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The Ultimate Guide To Overcome Social Anxiety Once and For All

 

SUMMARY

Discover the journey from social anxiety to social confidence.  I will demonstrate what it is like to be socially confident and what is involve in getting into that place.




FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, my name is Sebastian and I’m a former Social Anxiety Disorder sufferer.

If you want to discover the journey from social anxiety to social confidence, stick around and I’ll demonstrate to you exactly what it is like. How you can go from social anxiety to social ease and what is involved in getting to that place.

If you are listening to this on my podcast and you are not seeing this, there’s actually going to be a lot of visual demonstrations on the whiteboard. So, I really recommend that you go to youtube.com/sebastiaandoc  That is S-E-B-A-S-T-I-A-A-N-D-O-.

I’ve got the idea to create this video because of a comment that was made under a video that I released. The comment was as follows:

“Hi Sebastiaan. This was really helpful, but it was too short. The tapping session that you did was only four minutes, I have a target that I will overcome social anxiety, as well as shyness, in two months. So, should I repeat those four minutes of tapping two to three times continuously?”

If that was you that wrote that, thank you. Apparently, I’m not teaching things clearly. So, this really gave me some insight into how to articulate more clearly on what is involved to go from social anxiety to social ease.

To answer your question really quickly, no. You do not have to tap along with that a couple of times. It is not going to solve your social anxiety. I’m sorry, that is the bad news. But I have really good news so stick around.

The bad news is that what I’m presenting to you on these videos is the “what” of how to overcome this problem. The “how” and the specific next steps are too complex to do in a quick video.

Last year in 2018, from August 2018 to August 2019, I ran the first ever social confidence community that ran for a year. That means that I guided people through a transformation over a process that took a year.

Throughout that process, they learned about tapping. They learned about their psychology. They learned about their emotional health. They learned how to apply the tapping specifically to overcome their social anxiety. They were guided. They were writing on the forum. They were watching live webinars.

It’s a whole process that’s involved in making this transformation. It’s not just going to happen by tapping along with a simple video on YouTube. I do these tap-alongs not to make you overcome your social anxiety by a simple tap along because that doesn’t exist. That doesn’t exist. Sorry to bring it to you. Tapping is amazing. It’s very powerful, but that’s not realistic.

When you’ve had a problem for a very long period of time, it’s ingrained in your thinking, your feeling, and your behaving, and how you see yourself. There is resistance to overcoming the problem. There are feelings about having your social anxiety, and there are feelings about your ability to be able to overcome this challenge. There is a lot involved in making a profound transformation.

To go from being anxious around other people feeling, bad about yourself, having perfectionistic tendencies, freaking out, worrying about social situations, not being able to make eye contact, and all of the social anxiety itself. That is a challenging problem to overcome. Just the simple tap-along is not going to do it. That’s the bad news.

The good news is – the social anxiety actually is an invitation for you to look inside and see “Hey, what’s going on with my mental, emotional, and psychological well-being that I’m feeling anxious all the time?” That I can’t just be myself socially?” It’s a signal. It is your system calling out to us like, “Hey, hello, something is off here.” That is a way to see it.

What’s actually going on as your brain is perceiving threats. As a result, it activates the Fight-Flight-Freeze response which causes you to experience anxiety. The fact that that happens means that psychologically there is something going on. You’re seeing threats that are actually not there. I know that to be true because for one, I experienced it myself, and for two, I coached a whole bunch of clients over the past 10 years, and for three, other people are in the exact same situation and they don’t have that experience.

So psychologically, emotionally, mentally, there’s something going on there. In order to transform that, release that problem, update your psychology, there’s a journey involved. That’s not going to happen with a quick tap along. These tap-alongs I do because I want you to experience a shift. I want you to experience “Hey, I’m doing this tapping for four minutes and wow, I feel a bit better. I feel a bit more relaxed. I have some relief here. Something is happening. Wow, this tapping really does work.” I want to inspire you to the possibility of what could be. If you’re only aware of “Okay, I’m going to change my thoughts and face my fears” and that doesn’t work for you or it’s too scary for you to do that, then you have no options. Well, you always have options and tapping is just one of your options, by the way, it just happens to be a very effective one and quite a gentle one. That’s why I like talking about it.

What I’m trying to say is that there’s a journey of going from social anxiety to social confidence. Taking the time to do the work is so worth it. I want to explain to you now (that is why I’m standing in front of the whiteboard) what that journey. What are some of the things involved within that journey? Why is it worth putting your time and effort to actually do that, to take those steps to learn about the tapping, to understand your psychology, and move from social anxiety to effortless social ease. Effortless social ease, that’s the goal.

You just want to be yourself, it’s nothing special. It’s just being at ease, not feeling anxious. Feeling comfortable, feeling relaxed, feeling at ease. Talking to people is only a big deal when you are feeling anxious. When you’re not anxious it’s normal.

I want to explain how that works. As you see, the reflection here is my professional setup. You see my laptop and everything so I’m going to make this a little bit better. Okay?

Anyway, I hope you will be able to focus on my beautiful illustrations. If there’s anything I’m not, it is creative when it comes to drawing. Bear with me.

This is the start of your journey. This is where you’re at. We call this as a social anxiety.

Where you want to go, of course, is to go all the way to this side, which is social confidence. I call it social confidence because it just sounds better. Most people that feel insecure and anxious, they want to feel confident. Actually, what it is it’s social ease, but we’ll go with social confidence. So that’s where you want to be. Smiley face.

Now in order to get from A to B, from the problem to the outcome, from social anxiety to social confidence, there’s a journey involved to getting there. This is a road by the way, in case you didn’t see it. This is a road. This is the path to social confidence, the path to social ease, the journey.

Now, I’ve spoken about these many times before. I just mentioned, “Yeah, there’s a journey involved. It takes work. You need to get rid of beliefs. You need to release negative emotions. You got to shift and release painful memories. You got to accept yourself. You got to accept where you’re at, blah, blah, blah, but I’m not giving you like, a more graphic understanding. While I was thinking about how to answer the question that I got on that video, I got some insights. Also, when I was working with a client, I was saying, “Yeah, well, there’s a journey involved with getting from here to here. So yes, now you’ve made transformation. You feel better and you’re starting to notice these other benefits in your life.”

My client was talking about how he cut someone off in traffic and normally he will be super anxious. He noticed that now, he wasn’t anxious about that. He felt calm about it real quick. He was saying “It is showing up in other areas of my life now.” I’m like, “Yeah, because, it goes across the board.”

In my explaining to my client, I was saying that “You’re not just going on a social anxiety to social confidence journey. Through that journey, you’re going on some other journeys that are operating concurrently.” Social anxiety to social confidence is the main journey. But there are a couple of sub-journeys that are happening as well. Social anxiety to social confidence, that’s the primary one.

In order to get to that place, you need to get rid of your limiting beliefs. When I’m talking about limiting beliefs, I’m talking about your limiting beliefs that are responsible for your brain perceiving social situations as a threat. That perception is registered by your amygdala, a part of your brain that gives your early warning or activates the early warnings to the rest of your system that there’s a threat. The perception comes in, your amygdala registers it, then it informs the rest of your body of “Oh, there’s a threat. Let’s activate our survival mechanism in order to deal with that threat.”

Then, adrenaline gets released into your bloodstream. Cortisol gets released in your bloodstream. Your heart rate starts to elevate. Blood goes away from your digestive state into your outer limbs because you don’t need to be digesting stuff when you’re facing a threat. Your whole system needs to be energized to optimally deal with the threat. To fight it, if you can, to run away from it as fast as you can, or to hide or play dead. That’s your biological response to threat.

That’s the anxiety that we experienced. Our pupils dilate, we’re scanning for danger. We’re looking for ways to escape. You’re sweating, your heart rate, mouth goes dry, those social anxiety symptoms are the result of that activation of the Fight-Flight-Freeze response.

Most people focus their attention on reducing the anxiety and trying to learn to live with it. No. How about there is something that triggers that Fight-Flight-Freeze response. What is it that triggers the Fight-Flight-Freeze response? Well, the perception of threat. Why is it that some people feel anxious socially and other people don’t? The people that feel anxious in that particular situation see a threat, or they don’t feel safe to be themselves, which is similar. Because of that perception of threat, the Fight-Flight-Freeze gets activated.

That perception is governed by beliefs. If you believe that there’s something wrong with me, I’m not okay the way I am, people don’t like me, I can’t make mistakes, I have to do everything right, I’ve got to be cool, that kind of belief system forms a particular perception that registers as “Uh oh, this situation isn’t safe, because I’m inferior and he could reject me and it will be a big deal. I might get rejected by everyone if he… That’s the whole thing that goes on.”

Those beliefs that formed the perception of threat are the problem. Once you get rid of “I’m inferior. I’m not good enough. There’s something wrong with me” and you come to “I’m okay the way I am.” You get rid of “I can make mistakes” to “Making mistakes is okay”. From “I have to be perfect” to “I accept myself the way I am. I accept my imperfections. Whatever people think of me is fine.”

That kind of belief system registers as “Hey, I’m in the same situations, but now there is no threat.” That’s what you’re going for. So that’s the ultimate journey. That’s the primary journey that you’re going on when you’re going from social anxiety to social confidence.

Along with that, there are a couple of other journeys. The second one is this journey is also a journey of acceptance. The fact is, you’re dealing with a problem right now. You’re dealing with a very difficult problem which is affecting everything. It’s affecting your relationships. It’s affecting how you see yourself. It’s affecting your career. It’s affecting your thinking, your mental and emotional health, your well-being everything. It’s a very difficult problem to deal with.

So why do I write acceptance? Well, because acceptance is a precondition for lasting change. This is a challenging concept. It’s not easy to accomplish but with tapping, it’s possible. Thank God.

Imagine that you’re in a social situation, and I’m pretty sure you’ve experienced this, you’re in a social situation, then anxiety starts to happen. Your heart slights and you’re like, “Gosh, I’m getting anxious. Oh, no, not again. What am I going to do now? Ah, what if they see it? Oh my god, they’re seeing it. I got to hide this.” That kind of stuff. Then you might notice that someone sees you being anxious, and now you feel embarrassed about it, or you feel ashamed of it. Insecurity gets triggered.

So, you have all these feelings on top of the anxiety. Then you leave that situation, and go home, and you’re like, “Oh my god, what if I run into these people again? Why was I so anxious? I should have been confident. Why wasn’t I social? What’s wrong with me? I’m such a loser. I’m so pathetic. It’s so messed up, I should try our bla bla bla…” and you beat yourself up.

What all of that does is exacerbates the problem and makes the problem bigger. Your feelings about your social anxiety, and your self-judgments, and your judgments of the social anxiety, that locks it in place. It keeps a lid on the problem. Therefore, acceptance of yourself while you’re dealing with the problem, not once you’re done with the problem, not once you’re socially at ease, then I accept myself. No, right now, while I’m dealing with this crappy problem. I accept myself.

Accepting of the anxiety when it comes up. Instead of trying to fight it and push it away, accepting and allowing the anxiety to be there and not judging yourself – that is a journey in itself.

You might learn about this concept. You might initially struggle against it. It’s messed up. I don’t want to do that. How can I ever accept my anxiety? It’s impossible. I won’t do it. I refuse it. I’ll keep fighting it.

Pain is a good motivator and reality will teach you. I don’t want to be nasty about this, but this has been a very hard teacher for me. I really had to come to terms with the fact that acceptance really is necessary in order to change. There’s this famous psychologist call Carl Jung who said, “what you resist persists.” That’s the truth.

It’s unfortunate, but you really got to get to this place of acceptance. That’s challenging and it requires a journey, a journey to compassion for yourself. It really is a difficult thing to deal with. Beating yourself up doesn’t make it better. It’s challenging, but it’s doable. You can use the tapping to get rid of the feelings about it. You can use the tapping to get rid of the self-judgments, and so on.

Eventually, you get to a place where, “Okay, I’m anxious, but I’m okay. I don’t judge myself for it. I don’t see myself as an anxious person any longer. I no longer identified myself in this way. I’m just dealing with a challenge called anxiety, a very difficult one. I can even feel some self-compassion. I’m not doing this on purpose. Stuff happened to me, shit happened to me, as a result, I’m now dealing with this problem. But I take responsibility for my problem. I’m doing whatever I can to overcome it. As it comes up, it’s a bummer. It sucks. But, I’m surviving it. I’m allowing it to be there. I can handle this. It will pass.” That’s the journey.

So that’s a concurrent journey with this one. Then there’s more, there’s a third one. That’s a journey of releasing resistance, subconscious resistance. What is that?

Well, consciously, of course, you want to get rid of your anxiety. Why wouldn’t you? It sucks. But subconsciously, that’s different story. So, you have your conscious mind. You maybe have seen this been drawn out before. Whatever is above water, that’s your conscious mind (5%). Whatever is under that (about 90 to 95%) is your subconscious mind.

Now your subconscious mind is in charge about 90-95% of the time, your conscious mind is in charge about 5% of the time. So, if you say, “Hey, I want to overcome my social anxiety. I want to have social ease. Your subconscious will say, “No, that’s a bad idea.”

Guess where this is going to head? Will this iceberg going to flow to social confidence? Or is it going to stay where it is set which is social anxiety? Well, guess what? Since it 95% of the time in charge, you might use your willpower, you might go this way, but soon as your you lose your attention, you’re going to go back.

Why might your subconscious be resistant to having social ease? Because it believes that it’s not safe or beneficial for you to have that social ease.

For example, you were a young kid and you were being yourself, and while being yourself, you constantly got criticized, or you were ridiculed, or put down, or abused or whatever, your brain then learned, “Oh, wow, being myself leads to excruciating mental and emotional pain. So, I got to be careful. I got to do things in the right way. I got to make sure that I don’t do things in the wrong way.” Now, your subconscious still has that programming.

If you want to go to social confidence, your subconscious is like, “Well, if you’re going to get there, you’re going to get criticized again, you’re going to get put down again, you’re going to get ridiculed again. So no, even though this anxiety is uncomfortable, it’s better than there. You need to be warned about all these potential threats that I’m seeing that I know that are there.”

That’s just one example. There are many examples. Other examples might be, “Well, when I’m socially confident, then there will be higher expectations of me. When I’m socially at ease, I won’t know who I am anymore, because I’m so used to being anxious and changing my identity. Men, that’s a big change. We don’t want to do that.” On top of that, your subconscious likes to keep things the way they are, it likes to keep the status quo. As long as you stay where you’re at, there’s control. If you start venturing out into the unknown, making change and transformation, there’s the unknown that you don’t have control over. There’s going to be situations that you’ve not encountered before. You’re going to venture out into the unknown. So, there’s resistance to change itself. There are various no-s to change in the subconscious. Therefore, the subconscious is like “No, we’re not going to get there. We’re going to stay here.”

Now what you can do with tapping is you can turn these no-s into yes-es. Then, you have conscious and subconscious alignment. Then both parts of you are a yes to social ease.

By doing that, you stop the self-sabotage. Have you ever tried to do some tapping, or do some inner work, and you felt really tired all of a sudden, or you felt that “I got first to watch this TV program, or I got to walk my dog, or do my homework, or I just don’t feel like it right now. I’ll do it double tomorrow. Or on the weekend, I’ll do two hours.” All of that is self-sabotage. That’s the subconscious mind exercising its resistance. It’s sabotaging you consciously to stop you from going there because it knows that once you get there, it’s going to be more pain. Your brain works towards pleasure and away from pain. More away from pain survival than towards pleasure. So even though you consciously know “Hey, that’s going to be pleasure.”, subconscious is like “Yeah, but it’s going to be more painful.”

What you want to do is you want to teach your subconscious of “No, it’s not going to be painful at all. That’s a false assumption” Change these assumptions around so that there is 100% yes to change. There is a 100% yes to social confidence and to change. That also is not just a simple tap along. That is a journey. That is a process. It’s a process to getting there.

Then, there’s another journey that’s going on and quite an important one, which is “Healing Your Past.”

Now some people, in fact quite a lot of people say, “Well, my past was fine. I didn’t have any trauma. I had a nice childhood growing up and everything was good. My parents love me and everything.”

Then I start inquiring “Alright, so tell me about your relationship with your mom and dad.”

Like, “Well, Mom and Dad were always fighting and there was always trouble in the house.”

Like, “Okay, well, how did that make you feel?”

“Well, you know, quite insecure and uncertain and was afraid that we’re going to split up and bla bla bla.”

“Okay, what do you think that does to? What do you think that does to your mental and emotional well-being when you’re a little kid?”

That’s just one example. I can give you, if I take some time, I can give you 20 examples. There’s always something that caused or contributed to the problems that you’re having today. Think about this, you you’re born and you’re an itty, bitty baby. Maybe you’re one week old and you take shit. You know, you poop. Are you embarrassed about that? Are you afraid of embarrassing yourself when you’re a week old? No. Are you worried about what people are thinking of you? Of course not. Are you anxious? Are you socially anxious? No.

That’s a learned program. Nobody comes into this world being a super socially anxious baby. “What if they’re going to judge me when I pee myself?” Nothing like that.

That’s programmed into you. You learned that. That program of social anxiety happened as a result of the repetitive negative experiences that you have in early childhood. The things that happened to you over and over again, and life’s traumas, and programming from society, from culture, from religion, and through all of that, you came up with a particular belief system. That belief system is now responsible for your brain perceiving threats.

Okay, so when you’re a baby, you’re trying to make sense of the world. So you’re constantly observing, you’re modeling, you’re modeling your parents, you’re watching what’s being said to you, you’re interpreting things, and you’re making your own little mental map of the world. What does this mean? What’s my place in here? What does this matter? Your brain is constantly asking two questions: “What does this mean? What does this mean about me? How important is this?”

Well, for example, if you’re constantly criticized by your parents, and they’re very well meaning. By the way, they can be super subtle. For example, perfectionistic parents, they mean really well. But it’s very detrimental to you, to your mental and emotional well-being. So you’re growing up, you’re just top achiever, and you really try to impress your dad, but you do one thing wrong, and he gets really upset with you? Ouch, that’s going to hurt. That’s going to damage your psychology, or at least it can damage your psychology. I’ve seen it so many times that I can give that as an example.

The repetitive negative experiences in early childhood, right on the slate of who you become. You experienced emotional pain over and over and over. Every criticism, to stay with that example, I can go over all the examples but to stay with that example, every criticism hurts, and you start to get used to it.

So you start to feel like shame every time you get criticized. You start to feel insecure. You get criticized. You doubt yourself. You worry that you’re going to make mistakes again. Your system is going to come up with particular beliefs. Like, “there’s something wrong with me. I’m not okay, the way I am. I’m not good enough. I’ve got to do it better. I have to be at my best at all times that can’t make mistakes. I’ve got to do it right.”

You’ve got this whole belief system that sets you up for being anxious later on in life. Then, if you’re not already anxious, during your early childhood, which is about the case for about 40% of the clients that I’ve seen, and I’ve seen hundreds over the past 10 years, since 2009. There’s some particular experience that you have, maybe a traumatic experience where you’re bullied, or where you moved schools, or where you moved from a different country, like, into the US, for example, you don’t speak the language and you don’t fit in, or you go from your usual town to a new town, you don’t have your friends with you.

Now that earlier insecurity that was created as a result of the relationship with your mom and dad shows up and you’re not able to just be yourself. Now, you have a traumatic experience. Maybe you’re bullied. Maybe you have to read out loud in front of the class and you’re laughed at. Maybe you get punched in the face. Maybe you developed acne. Maybe…whatever. There’s so many things. There are so many things.

You have a traumatic experience. From the traumatic experience, again, you make meaning. What does this mean? How important is this? Well, I read out loud in front of the class, I get laughed at. What does it mean is that people don’t like me. I’m a loser. Okay, now you’re walking around with that belief system. Through that belief system, you’re perceiving social situations. Guess how that’s going to make you feel? Anxious. And these are just examples.

Other examples might be hearing the same thing over and over and over and over again. In society, how you should be, and how you shouldn’t be. That causes you to end up with a particular belief system.

Now when I say healing the past what I mean is releasing those emotions from the younger you that was constantly criticized, or whatever it was, or bullied, or ridiculed, or put down, or ignored, or not acknowledged, or not accepted as you were, or you know pampered, not allowed to become independent. Whatever it was. The emotions from the earlier you, releasing those. The emotions from those traumatic experiences, releasing those. Why? You still remember it, but you stop re-living your past.

Have you ever felt out of the blue insecure? Have you ever felt out of the blue uncomfortable? Have you ever felt out of the blue really bad for no good reason? There’s something that gets triggered, some thought, feeling, circumstances in your environment, something some person says, a particular look that they give, you have an eyebrow that is raised, a thought that you’re having. Something triggers these old traumatic experiences, and you relive the feelings from back then. And that happens over and over.

When you have a traumatic experience, on that example of you’re reading out loud in class, and you’re being made fun of, and you didn’t see that coming, that’s a shock to your system. According to Dr. Robin Scare, one of the leading trauma researchers, the definition for trauma is “Something happens that violates your expectations. In other words, you don’t see it coming. It’s a surprise but a bad one, a shock. You feel overwhelmed with emotion, and you don’t know how to handle the situation, and you feel out of control. You feel helpless and alone.” That’s a trauma.

Whenever that happens, your brain takes a little snapshot off that particular experience, and it stores it in procedural memory, meaning still active memory. That’s different memory from, “I ate an apple two days ago” because you forget about that. It’s not relevant. This is very relevant, because all of the emotions, the sounds, the sights, the sensations, the emotions, the smells, and the meaning, the meaning that you made out of it, the belief, the conclusion that you drew from that experience, all get stored in what he refers to as a trauma capsule in procedural memory.

Then, whenever something happens in your current day life experience, it can trigger those trauma capsules, and they leak out the feelings. You’re reliving your feelings from back then. Part of going from social anxiety to social confidence is healing your past so you stop reliving your past.

Then finally, this is a beautiful path of self-acceptance. It might just be a metaphor of how I see things, but this is how it’s been for me. In the beginning, I just wanted to get rid of this stupid anxiety that annoyed the hell out of me. That’s an understatement. I was suffering badly. But now, having overcome it, and having overcome it for a while already, and having worked with so many people, and seeing the life that I’m fortunate enough to live now, that anxiety has been a gift. I know it’s hard to hear that, but it’s been a tremendous gift. It has forced me to look inside of myself and do the work and see, “Okay, why am I feeling anxious?”

As a result, I’ve done so much healing. I’ve increased my self-esteem. I’ve got rid of perfectionism. I stopped being shame of things. I’m more easygoing about life. I don’t get triggered all over the place anymore. I have a nice, well balanced mental and emotional state. I feel good. I enjoy the life that I’m living.

So many things have happened as a result of me addressing this social anxiety problem. It’s really a journey of self-acceptance. So, what does that mean? Well, that means (I kind of include self-esteem within self-acceptance) liking yourself to the full. Liking every part of you, not just some parts of you. “Hey, I like myself when I’m happy. I like myself when I’m in a good mood. I like myself when people think I’m funny. I like myself when I’m intelligent. But I don’t like myself when I’m having a bad day. I don’t like myself when I’m feeling insecure. I don’t like myself when feel anxious.” All of that. Liking all of you, being okay with all of you, and just feeling good about yourself.

When you feel good about you, guess what? How safe do you then feel sharing yourself with others. Given this analogy before, but imagine that you’re a product, and you’re trying to sell the product to other people. If you believe, “Man, I don’t like this product. This product is crap. This is shady product. I paid it. I wish I didn’t have to deal with this product. Do you want to buy it?” It’s very unlikely, right?

But what if you say, “Wow, I love this product. This is such a great product. This is a good product. I love it. You know, it’s amazing. But you know, I’m nice enough to share it with you.” All right. It’s very different, very, very different.

This journey has these five concurrent journeys within it. Now because of that, it’s not going to take you four-minute tap along in order to get from here to there.

Now then, I  want to say a couple of things.

People often say, “Well, tapping doesn’t work for me.” Well, tapping works when you apply it in the right way to the right targets. With social anxiety, that can be a bit complex because where do I start? Well, I’m sorry, that is the way it is.

That’s why I’ve created a bunch of programs to help you with that. Some of the tap-alongs that I have on YouTube will help you with that as well. One tap-along that comes to the top of my mind right now for example, that will get you started with acceptance is called “stop fighting your anxiety or acceptance to stop fighting your social anxiety” something like that. Google that and you’ll find it. That will be a good first step.

Also, I have a free mini-series that you get when you go to my website and you click on “Overcome S.A. for free”. Overcome Social Anxiety for free. You get a social confidence starter kit. There I teach you a bit of the the tapping. I give you the basics of the tapping, and I introduced to you how to use it to become completely anxiety free. Many people have shared that it’s benefited them profoundly. One person said that he resolved 40% of his social anxiety, just with that particular free course. You know, so very cool. That’s something that you can start doing. Tapping works when you work it and you do it in the right way.

For some people, that might mean that you need to get some outside assistance. I specialize in social anxiety, social anxiety alone. I don’t specialize in severe depression, or being suicidal, or schizophrenia, or bipolar, for those things. You need to find someone else who specializes in that. That person might very well use tapping as well.

Further, people say, “well, it’s very difficult, and it’s hard.” Well, it’s not difficult. It’s complex, but you can break the complex down into smaller pieces. How do you eat an elephant, one spoon at a time. Once you break something down and you break it small, you break it down into smaller pieces. You can learn it. It’s a study.

Just like you want to start learning a new language. You’re not instantly going to be fluent. I’m here right now, and I don’t speak Spanish. I want to speak Spanish. Yes, that’s overwhelming. That’s complex. But, if you start out with learning how to say “Hello” (Hola), and you want to know how to say “Good morning” (Buenas Dias), and you learn those little things, that’s where you start. Now you’re getting a beginning. Then, you start to make small sentences. Then, you start practicing those small sentences. Eventually, you’ll get to the place where you’re fluent.

Eventually, you get to the place where you’re socially at ease. So, it’s not difficult. You’re tapping on your face and body in the comfort of your home. It just requires a commitment, doing the work, and actually showing up and doing it. Do 15 minutes a day for a year. Actually, do 15 minutes a day for a month, and you’ll have a very different experience. You will have made a transformation. For some that will be profound. For others that will be slight. But still, it’s worth it. All the little steps that you take get you closer to your goal. All the little shifts that you make add up to a bigger shift over time. It’s really worth it.

Some people say, “Well, I just get temporary results when I do the tapping.” Yes, because you’re tapping on symptoms and not on the causes. So that might be a tap-along that you do with me online. “Oh, yeah, I get some relief. I feel a bit more relaxed afterwards. But then, you know, after that, it comes back.” Yes, because tapping on symptoms is kind of like cutting weeds in your garden. Eventually they’re going to grow back. But if you pull the weeds with the root and all, it can’t grow back anymore.

That’s doing the deeper work, all of this. Like I said, it’s a what we did in our community last year. I’m going to run another one in August this year. So, mark your calendars, its going be epic. Okay, so next.

Some last thing I’m going to say is like about this particular thing that people say, “Well, I’m just socially awkward, and I need more social skills.” Well, you’re socially awkward because you’re reliving your past, and you’re feeling anxious, and you’re judging your social skills based on when you’re anxious, which is not fair.

So often when a client says this, I say “Okay, so is there’s someone that you’re comfortable with? A family member? A longtime friend?” Sometimes they are in a relationship, “Your significant other? How do you feel around them?”

“Yeah, with them, I feel comfortable.”

Okay. Well, can you think of a time that you were with that person that you’re comfortable with?”

(By the way, do this if you’re listening to this.)

So, can you think of someone that you feel comfortable with or mostly comfortable with?

Okay, now think of that particular person when you were having a good time with that person. It was nice when you’re having a good time with that person. Now, are you really thinking about, “Oh, what’s the next thing that I’m going to say? Or what if I’m going to run out of things to say? What if I embarrass myself? I hope I don’t say something stupid. What if I run out of things… bla bla bla, like the anxiety?” No, you were just shooting from the hip. You were saying whatever came to mind.

By the way, if you don’t have a particular person that you feel totally comfortable with, well, for one, I’m sorry to hear that, but it’s still applies. It’s more a bit more difficult to convince you, I’m afraid, but It still applies.

Your social skills are there naturally when you’re at ease. If you’re not worried about saying something stupid, when you’re okay with looking bad socially, when you’re fine with looking foolish, there’s no downside to whatever you say within reason.

When you feel safe to say whatever, you’re not filtering everything. Running out of things to say only happens because you’re like, “Oh, I got to say the right thing. I can’t say the wrong thing. I have to be impressive. I have to be cool. I can’t look like a loser. I got to make sure that they like me.” When all of that is not there, you’ll just free flow. You just be stupid sometimes, forget things like me on camera, and it’ll be alright.

In some rarer cases, you’ll need some social skills, but you’ll get those a lot easier as you feel more comfortable with yourself. It’s very difficult to gain social skills when you’re highly anxious. It’s a lot easier to gain social skills when you’re feeling comfortable.

So, you’re not socially anxious person, you’re not an awkward person, you’ve just experienced anxiety for a long time. Then you started labelling yourself as a socially anxious person.

Okay, now, I’ve talked and said a lot. This is a whole process to go from here to there, but it is so worth it. It’s not just that you get to a place where you feel socially at ease, but it’s great. You feel socially at ease. You’re looking forward to social situations. When you’re around others, you speak your mind and you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to say. You’re just in the moment. You’re present. You’re not in your head. You’re connecting with people. You actually look someone in the eyes, and feel good doing so, and have no restrictions within that. You can be genuinely curious, and meeting people. Have fun, be playful, looking forward to the weekend, enjoying meeting up, calling people, inviting people, that’s social ease.

That all is really great. But that’s only one thing. It’s the highlight, but through this journey. We’ll get to acquire a couple of extra things in life.  Those are:

1. Create powerful thinking habits.

I don’t talk much about changing your thoughts, because in my experience, that’s just a small part of the puzzle. Most of this is an emotional journey. Going throughout this process, you’ll discover and integrate new empowering mindsets. New ways of seeing the world, seeing yourself, and how to handle and interact. That will cause you to stop worrying, stop being so critical of yourself, stop judging yourself and others all the time. Instead, you’ll be more rational and realistically optimistic. Okay? And that’s very helpful in life, of course.

2. Your master your psychology (and I’ll put that in brackets because you’ve never completely master it).

You’ll get to understand why it is that you suffer, and why other people suffer, and how you can stop suffering. You’ll build self-compassion.

3. Create incredible control

Then, that leads to creating incredible emotional control. When I say control, I mean the good kind of control, okay? Because trying to control everything all the time with all people without exceptions, that’s not the good kind of control, but a healthy kind of control that is good and beneficial. That means that you don’t get triggered all the time with past stuff. You can stay in the present and you feel calm. When something does trigger you, you can calm yourself down quickly, and that leads to emotional maturity. Emotional maturity is rewarded in society. When someone is emotionally together, that’s rewarded in society.

4. You get to enjoy mental and emotional health.

Throughout this process, you get to like, respect, appreciate, accept yourself. All of that. Also, you get to accept others and you get to accept life. A very other important one is you get to feel that you like a sense of “I’m good in this world. I feel safe here. I feel secure.” I know problems are going to happen. Shits going to hit the fan, but I’m good. I can handle it. I trust that I can handle whatever comes my way. I feel safe being me. I feel safe in the world and I feel safe being me with others. That is tremendous.

These four main benefits, aside from the social ease, the cool thing about all of that, is that this, social confidence, leads and affects everything.

Your relationships, your career, the partner that you choose, the hobbies that you go for, the amount of fun that you have in life, how peaceful you feel, your mental and emotional well-being, how you show up in the world, what you do in the weekends. In other words, your life fulfilment. It affects everything forever, for the rest of your life.

So, should you go for a four-minute tap along? Or do you want to go on a journey to get into all of this which affects everything for the rest of your life? All right. There you go.

So that little comment on that video, really have me going.

I hope that this explains to you the journey to social confidence a bit more. I’m going to be talking about this more frequently. I’ve actually defined five particular stages to go from social anxiety to social confidence.

There’s stage zero where you’re suffering, stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four and stage five where you are in social confidence. There are particular milestones and going from one to the other. I’m going to talk about that at some point in the nearby future. I’m clarifying all of that. So it becomes more visual for you. It becomes easier for you to understand how to go from here to there. So that’s what’s coming up.

In August 2020, I’m going to run the new social confidence community and that’s going to be absolutely epic. It’s been years since we ran the last one. The last one was a big success. I’ve got a whole bunch of video testimonials of the people that joined that, we’re going to be showing you a couple of those in a few months prior to the actual start of the new community. That’s going to be really, really amazing. I’m so happy that I get to share that with you.

Now I was writing down a couple of weeks ago, I want to create a dream come true experience for people with social anxiety as they go through that community. What is it that I would have loved to have had when I was suffering from social anxiety? Well, I would have loved to have had people that understand me. Understanding how, why I have the problem, what I can do about it, specific exercises to do it being guided through it. Having a place where I feel safe, where I can come where I can make progress, having techniques and tools and strategies that actually work, and being able to take control of my own in a world, that’s definitely what I would have wanted to have.

That’s exactly what the social conference community is going to provide. I’ve taken a year off from the last community to improve this one. It’s going be really, really epic. I’m very excited to bring that to you. Anyway, that’s what’s coming up.

Now if you want to start with something right now, and you don’t already have any of these programs, I’ll have a sale for about 48 hours after I release this video. That sale is for my “Create Incredible Emotional Control” program, along with my “Overcome Your Fear Of Being Judged” coaching series.

That two programs that normally go, for “Create Incredible Emotional Control” goes for $129, and Overcome Your Fear Of Being Judged” goes for $199, so normally it’s 330 bucks, roughly 328, but now it’s just going to be for $199. Just for those 48 hours, just for my inner circle.

Also, I might do that promotion at some point again in the future, but it will only be announced to the people on my email list. So if you’re not on my email list yet, go to social-anxiety-solutions.com, click on the “Overcome S.A. for free”, there will be a link below this video as well, and you’ll then be on my email list. You’ll be notified about it, and you’ll get my free social confidence starter kit. Win-win. Good stuff. So that will be for $199.

So real quick, what is “Create Incredible Emotional Control”?

“Create Incredible Emotional Control” is a program where, for one I summarized my 13, maybe 14 years of tapping experience, psychology experience into a particular short and effective course. I learned basic EFT (Garry Craig’s EFT). I learned pro-EFT from Lindsay Kenney. I learned simple energy techniques. I learned a variety of other techniques. I studied a lot of the top people and kind of devised my own simplified approach specific to social anxiety. That’s what I teach in there. Then I also take the most effective and efficient, simple techniques from the whole community that we ran in 2018-2019. I put those in there. Now, this program is not going to help you overcome your social anxiety completely, but it’s highly likely that it’s going to significantly reduce your social anxiety, and it’s going to give you a lot more emotional control. That’s why it’s called “Create Incredible Emotional Control”. So, it’s really cool program.

And then the other program is a tapping series. What I found was, I did in the previous social confidence community, I did live webinars, and I tapped with a particular client who could bring whatever issue he or she had, and everyone would tap along with it. People reported profound benefits just from tapping along.

So, I decided to do a coaching series where I worked with one person, a volunteer, her name is Mahsa, and I worked with her for five sessions. Throughout those five coaching sessions, which were live webinars at the time, she overcomes her fear of being judged. She also overcomes most of her social anxiety, by the way. So you get to see her make that transformation on screen, and you can tap along. There are, I think, more than 50 comments under that video series of people saying, “Wow, I significantly reduce my social anxiety just by tapping along.” or “Oh my god, I can so relate, I feel so much better myself.” So, you get a profound transformation just by watching and tapping along. It’s like the Netflix of healing. This is the simplest way of making a profound transformation.

So, all of that at $199. You can get that by going to bit.ly/sasflashsale. That’s bit.ly/s-a-s-f-l-a-s-h-s-a-l-e- So, go there now.

Alright, hope this has been helpful to you. Again, if you have any questions, put them below this video. Make sure please, if you like this, that you actually hit that like button, make sure you subscribe, and share this video wherever it is helpful. Really, it’s very helpful to me because I get to reach more people help more people with this message. So, if you like this, please do that.

I’ll connect with you next week. 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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