SUMMARY
Overcoming your Social Anxiety is a Journey.
It’s an up and down journey.
It’s a journey of a lot of little steps.
And on some days, things are happening around us that made us feel disheartened.
We then think to ourselves:
“Why do I feel like this again?”
And if you’ve asked yourself the same question, then this episode is for you.
Watch the full video. Enjoy!
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Do you keep struggling to overcome your social anxiety completely?
Then let’s talk about that.
About why that is and whether that’s okay. And how to see things.
My name is Sebastiaan van der Schrier. I’m a former Social Anxiety Disorder sufferer and a Social Confidence coach.
I’ve been doing this for 12 years. I’ve been coaching people with social anxiety since 2009, and I’ve logged 5000 coaching hours and have walked the path to overcoming this myself.
And I tell you this to give you a bit of perspective.
Overcoming your social anxiety is a journey.
It doesn’t happen overnight.
It doesn’t happen in a couple of weeks.
There are exceptions when you work with a great practitioner, and you don’t have that severe social anxiety. It can be the case that you resolve it in a handful of sessions.
But for most people, it’s a journey over a period of time.
And that journey is actually up and down journey. What I mean by that is, when you make progress, you feel good!
“Hey, I noticed that I’m less anxious in that situation.” — That’s so great!
“Hey, I notice my overall anxiety is starting to decrease.” — That’s fantastic.
“There was this situation. And I noticed there was no anxiety where I normally always get anxious.” — That is so awesome.
“I just felt completely like myself. And I afterward, thought to myself, ‘hey, I was just so natural, I was so at ease!”
Those kinds of experiences are great.
That’s when you’re making progress.
That’s the up of the journey.
But if this is where you’re at (social anxiety). And this is where you want to be (social ease). It’s not a straight line. It’s up and then down, up, and then down in then you plateau bit and then up and then down and up, plateau, down, blah, blah, blah, and eventually you get there.
But that means that there are a lot of “setbacks.”
And when a setback happens, it’s not an actual setback. It just feels like a setback.
What happens in a moment like that is you get triggered!
And when you get triggered, you feel anxious significantly, like you’ve been before.
And it can feel like, “oh, my God, all of it is back. I’m back to square one.” And it’s really disheartening.
Because at that moment, you’re in the trance of the problem.
You’re relieving feeling from way back when.
You feel like there’s a threat, there’s a danger.
Your brain has received some threat it has, it has reactivated an old memory, you’re reliving the old feelings of that, and you’re experiencing anxiety.
So, when you get triggered, it’s just as bad as it was when you were starting this whole journey.
So maybe you’ve been on this journey for a year. Well, you feel just as bad as you felt a year ago. And then it can seem like, “oh, my God, I’m not making any progress!”
Because at that moment, you see the world through the eyes of those emotions.
So maybe you’re feeling hopeless, you may be feeling scared, you’re feeling unworthy, you’re feeling insecure, you’re feeling anxious.
And through those emotions, they’re coloring what it is that you’re looking at, and you’re looking at the progress you’ve made.
And even if it’s very obvious — because you’ve made all of this progress, like examples that I’ve given you before.
But it can seem like, ‘well, that doesn’t count, or that doesn’t feel real, or maybe that’s not true. Or maybe that’s gone now. And I won’t have that anymore, and I’ve lost everything’.
And that’s all because you’ve just got triggered.
And that’s normal.
Now, while it’s normal, it’s very difficult to deal with.
It’s so hard to deal with.
Because you feel like giving up almost because it’s like, “Hey, if I do all of this work, and I’m doing all this personal development, and maybe I’m seeing a therapist, I’m doing this tapping, I’m doing all I can, and then this is it? I’m still not where I want to be?”
But if you’ve ever experienced this, what you also know is this passes.
This is not going to stay around forever.
The emotions from the trigger start to decrease, especially if you start tapping on those feelings. And you have the right mindset about it, which is what we’re talking about now.
Then, the upset about the trigger can start to reduce, and then sleep over it a couple of times, and that won’t be so bad anymore.
Or even better. Look at “Hey, what was it that triggered me? What was it that set me off?”
And then when you actually do the work to neutralize the experience or the sets of experiences in the belief that were learned from that experience – that caused your brain to see a threat.
Now you’ve made progress, and you’ve turned your “setback” into a breakthrough.
Because now in the future, the scenario that triggered you today is not going to trigger you anymore then.
This means that you’ve grown your resilience.
You’ve updated your old software.
You’re more in the present.
You’ve matured your mental and emotional well-being because your brain is no longer able to relive the feelings from back then. Because you’ve cleared it up, you’ve neutralized it, you’ve eliminated it.
So, when you have a “setback” – it’s actually a healing opportunity.
Alright?
And so, what you want to do at that moment is get perspective.
Perspective is: it’s normal, it’s part of the journey, it’s going to happen, it sucks, but it is what it is.
Address the feelings that are coming up for you.
So, tap on your general upset about it, the feelings that you’re aware of, notice the feelings in your body.
Just sit and allow what’s going on, describe your experience, you might want to write out on a piece of paper what’s going on, so you can see it and have some distance from it.
And then tap on what you’ve written down. — Your reactions to it. And that will, you’ll start to calm things down.
Know that with time things are going to pass.
And then the next step is that you’re going to ask yourself, once you’ve calmed down, and possibly with the help of a practitioner:
“Hey, what was it that triggered me? What was it that set me off? Was it a person? Was it a scenario? Was it a circumstance? And what specifically happened? And what does that feeling that I felt? What does that remind me of? Or what did I believe in that situation? Or what was I afraid of happening? Or what was it that happened that I was afraid of? And what does that remind me of?” etc
And then you start to uncover “what old memory you’re reliving or what certain circumstance are you repeating emotionally?”
And you can then use the tapping to neutralize that and move past that.
And as you do, it’s such a relief.
Now, let me see if I can think of an example.
Yeah, I would often get triggered around cool people.
I was fine.
But then a cool person would come into the room.
And it would trigger me.
It would make me feel insecure.
My heart would start to rise.
I wouldn’t know what to say.
I will, at all costs to avoid communication with that person.
I would start to go in a different direction or even leave.
As soon as I was aware that that was happening, I worked through which got triggered — the old stuff and my belief system around cool people and who I am on my self-image and so on.
And once I had worked through that, I didn’t see cool people as better than not cool people.
Or that whole concept was not there anymore.
And as a result, it just feels normal.
Just feel at ease.
Just feel neutral.
No anxiety.
No uncomfortable emotions.
etc.
And so that grew me.
That made me more resilient.
That made me more present.
Because I didn’t get reverted back to the past.
Okay?
I hope this is helpful.
Leave a comment below if you ever got triggered and felt like, “oh my god, now I’m never going to overcome this”.
And tell me what some of the feelings you’re having in a moment like that.
Okay?
I hope this helpful
This is Sebastiaan from Social Anxiety Solutions
I’ll connect with you very soon. Bye for now.
If you experience Social Anxiety, click below to receive the FREE “7 Secrets to Social Confidence” Mini Course!
- How To Stop Worrying - January 17, 2024
- How to Reduce Facial Blushing with EFT Tapping? - June 29, 2023
- Are You Scared to Get Anxious? Here’s how to fix it! - June 16, 2023
