SUMMARY

In this post, I share how to unlock your true self when you have social anxiety.

I share a metaphor of an amazing statue being built that I came upon to help illustrate the point.

Here are some things you’ll learn:

• That your social anxiety was learned, you weren’t born with it
• That you have built up walls around yourself for protection
• How to unlock your true self, behind these walls, to get back to the core of you

I’m challenging the assumption that social confidence is built.

Let’s explore the possibility that your social confidence is already there…

…we just have to deconstruct the walls that are built up around it.

FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Sebastiaan: Hello, my name is Sebastiaan van der Schrier from social-anxiety-solutions.com. I am a social anxiety coach, a social confidence coach. I help people with social anxiety to feel calm and relaxed in social situations so that they can have a good time, enjoy themselves, connect with others, create a satisfying social life, travel the world, whatever they want to do. And in this video, I want to talk to you a little bit about unlocking your true self. And it’s kind of cool concept and I’ve spoken about this before but I’m gonna give you a metaphor which I think will land the plane quite well.

So, the other day I was going to salsa lesson with my salsa teacher, my dance partner actually and this was in this cultural park and so, she was showing me around a little bit before we went to the dance and I was looking over like “What the hell is that?” And she’s like “Oh, that’s the…” And I wrote it down because otherwise I would forget it. – “That’s the Garuda Wisnu Kencana statue that they’re building”. And so, I was looking at it and their building is gigantic monument that’s gonna be a hundred and twenty meters high and it’s huge. And so, I took pictures of it.

Now, they’re still building it but it’s gonna be a hundred and twenty meters high and it’s gonna be about thirty meters higher than the Statue of Liberty in the U.S. They want it to be the you know one of the biggest monuments in the world. And hey, wait when I was looking at that they’re still in the process of building it and I’m kind of was looking for “Hey, oh, what is a metaphor? How can I explain what I know in a different way so that it’s easier for you to understand what I’m talking about with getting rid of your social anxiety and you know feeling at ease socially?”

Your Social Anxiety was Learned

Because your social anxiety is a learned program. It’s actually a bunch of beliefs and programs that you’re having as a result of the things that happen to you in life.

So, you’re not born socially anxious you’ve learned to become socially anxious. And so, when you’re a little kid the core of you is joyful so that’s the center of you so your natural default state is one of mental health, one of joy you know.

When I spend time with my daughter she’s just a bundle of joy, she’s always having fun, she’s always laughing. Of course, if you… she doesn’t get her way, she doesn’t get an ice cream or something she’ll have a hissy fit for a bit like kids do but their default is joy, alright?

So, but, when you’re suffering with social anxiety your default often has become anxious. But that’s not your original default that’s the “virus” that you’re dealing with.

So, you know, you could compare it to a computer virus, you’re dealing with a computer virus and so your computer is not properly functioning, but that virus wasn’t on there when you bought it. You know, that virus has come on to the computer and the virus can be deleted as well, you can reset your computer back to factory settings and your computer will be running smoothly again. And that’s also what you can do with you know, doing the tapping and overcoming your social anxiety.

The Walls You’ve Built

So, here’s the metaphor. So, as you look at that as you look at that picture of the of the of the statue that they’re building you see that they’re having these gigantic places that they’re bringing up to that huge statue and they’re putting it in place and there’s a huge framework that is made out of iron in order to keep everything in place. And so, the center of it it’s pretty much empty that’s the core of it and then all these walls are built around the center of it.

Well, I kind of liken that to well the center core of view is in the middle of you and then you have all these walls built around you for protection. All these beliefs about how you should be socially you know, “I should become should be comfortable; I should be interesting; I should make a good impression; I should have people like me; I should be popular; blah, blah, blah”. And all these “should’s”. “I should not make a fool out of myself; I shouldn’t upset anyone; I should not you know, ridicule people or be mean; I should…”

You know, you have all these rules about how you shouldn’t, shouldn’t be and you have all these beliefs about yourself you know, “I’m not good enough; There’s something wrong with me; I have to be perfect to be accepted; I’m flawed; I’m bad”. You know, you name it. And these beliefs about the world you know and people like the word that “The world is a dangerous place, people are out to get me, people don’t like me, you know, society is against me”. All of these beliefs are kind of like in the way of you being able to be yourself and in a like in similar way as I saw that building being built it’s like “Wow, that’s how your social anxiety is being built and that’s also how you can deconstruct take apart piece-by-piece your social anxiety”.

So, if you’re looking at the picture of this statue that’s half completed those are the walls around you. So, you’ve got these walls around you that prevent you from being yourself because yourself is hiding behind these walls. It can’t really come out.

Unlocking Your True Self

So, what you do when you do the tapping work is you’re taking one specific small part of your statue that’s built around there through you the core you and then you apply tap into it and then you get rid of it.

And so, now, there’s a small… there’s just there’s a tiny bit more of you available and then and that’s and so you become a tiny bit more comfortable and then you take another piece of this statue that’s been built around you and you apply tapping to it. And you know, you neutralize it and you get rid of it so you get rid of one of the beliefs for example. And now again there’s a little bit more of you visible and so you’ve become a little bit more you. You’ve become a little bit more comfortable.

And since you, you know, most people watching this have been dealing with social anxiety for a long, long time there are a lot of these pieces to the puzzle, a lot of walls that have been built up around you, a lot of beliefs that have been built up around you. So, your statue is pretty much done, and we want to break down the statue so that we come so do we go back to the core of you and how you do that is taking one step at a time.

Now, I also bring up this analogy or metaphor… I mix them up frequently because a lot of people think “Oh, well, I’m gonna do an hour of tapping and my problems gonna be gone or I’m gonna see a practitioner and I’ll have session and then I’ll fix my social anxiety”. Well, hold on a minute. You know, you you’re dealing with a problem that you’ve dealt with for your whole life you’ve build up all these walls around you. There are all these individual pieces that are around the core of who it is that you are. And so, it is likely so not necessary sometimes it goes really fast, but it is likely that it’s gonna take quite a bit of deconstructing of taking apart that shelter that you have built up around you.

So, I hope the plane lands on this one actually. It’s kind of… I took some picture of it and I thought I’m gonna talk about that and let’s see if it works. So, anyway, if that did land the plane for you or if you had some insights from that please share them under this video and I’ll have a look at them and I’ll reply to them. I’d like to hear from you and yeah, I will love you and leave you and I’m gonna assume that you’ve already gotten the social confidence starter kit where I you know, I refer to tapping earlier on which is a technique to reduce negative emotions and metaphorically spoken to get rid of these blocks, these building blocks that are around you that are in the way of you being yourself.

So, I teach you that technique in this free course. It’s a… I think it’s a ten video, ten videos, video course along with an e-book and you can get that for free by clicking on the link below this video.

So, I hope it’s been helpful. If so, let me know in which way, do that in the comment section and I’ll be talking to you very soon. Alright, bye for now.