1. You have far more in common with other people than you think. Do you not eat, sleep, breathe ? Do you not live on Earth and walk on the ground ? Do you not walk and talk ? Do you not have to urinate or defacate ? Will you not die one day ? People who call others weird and strange are fooling themselves into thinking they are more normal than others.
2. The part of the mind that focusses attention onto anything you want is used by every single person on the face of the Earth. If you want to focus your attention on perhaps a bird flying by, you place your attention into your visual sense and then you direct your attention onto the bird - your eyes just follow your attention. How can people say they are better than you and you are inferior when they all use this same ability ?
3. The social world is chiefly made from concepts. A person is a collection of quarks and gluons, protons and neutrons, atoms and molecules. These parts are put together to form a thing that is called a "person". Then the actions these people carry out are assigned more labels. Discard all labels and start breaking people down into the various parts and actions they carry out.
4. People love to say they are better than others because they do this or have that or they are more social than you. When this occurs you think they feel proud and are perhaps trying to make you feel worthless or lesser than them. This thought can cause you to feel shame around them. So what are these people without those things ? Is human worth based on possessions or acheivements ? Will not all this disappear one day ?
5. Just before you place your attention into a sense to allow the attention to focus on an object, that object does not exist for you. Turn your eyes from a person and very soon they disappear from your consciousness altogether.
6. If you are feel anxious of the unknown or unfamiliar situation, remember that the one thing that is most unpleasant at the time is the perhaps the most familiar thing to you...ANXIETY!
7. Realization of what is happening, what you are feeling or thinking or doing will help draw your attention away from painful feelings or situations. If you feel like eveybody is looking at you, realize that you are feeling this way.
8. The "intention" of others plays an important role into whether you feel relaxed or anxious, inferior or superior. Yes, the intention of others needs to be thought inside your own mind before a feeling will start. If you see a loving couple kissing, you may think they just want to exclude you and rub your nose in the fact that you have no romance in your life. You are thinking about an intention of another person and the intention that you think will create a feeling. Try thinking a different intention next time you feel anxious because of what others might do or have said.
9. Much like intention, thinking about what others are thinking or feeling is also a very important aspect of social anxiety and shyness.
10. Now matter how painful a situation is or feels it will be it always ends and a new day will start.
11. Do you sit and ponder about mistakes other people say or do ? If someone blushed would you want to avoid them or think terrible thoughts about them ? Most likely not. It is likely that others will do the same and NOT dwell on your blushing for more than a few seconds.
12. Most people go though life as if they were asleep, just percieving, thinking, feeling and doing things with no realization what they are doing or thinking or feeling or perceiving. Realization is an extremely powerful tool and allows choice. Realize you are caught up with your attention on an aspect about yourself you don't like, or that you are feeling shy or anxious and you present yourself with the ability to begin to change the feeling, the thought, the behaviour, and where your attention is focussed on.
13. Asking yourself questions is a great way to allow your mind to process things it never even considered. What am I really afraid of ? What if that happened ? How could I handle something if it did happen ? How well could I handle that ? What could this mean for my long term future ? Without questioning, the mind simply jumps to disastrous conclusions or simply reacts with anxiety because of the unkown or unpredictable in any given situation.
14. How many times have you anticipated a social situation to turn out bad and your fears came true ? If it is low, then have you considered that perhaps you could be wrong about most people in how they will react to you.
15. Having a shy and anxious temperament or a chemical brain imbalance does not limit you to robot-like compliance to your feelings and thoughts. Remember realization gives you choice. It's just what you do thats important. Do you give in to the feeling. Do you fight the feeling or do you avoid it ?
16. Social anxiety is purely a state of mind. Have you ever talked to someone and felt comfortable enough to be yourself ? Have you ever done this inside a dream ? If social anxiety is a state of mind what else in the human experience is a state of mind ? Isn't everything ?
17. Learn cbt and meta-ct. They work if you do them properly.
18. Attention-control works enormously for acute anxiety and self-consciousness.
19. Don't waste you time on wondering if social anxiety is caused by an chemical imbalance or chemcial makeup. It won't help you.
20. Mindfulness meditation will show you how reality is constructed. How thoughts and feelings make up most of your world. Then you can have some fun and play around with your own reality.
21. Discard every single concept you have ever learned. A book is not a book. Words are not words. A hot girl is not a hot girl. They are used to understand and make sense of the things we percieve. Once you look at something and understand what it is you have gone to far. You need to move back to the point to where you it has no meaning - the object is no-thing.
22. I believed all my life that when other people say or do "bad" things to me those things were the sole reason behind the hurt. Yet this turned out to be false. If I thought those people's intentions were to hurt I would feel they were better than me and heartless and I was worthless, uncared for, felt humiliated and sad. If I thought they were doing this because they were afraid of my rejection and were repsonding in the only way they knew the sadness and humilation would disappear and I didn't feel worthless or uncared for. I felt sorry for them and even wanted to help them. Why when an object falls on your foot you very rarely get angry at it or feel in a bad way ? Because you think it had no intention. That is how important intention is in the social world and how it causes emotional reaction. Re-think the intentions of others!
23. Pondering about how much I focussed on how much social anxiety I had realized I was avoiding the deeper issues. Anxiety was merely a sign something was wrong. I was afraid of people hurting my feelings through ignoring and mockery and that I was afraid of expressing this fear because it would be ignored or made fun of. Going on the internet explaining my social anxiety, how bad it was and how wide-range it was was a small outlet for explaing my fear of being hurt. Explaining to someone on the interent that I feared others will laugh at me if I said this or did that was not really the same as telling someone to their face that I feared they would not care about my feelings.
24. Social skills is all about getting caught up in the mood of the conversation. If you've ever found yourself caught up in a conversation and just forgot about all your worries and you had no trouble talking then you know what I mean.
2. The part of the mind that focusses attention onto anything you want is used by every single person on the face of the Earth. If you want to focus your attention on perhaps a bird flying by, you place your attention into your visual sense and then you direct your attention onto the bird - your eyes just follow your attention. How can people say they are better than you and you are inferior when they all use this same ability ?
3. The social world is chiefly made from concepts. A person is a collection of quarks and gluons, protons and neutrons, atoms and molecules. These parts are put together to form a thing that is called a "person". Then the actions these people carry out are assigned more labels. Discard all labels and start breaking people down into the various parts and actions they carry out.
4. People love to say they are better than others because they do this or have that or they are more social than you. When this occurs you think they feel proud and are perhaps trying to make you feel worthless or lesser than them. This thought can cause you to feel shame around them. So what are these people without those things ? Is human worth based on possessions or acheivements ? Will not all this disappear one day ?
5. Just before you place your attention into a sense to allow the attention to focus on an object, that object does not exist for you. Turn your eyes from a person and very soon they disappear from your consciousness altogether.
6. If you are feel anxious of the unknown or unfamiliar situation, remember that the one thing that is most unpleasant at the time is the perhaps the most familiar thing to you...ANXIETY!
7. Realization of what is happening, what you are feeling or thinking or doing will help draw your attention away from painful feelings or situations. If you feel like eveybody is looking at you, realize that you are feeling this way.
8. The "intention" of others plays an important role into whether you feel relaxed or anxious, inferior or superior. Yes, the intention of others needs to be thought inside your own mind before a feeling will start. If you see a loving couple kissing, you may think they just want to exclude you and rub your nose in the fact that you have no romance in your life. You are thinking about an intention of another person and the intention that you think will create a feeling. Try thinking a different intention next time you feel anxious because of what others might do or have said.
9. Much like intention, thinking about what others are thinking or feeling is also a very important aspect of social anxiety and shyness.
10. Now matter how painful a situation is or feels it will be it always ends and a new day will start.
11. Do you sit and ponder about mistakes other people say or do ? If someone blushed would you want to avoid them or think terrible thoughts about them ? Most likely not. It is likely that others will do the same and NOT dwell on your blushing for more than a few seconds.
12. Most people go though life as if they were asleep, just percieving, thinking, feeling and doing things with no realization what they are doing or thinking or feeling or perceiving. Realization is an extremely powerful tool and allows choice. Realize you are caught up with your attention on an aspect about yourself you don't like, or that you are feeling shy or anxious and you present yourself with the ability to begin to change the feeling, the thought, the behaviour, and where your attention is focussed on.
13. Asking yourself questions is a great way to allow your mind to process things it never even considered. What am I really afraid of ? What if that happened ? How could I handle something if it did happen ? How well could I handle that ? What could this mean for my long term future ? Without questioning, the mind simply jumps to disastrous conclusions or simply reacts with anxiety because of the unkown or unpredictable in any given situation.
14. How many times have you anticipated a social situation to turn out bad and your fears came true ? If it is low, then have you considered that perhaps you could be wrong about most people in how they will react to you.
15. Having a shy and anxious temperament or a chemical brain imbalance does not limit you to robot-like compliance to your feelings and thoughts. Remember realization gives you choice. It's just what you do thats important. Do you give in to the feeling. Do you fight the feeling or do you avoid it ?
16. Social anxiety is purely a state of mind. Have you ever talked to someone and felt comfortable enough to be yourself ? Have you ever done this inside a dream ? If social anxiety is a state of mind what else in the human experience is a state of mind ? Isn't everything ?
17. Learn cbt and meta-ct. They work if you do them properly.
18. Attention-control works enormously for acute anxiety and self-consciousness.
19. Don't waste you time on wondering if social anxiety is caused by an chemical imbalance or chemcial makeup. It won't help you.
20. Mindfulness meditation will show you how reality is constructed. How thoughts and feelings make up most of your world. Then you can have some fun and play around with your own reality.
21. Discard every single concept you have ever learned. A book is not a book. Words are not words. A hot girl is not a hot girl. They are used to understand and make sense of the things we percieve. Once you look at something and understand what it is you have gone to far. You need to move back to the point to where you it has no meaning - the object is no-thing.
22. I believed all my life that when other people say or do "bad" things to me those things were the sole reason behind the hurt. Yet this turned out to be false. If I thought those people's intentions were to hurt I would feel they were better than me and heartless and I was worthless, uncared for, felt humiliated and sad. If I thought they were doing this because they were afraid of my rejection and were repsonding in the only way they knew the sadness and humilation would disappear and I didn't feel worthless or uncared for. I felt sorry for them and even wanted to help them. Why when an object falls on your foot you very rarely get angry at it or feel in a bad way ? Because you think it had no intention. That is how important intention is in the social world and how it causes emotional reaction. Re-think the intentions of others!
23. Pondering about how much I focussed on how much social anxiety I had realized I was avoiding the deeper issues. Anxiety was merely a sign something was wrong. I was afraid of people hurting my feelings through ignoring and mockery and that I was afraid of expressing this fear because it would be ignored or made fun of. Going on the internet explaining my social anxiety, how bad it was and how wide-range it was was a small outlet for explaing my fear of being hurt. Explaining to someone on the interent that I feared others will laugh at me if I said this or did that was not really the same as telling someone to their face that I feared they would not care about my feelings.
24. Social skills is all about getting caught up in the mood of the conversation. If you've ever found yourself caught up in a conversation and just forgot about all your worries and you had no trouble talking then you know what I mean.
