SUMMARY
In this post, learn to go from wanting instant success with overcoming social anxiety and failing to a mindset and a tool to use that will actually help you in the real world.
Here are some things you’ll learn:
- The mindset that sabotages your success and a new one to take on to start getting results
- What memories to neutralize to make real progress
- How to summon the feelings to clear from the comfort of your home (where you aren’t typically anxious)
- A quick tool you can secretly use in the moment to calm your anxiety
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Sebastiaan: Hello, hey, hi, this is me, Sebastiaan from social-anxiety-solutions.com. I’m a former social anxiety disorder sufferer and I’m a social conference coach. In the past nine years I have been helping people to overcome their own social anxiety after I’ve overcame my own social anxiety. I also do a podcast where I interview psychologists’ coaches, healers, psychotherapists, best-selling authors, scientists, you name it. You can find that in iTunes if you look for social anxiety solutions or you can go to my website social-anxiety-solutions.com.
Alright. Marketing out of the way, I am answering a question today that was on under one of my videos. I have a whole bunch of them and the question is as follows. By the way, why should you watch this? Well, because it might be interesting what I’m going to say to this person. That’s the journey of overcoming your social anxiety in a bit of perspective and tells you a little bit about how to do this tapping thing.
Here’s the question – “Hey, man can’t seem to grasp the EFT tapping really well after checking one of your videos. You said that we should tap and see the change in how we feel. I do really have social anxiety disorder bro. When I’m at home I feel comfortable in myself. Should I tap? Tapping was meant to reduce the anxiety, but I don’t think that I feel anxious when I’m at home. Please reply back. Thank you”.
By the way this was an email sent to me sorry, this was not on a video. First let me address the question itself. Maybe it’s in the way that he writes it. I’m not sure if what he’s trying to say is really written down very well, but it says – “I can’t really seem to grasp the EFT tapping thing after watching one of your videos”.
Okay, well, bad news, you’re not going to grasp it after watching one video. In fact, you’re not even going to grasp it after watching all the videos that I have on YouTube. I’m just giving you a couple of tasters of what’s possible. It is actually quite a study to understand the tapping though you can you can get the basics definitely from the videos that I’ve put out there and you can get an experience of it as well as when you watch a bunch of the videos where I guide you through it.
But to learn how to use the tapping to overcome your social anxiety it’s not going to happen in a video. Now this is something that you have a problem with and you have had a problem for a long time, you’re not just going to find a technique whatever technique it is and solve that problem in ten minutes or even in an hour. It’s going to take time.
This is your mental health. This is your mental and emotional and psychological well-being. Now this affects everything – How you interact with others, your career, your intimate relationship, how much joy you have in life. This problem has seeped itself into your life and it is connected to so many areas so then it’s going to take some time to undo that.
Alright, now, I hope you don’t feel attacked because I’m not trying to attack you. I’m just trying to give you a proper perspective here because a lot of us have this quick fix mentality and that quick fix mentality is costing you your success. Just wanted to point that out first.
Then I said that we haven’t changed. – “I really do have social anxiety disorder but when I’m at home I feel comfortable in myself. Should I tap?” Well, yes, you should tap but you can use your imagination to bring up the last time that you felt anxious for example. You can imagine what that was like, so you see what you saw then, you heard what you heard then, you feel what you felt then. Most people can then tune into the emotions that they felt.
For example, maybe you were anxious at work during the meeting the last time. You can go back into the room say that was a week ago, so you can step into the shoes of the you a week ago and that’s how you can access some of the feelings.
However, that is just a way into the problem because treating experiences from last week is not going to give you that much results. You actually want to go back to the earlier experiences in life because you are having that social anxiety last week is the result of your brain perceiving threats in that meeting, say it was meeting.
In that meeting maybe, you feel inferior to your boss, maybe you’re worried that you’ll say something dumb. Maybe you’re afraid to be the center of attention to make a mistake. Whatever, your brain sees all these potential threats.
Now, why are these threats to you and not to somebody else? Because you’ve had certain life experiences, certain painful life experiences and repetitive programming in early childhood where you learned that making a mistake is dangerous. Maybe your parents were very critical. Maybe they were very strict. Maybe when you got your report card and you were second in class you some criticism or some disappointment or even punishment from your parents because you weren’t number one for exam.
There are these reasons for why those things are a threat to you now. You need to go back to wherever that was and address that with the tapping. That’s when you’re actually effective when you are tapping. I can’t tell you how to solve your social anxiety just in a quick video here, but I just want to point out yes, there are definitely things that you can do but it’s going to require a bit more study.
The other thing that you can do, you can do that right now is to just bring the tapping to wherever you are going. I know doing this at work in a meeting probably isn’t going to be very great, but you can also do the finger tapping.
There are these acupressure points on the outside of the thumb. Let me see, here on the nail bed of the thumb, at the outside of the thumb. If you fold your thumb it’s right there and then it’s on the inside of the index, inside of the middle, inside the ring, inside the baby finger. You can fold your thumb tap here and then tap here and then tap here. You tap roughly ten times between 5 and 20 is fine. It can be longer, it doesn’t really matter as long as you keep moving from point to point and you cover these five. You can do two hands you can do one hand.
Now, why am I explaining this way? You can do this under the table. I’m doing it right now you don’t see it. You can do it, you can hide it behind your back. This way you can add the tapping to whenever the problem shows up for you.
Now it’s important that whenever the problem shows up for you and you do the tapping your intention is actually not to try to get rid of the anxiety. The intention is to just observe the anxiety, let it be there while you do the tapping. Now if you do that and you do that for a couple of weeks, things will start to shift and change most likely. Let’s not make any promises that I can be sure of. But that’s likely to happen.
When you get triggered, you go to that meeting, your boss points something out and you become really anxious, okay, you might excuse yourself to go to the toilet if that’s possible or directly after the meeting you go to the toilet or you’re fine, go to your car or whatever.
Find some privacy somewhere and just tap on what happened. You can just describe what happened – “My boss put me at the center of attention. I felt really anxious when he did that. Everyone was looking at me. I felt so nervous they probably thought that I was anxious, they probably saw it. I want to think about that. I feel so horrible, blah, blah, blah.”
You’re basically describing what happened and you’re verbalizing you’re feeling as if you’re complaining to a friend. Now that will start to settle it down. Now these two simple techniques can help you start to decrease your anxiety already a bit. But decreasing your anxiety little bit versus being free of your anxiety being at ease, being comfortable, having a good time connecting with people, just feeling free to be yourself waking up, actually looking forward to connecting with other people. That’s a different story and that’s actually your natural state of being and you can get to that natural state of being but it’s going to take some time.
The question is “Are you willing to put in the time?”
Alright. I’ll leave it there. This was Sebastiaan from social-anxiety-solutions.com. That’s a good question to ponder for yourself – “Are you worth it? Are you worth it to put the time in to get the outcome that you want to live the life that you want to have the social ease that you dream of?”
That’s it. I will talk to you next week. I have a video like this every Thursday. You can subscribe here, here, here and whatever it is and get free social confidence starter kit where I teach you how to do this EFT for your social anxiety on my website.
Alright, have a good week and thanks for your question and I’ll talk to you soon. 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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