things that you’ve done to try to overcome this?

Or what is something that you’ve learned that was helpful?

Or a question?

This is that’s it for now. This is Sebastiaan from social-anxiety-solutions.com

Check out my podcast, Social Anxiety Solutions in iTunes. Start with the first episode there I interview. healers, coaches, psychotherapists, psychologists, Ph.D., researchers, you name it for their best social anxiety solutions.

That’s it for now. Have a good one. Bye-bye!

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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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