Hey, how’s it going? This is Sebastiaan from social-anxiety-solutions.com I’m a former Social Anxiety Disorder sufferer and a Social Confidence Coach.

I’m trying to keep myself a little bit awake and be a little bit pumped up about this video because I’m very tired. I’m operating on very little sleep. I got some drugs from the from the Ear-Throat-Nose Doctor and kind of messed up my whole system. I was wide awake at 5am in the morning, trying to get to sleep until I popped the sleeping pill. I fell asleep for about six and then at 9:30 construction started. Hey, good life. Anyway, it happens.

Here I am, shooting this video for you. I had to pump myself up a bit because of the topic that I was going to talk about or shooting this video. Now that I’m talking, I’m actually genuinely excited to talk about what I’m going to talk about. What I’m going to talk about is the ultimate outcome that you’re after.

Here’s a bit of philosophy around it, I think you might find this quite interesting. In my experience, you might start out with trying to get rid of your social anxiety. You might start trying to reduce it. That’s okay. That’s where you’ll start, and you start reducing a bit, and then that gets better.

Eventually, you get better at that. Eventually, your general anxiety starts to decrease in certain situations. Then, you’re not anxious anymore, bit by bit. You start working through those triggers. Then, those triggers are not there anymore. You’re in a particular social situation where you normally would get triggered, and now all of a sudden, you’re like, “Hey, I feel calm here. That’s great.”

The more and more and more you get that, and eventually with enough persistence, and this is a journey, that’s why I was talking from my last week’s video, if you haven’t seen it yet, go check it out. There’s a link here somewhere (presuming my lovely assistant, Lia, is adding that link in there. Hi, Lia).

There’s a whole journey involved in that. It’s going to take a bit of time. It doesn’t just go like that. Although you can make progress just like that when you tap in the right way. That’s not the end of the journey, being free of anxiety.

So, what’s the ultimate outcome that you’re after? Well, in my book, the ultimate outcome that you’re after is, *drumroll* to feel safe being yourself. That’s your ultimate goal.

Because then, you’re not only not feeling anxious, you’re also not restricted. You’re also not stiff, you’re also not rigid. You have the ability to be spontaneous. You can say what comes to mind. You don’t have to filter everything through like a million possible things. You’ll still have your common sense. You’ll still have your social skills, and your social integrity intuitiveness, and your social savviness with you. You can just blurt things out which is so liberating and so much more fun, both for you and for other people as well.

When you’re being yourself, and you feel safe being you, it’s safe to be me, then so many other areas open up like relationships. It’s very easy to connect with someone who feels safe being him or herself. There’s no pretending, having to prove yourself, being better than some and being less than others, because you’re not playing a comparison game, because you’ve done acceptance work, and you’re okay with you, and you appreciate yourself as the unique person that you are. You’re not in competition with other people. It’s safe to be me. That’s, the ultimate goal. It’s a beautiful place to get to. It’s a beautiful journey to get to that place.

I say it’s a beautiful journey, but it’s not always easy. Sometimes it’s really tough, and sometimes it’s really challenging. My coach once told me, when I was complaining to her about the misery that I was in, she said, “Well, you’ll always have problems. So, get used to it. I’m 70 (She was 70 at the time. She’s somewhere in her 70s. I don’t know her actual age. She’s like 70 or close to 70), I still have problems in my life. That’s a normal thing in life. You’ll continuously have them.” I’m like, “Well, I’d like to have some better quality problems.” So yesterday, I was talking to her, I was talking how I feel overwhelmed. I have so many tasks and I’m like, it’s first world problems that I’m having. It’s problems that haven’t, it’s still problems, but at the end of the call, she said, “Well, congratulations on your high quality problems.” These are much nicer problems to have.

However, at the time, when I was so anxious, and I had really big problems, I couldn’t see the end of them. I couldn’t see how I could get out of that hellhole where I was in, where I was feeling so lonely, where I couldn’t connect with people, where I felt like people didn’t like me it. All of these problem, I couldn’t see how I would get out of it. Something that she told me at the time was really helpful, which I’ve always remembered, and I now tell my clients when they’re having a really tough time, and that is, “Life’s biggest challenges hold lives biggest rewards.” Think about that.

The bigger your challenge, the bigger the gift within that. Social anxiety is a huge challenge. But it is an invitation, to go inside, and to look at what’s going on there. Why is my brain perceiving threats? “Oh, I’m actually not okay with all of myself. Oh, I’m trying to seek approval. Oh, disapproval from others is not okay with me. Oh, I have deep insecurity that is unresolved. Oh, on the deepest level of myself I don’t feel that I’m good enough.”

All of these things is what anxiety is pointing towards. Then, doing the work to start resolving, that releasing that, that’s actually a really beautiful journey. That doesn’t just get rid of your social anxiety, it actually opens up so much more. It’s easy to become a rich, deep, interesting character. You get to learn a lot about yourself. You get to learn a lot about your psychology, how things work, your emotional system, your thinking.

It’s challenging to be more at the beginning of the stage, but it gets better when you actually start doing the work. Question is, are you doing the work? Are you just watching these videos? You’re just reading, reading up on things? Are you just filling up your conscious mind with cognitive information? Do you have these little videos make you feel a little bit better or actually in there in the trenches? As they say, doing the work, doing the tapping, that’s the thing that’s going to make a difference.

Now, certain mindsets are helpful, and necessary, and required. But this is mostly an emotional journey. You’ll hear me talk about that more. Now, I think this is, if I had to guess, it’s about 20% cognitive, and for the rest, it’s an emotional journey. So, a very effective technique to address these emotions is the tapping.

Now, my coach was also on my case, because I sent out an email and the headline was “tapping doesn’t work if you don’t do it in the right way.” And she said, “Well, people could interpret that to mean that tapping doesn’t work if you don’t do it in the right way.” I’m like “yes, that’s correct.” But what she was implying was, “Well, I say to my clients, it’s a very forgiving technique. So, if you say to them, it only works if you do it in the right way, they might be held back from giving it a try.” I’m like, “Okay, well, I don’t want that to happen.”

What I meant was – in order to overcome your social anxiety completely, you need to do tapping in the right way. Tap on the right targets, overcome your resistance, achieve acceptance, get rid of what’s in the way of accepting yourself, healing your trauma, shifting your belief system, etc. That requires a study in order to understand that. That said, that doesn’t mean that you can’t already start using the tapping, and just seeing what you can do, and seeing where you can get relief. Every little bit of relief that you get, gets you closer to feeling safe to be yourself.

I taught my mom a simple technique, “complain to your friend” technique. If you’re having a really tough time mom, or you, what you can do is you just sit down with yourself, and just start tapping, from point to point, you don’t have to do a setup, you don’t have to do standard original EFT, you can just tap from point to point, and while you’re tapping from point to point, just let it all go. “Oh my god, I’m so tired of having this problem. It’s draining me every time I go out. I can’t focus on what people are saying. They can’t see me anxious. It’s a horrible to frustrating. I can’t live my potential. They’re seeing me anxious and feel so ashamed about it. Why do I have this problem? I’m so sick and tired of it.”

You’re pretending like, you can even close your eyes, and you imagine that you have a friend sitting in front of you, and you just blurt it all out. You just complain and complain and complain and complain. While you’re doing the tapping, that complaining has emotions attached to those thoughts that you’re having. While you’re simultaneously tapping and doing the complaining, that’s going to calm things down.

Now, it might not make you feel amazing, but it’s going give you some relief, sometimes a little bit, sometimes profoundly. You know, as my mentor says, she’s different from my coach, “Tapping is very effective technique to neutralize excessive negative emotions, sometimes, quickly, and other times less quickly.”

Well, if you’re one of these people that it takes a little bit longer, it’s okay. That’s how it was for me. That forced me to go deeper and it took longer to get to where I wanted to be. But it also brought up a lot of other benefits. I learned a lot more, I study a lot more, I got to understand myself a lot more. Thanks to that, I can now share it with others a lot more, I can help my clients in a much better way. There’s always hidden benefits in challenges that you’re having.

It’s a journey. It’s mostly an emotional journey. At the end of the journey, the goal at the end of the rainbow, is “It’s safe to be me”. That’s your goal. My invitation is commit to that. Nothing less than that. You deserve it. You’re worth it. It’s safe to be you. That’s your outcome. That’s your goal.

Sorry for my philosophical rant there, but this is what is top of mind for me right now.

I hope it’s been helpful. I will connect with you next week again.

Keep in mind that in August 2020, there will be a new social confidence community that I am super excited about because I’m doing all the pre work for it right now. It’s going to be really, really knock your socks off. Amazing. Be guided, be supported with a whole bunch of other people all in the same boat going towards that same outcome. It’s safe to be me. I’ll share my everything within that community, specific how to live webinars, everything. So that’s what’s coming up. It’s still six months, but just wanted to let you know.

Alright, so this is Sebastiaan from social-anxiety-solutions.com. I will connect with you soon. Bye for now.

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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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