22. Cost/Benefit Technique
Is a negative behaviour or thought or feeling holding you back from wanting to change ? Like you feel like not giving up a thought (can't trust others with
my feelings) or feeling (being bitter and angry over lack of personal life) or behaviour (sitting at home on the computer all day) that you know is most
probably beter to get rid of than holding on to. Negative behaviour, thoughts and feelings may have hidden rewards behind them. Say for example you don't trust other people with your feelings, you write out all the advantages of having this belief and all the disadvantages of the belief.
Advantages
not being hurt
not having to bother with other people all that much
I can make sure I'm on top of others all the time and not let them get me
feel more powerful and special than others for hiding feelings from them
feel unique for having problems
Disadvantages
being emotionally empty
having no connection with anyone
putting others off with aloofness
not able to let others in
You can ask yourself questions at the end such as is it really worth running from emotional pain at every chance I get ? How important to me is being free from emotional hurt ? Is this belief causing more problems for me in the long run. SOCRATIC QUESTIONING works great here. Once you realize the negative thing you are holding onto is not best for you, you will often be released from it and be more open to change.
23. Double-Standard Method
Do you tell yourself off when you goof up in social situations ? If someone you liked did that would you do the same to them and tell them off ? If you had a close friend or one of your children wanted to go out and find friends but never did and stayed at home in their room most of the time or avoided intimacy with others purely because they were terrified of rejection or being hurt, what would you tell them ? Would you agree with their fears and help reinforce it, or would you think their fears are exaggerated ? Wouldn't you point out how wrong they mostly are about their conclusions about others. Do you think you need to always be funny and amusing around others ? Do others do that when your around because they fear your rejection ? Probably not. So why feel you need to do that around them ? Do people make a grand effort around you at being a great conversationalist ? You don't need to agonize in the lunchroom because you aren't saying anything; the other people are not either. Do others go out of their way to keep you happy and to keep your approval ? Do you avoid critiizing or pointing out other people's mistakes when it is best to do so out of fear of losing their approval ? If you do but they don't then how is that fair on yourself. You'd be suprised at just how you treat yourself in comparison to others and usually you end up treating others more better than yourself - but not always. Are you rejecting towards others when they attempt to befriend you but you feel nobody has a right to reject you. Are you being fair to others ?
24. Compassion
Do you ever scorn yourself for mistakes you think you make around others ? Do you feel worthless when others reject you ? Does loss of approval enrage you ? Do you believe you are unworthy of things such as acceptance and love or getting your emotional needs met ? Ok. We will be trying to provoke feelings of compassion to counter negative feelings associated with social anxiety. Feelings of acceptance, caring, softeness, tenderness, warmth and sympathy will sooth the deepest feelings of toxic shame and humiliation. I found imagining having a close opposite-sexed friend do the trick to get the feelings of compassion to surface. You can imagine yourself being humiliated or mistreated and the figure then comforts you. PRactice it. Then when you are hurting for real, this image can be conjured up and soothing can take place. Remember the double-standard method ? Would you laugh and add insult to injury to someone who you liked if they were rejected or made a social mistake ? I certainly hope not! If you are rejected by someone or make a mistake you simply treat yourself with same compassion and understanding that you would towards someone else. Compassion will help you move towards emotional hurt without feelings of contempt, anger or disgust and will soften the impact emotional pain has on you. You will instead feel the sadness and hurt that it causes rather than anger and hatred towards people doing the rejecting. You will feel more open towards revealing vulnerability rather than hiding it and you will begin to appreciate your own hurt.
If you've ever done CBT, the difference between that and compassionate-based cbt is that instead of suggesting a rational alternative you suggest a
compassionate one. One that shows yourself understanding and rooom for percieved faults and comfort for anticipation of social humiliation and embarrassment rather than a cold, rational alternative view. You show yourself love. If cbt has failed then perhaps compassion may work since it works on the emotional level.
25. Mindfulness
You become an impartial observer of your own consciousness. Emotions like anxiety, shyness, embarrassment and humiliation are noticed without judgement. Without judgement there is no aversion to them. They come and they go. When a negative thought first comes into your mind such as "people are watching me and thinking bad stuff", you may then feel self-conscious and anxious over it. But you realize this is happening and you decide to not react to it, rather just notice you are feeling such as way and thinking such a thought. So how do you be mindful ? Well, remember the technique I explained for EXTERNAL FOCUS ? The easiest way I found is to just pick an object to concentrate on and then when the mind wanders off realize it is but let it just do what it wants. You can draw it back onto the object if you want and let it wander off again and then draw it back again and so on. Then when you are in an anxious situation just realize you are and let the feelings occur without reacting to them. You sort of look at your feelings and thoughts much like a scientist.Mindfulness will begin to show you that things everywhere are really mental constructs. Things are really parts put together with labels slapped onto them.
Mindfulness is the mental ability to pick something, whether in the external world or the mind, and focus attention onto it. It occurs so fast that you do not notice it and the thing you focus on has already become solidified into a "thing" or into an ability. With practice you will be able to notice it's function. You will notice that everything that you are aware of happening in the outside world and inside world is actually the result of you using the process of mindfulness to focus attention onto it and then allowing the mind to form concepts. To give you an example of when someting is solidified into a thing, just look at your mouse. You know it is a mouse. When you look at it it gives you a certain feeling. Once you know what the thing is you are looking at, it has been solidified into a concept. This is occuring inside your own mind. You can learn to hold back forming these concepts through midnfulness. I found that keeping the idea to pick the oject to focus on in the back of my mind, would help the mind to stay focussed on it. Mindfulness helps develop concentration in that you are able to notice your own concentration, what it is focussed on, how focussed it is, and when the attention wanders. Then you can quickly re-direct it back onto the object.
26. Paradoxical Magnification
When you think something negative about yourself such as "I'm a weirdo", try to make the idea seem ridiculous by exaggerating it in an absurd fashion such as "I'm the biggest weirdo in the street, no the whole country, no, actually the entire planet". Imagine the President of the U.S.A making a daily comment about you being the most weirdest of weirdos on the face of the Earth. Imagine people everywhere stop and stare and point and call out "weirdo". They even call you up. Imagine people everywhere are driving around with bumper stickers of the you being the biggest werido ever. Everyone wears t-shirts that say the same thing. People drink coffee mugs with your face on there stating "WEIRDO". There are number 1 songs about you being a total weirdo. There are billboards of you on how weird you are. Millions of dollars are spent advertsising this fact about you on tv and radio. There is even a world's biggest weirdo public holiday. When you do something like this, the whole idea of the negative thought can seem absurd and you start to rethink the thought in the first place.
27. Examine the Evidence
If you are afraid of being rejected or humilated or insulted when you go out in public, ask yourself how you know that will actually happen. How many times has this happened before ? What are the statistics of people being openly humiliated when they go out in public ? How many people do you know this has happened to ? How often do you feel like humiliating someone in public ?
28. Experimental/Curiosity Technique
If you are afraid of other people's reactions towards you like being ignored or laughed at or being told off, how will you find out if these things are infact true ? You go in like a scientist undertaking a new experiment, with an attitude of pure curiosity. Drop all expectations and convictions and start
observing by paying attention. You are only testing to see what occurs. No emotional involvment, just detached observation, the kind you must have when visiting a violent crime scene or fatal accident or doing an autopsy.
This is one of the best ways of testing out alternative beliefs when undertaking cbt.
29. Survey Technique
Ask people if THEY wanted to do something but were scared of it would it just be better to stay put. Ask people if they have ever lost their train of thought or felt embarrassed or shy during a social encounter. You'll find most people have felt anxious or shy or embarrassed around others before. It is some comfort to know this since it helps to reduce feelings of being strange for having this issue of being afraid of others if you indeed feel that way.
30. Define Terms
When you apply labels to yourself like "loser", "inferior", or "idiot", what do they actually mean ? How much of a loser are you ? Do you always lose or only sometimes ? How much do you lose compared to others ? If you have won anything, are you still a loser ? Labels and names are just theories about yourself and others. You can play around with them, blow a bubble at them, discard them and just move on.
31. Threat Technique
You HAVE to do the thing you want to do. You have no choice. Eithe do it or suffer the consequences. your kneecaps will be smashed with a sledge hammer. Your sexual organs will be destroyed, a red hot pin will be inserted slowly into your eyeball. your tounge will be cut off and so on. Try to really imagine such a consequence will be waiting for you IF you don't get up and do that thing you want. Which would be more unpleasant intense physical pain or emotional pain ? If you were bullied or smacked a lot you might think that such things will happen again if you don't do the thing you want to do. Is going to the shop and buying the shoes you want so much worse than being punched up by 5 bullies or being belted hard on the arse by one of your parents ?
When an outcome such as severe physical torture is the consequence for not doing something like approaching an opposite-sexed person you like, the mind will normally become capable of doing the thing it fears. Therefore, try to find consequence that will be worse than the fear and it will usually overide the social fear.
32. Self-Punishment Technique
Everytime you give in to a fear and avoid, you punish yourself. You might touch the electric spark that ignites the gas stove. You might eat tasteless boiled vegetables for a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner or something else dull and boring you don't like. Put chilli sauce in your eyes. Put a bar of soap in your outh. Disconnect your tv and computer for a week. Give away half you paycheck to charity. Give up smoking for a month. buy somethign you really want then destroy it. Stay awake for 2 or 3 nights in a row. Havea cold shower for a week. sell or give away things you like such as dvds or cds. Slap yourself on the cheek 10 time really hard or use a belt on you arse - even get someone to do this for you. Explain to them why. Eventually you should reach breaking point and give in. I found pretending to be an authority figure doling out punishment for disobedience seems to help the whole process.
33. Positive Reinforcement Technique
Whenever you go into a feared social situation, you pat yourself on the back. Let's say you afarid of going outside and you just step out onto the front porch. You can reward yoursef by cooking yourself a good meal. This will help get the ball rolling with confronting more social fears. Everytime you succeed
in reducing a fear you reward yourself. Buy something you really like but didn't want to spend the cash on. Make yourself feel good by telling yourself you've done well.
34.Dream Technique
Have you ever had a dram where you are doing something that would scare you to death in real life. I'm talking something social. Do you do things inside
lucid dreams you would never do in reality ? The reason you are able to do such things is because there are no consequences. It is a state of mind. Practice pretending you are in a dream while awake and that consequences do not matter. CURIOSITY helps here. Pretend everything is a dream and that you will wake up soon.
35. Submit & Surrender Technique
Have you ever noticed how some people seem very shy but don't look worried or anxious or distressed ? These people just smile a lot, look down and nod to questions. They might just be acting coy or not be ashamed of being shy. But another reason may be because they don't try to avoid or fight against negative situations or feelings. They submit to them or surrender to them. They are able to humble themselves and swallow up all of their pride. When you have done something wrong do you fight the consequences or try to avoid it ? Or do you surrender to the punishment ? When you surrender the stress dissipates. When an animal is being hunted it runs away, when it is cornered if may fight back, but at some point it may just surrender and allow whatever it thinks will happen to just happen. It no longer experiences stress anymore. When you surrender to the things you fear will happen the same happens to you. Try to put your ego and pride aside in the moment and just submit and surrender. Again, CURIOSITY works well here as does MINDFULNESS. If you have a crush on someone but don't talk to them because you are too shy, try to feel love for them. Try to feel a deep sence of unconditional love, respect and comapssion for that person. This should help disolve pride, fear and shyness and help you to feel humble. And humbleness works against embarrassment and humiliation whereas pride seems to help encourage it in most cases. If you are rejected, your love and repect for the other person will help halt negative feelings of humilation and shame.
Is a negative behaviour or thought or feeling holding you back from wanting to change ? Like you feel like not giving up a thought (can't trust others with
my feelings) or feeling (being bitter and angry over lack of personal life) or behaviour (sitting at home on the computer all day) that you know is most
probably beter to get rid of than holding on to. Negative behaviour, thoughts and feelings may have hidden rewards behind them. Say for example you don't trust other people with your feelings, you write out all the advantages of having this belief and all the disadvantages of the belief.
Advantages
not being hurt
not having to bother with other people all that much
I can make sure I'm on top of others all the time and not let them get me
feel more powerful and special than others for hiding feelings from them
feel unique for having problems
Disadvantages
being emotionally empty
having no connection with anyone
putting others off with aloofness
not able to let others in
You can ask yourself questions at the end such as is it really worth running from emotional pain at every chance I get ? How important to me is being free from emotional hurt ? Is this belief causing more problems for me in the long run. SOCRATIC QUESTIONING works great here. Once you realize the negative thing you are holding onto is not best for you, you will often be released from it and be more open to change.
23. Double-Standard Method
Do you tell yourself off when you goof up in social situations ? If someone you liked did that would you do the same to them and tell them off ? If you had a close friend or one of your children wanted to go out and find friends but never did and stayed at home in their room most of the time or avoided intimacy with others purely because they were terrified of rejection or being hurt, what would you tell them ? Would you agree with their fears and help reinforce it, or would you think their fears are exaggerated ? Wouldn't you point out how wrong they mostly are about their conclusions about others. Do you think you need to always be funny and amusing around others ? Do others do that when your around because they fear your rejection ? Probably not. So why feel you need to do that around them ? Do people make a grand effort around you at being a great conversationalist ? You don't need to agonize in the lunchroom because you aren't saying anything; the other people are not either. Do others go out of their way to keep you happy and to keep your approval ? Do you avoid critiizing or pointing out other people's mistakes when it is best to do so out of fear of losing their approval ? If you do but they don't then how is that fair on yourself. You'd be suprised at just how you treat yourself in comparison to others and usually you end up treating others more better than yourself - but not always. Are you rejecting towards others when they attempt to befriend you but you feel nobody has a right to reject you. Are you being fair to others ?
24. Compassion
Do you ever scorn yourself for mistakes you think you make around others ? Do you feel worthless when others reject you ? Does loss of approval enrage you ? Do you believe you are unworthy of things such as acceptance and love or getting your emotional needs met ? Ok. We will be trying to provoke feelings of compassion to counter negative feelings associated with social anxiety. Feelings of acceptance, caring, softeness, tenderness, warmth and sympathy will sooth the deepest feelings of toxic shame and humiliation. I found imagining having a close opposite-sexed friend do the trick to get the feelings of compassion to surface. You can imagine yourself being humiliated or mistreated and the figure then comforts you. PRactice it. Then when you are hurting for real, this image can be conjured up and soothing can take place. Remember the double-standard method ? Would you laugh and add insult to injury to someone who you liked if they were rejected or made a social mistake ? I certainly hope not! If you are rejected by someone or make a mistake you simply treat yourself with same compassion and understanding that you would towards someone else. Compassion will help you move towards emotional hurt without feelings of contempt, anger or disgust and will soften the impact emotional pain has on you. You will instead feel the sadness and hurt that it causes rather than anger and hatred towards people doing the rejecting. You will feel more open towards revealing vulnerability rather than hiding it and you will begin to appreciate your own hurt.
If you've ever done CBT, the difference between that and compassionate-based cbt is that instead of suggesting a rational alternative you suggest a
compassionate one. One that shows yourself understanding and rooom for percieved faults and comfort for anticipation of social humiliation and embarrassment rather than a cold, rational alternative view. You show yourself love. If cbt has failed then perhaps compassion may work since it works on the emotional level.
25. Mindfulness
You become an impartial observer of your own consciousness. Emotions like anxiety, shyness, embarrassment and humiliation are noticed without judgement. Without judgement there is no aversion to them. They come and they go. When a negative thought first comes into your mind such as "people are watching me and thinking bad stuff", you may then feel self-conscious and anxious over it. But you realize this is happening and you decide to not react to it, rather just notice you are feeling such as way and thinking such a thought. So how do you be mindful ? Well, remember the technique I explained for EXTERNAL FOCUS ? The easiest way I found is to just pick an object to concentrate on and then when the mind wanders off realize it is but let it just do what it wants. You can draw it back onto the object if you want and let it wander off again and then draw it back again and so on. Then when you are in an anxious situation just realize you are and let the feelings occur without reacting to them. You sort of look at your feelings and thoughts much like a scientist.Mindfulness will begin to show you that things everywhere are really mental constructs. Things are really parts put together with labels slapped onto them.
Mindfulness is the mental ability to pick something, whether in the external world or the mind, and focus attention onto it. It occurs so fast that you do not notice it and the thing you focus on has already become solidified into a "thing" or into an ability. With practice you will be able to notice it's function. You will notice that everything that you are aware of happening in the outside world and inside world is actually the result of you using the process of mindfulness to focus attention onto it and then allowing the mind to form concepts. To give you an example of when someting is solidified into a thing, just look at your mouse. You know it is a mouse. When you look at it it gives you a certain feeling. Once you know what the thing is you are looking at, it has been solidified into a concept. This is occuring inside your own mind. You can learn to hold back forming these concepts through midnfulness. I found that keeping the idea to pick the oject to focus on in the back of my mind, would help the mind to stay focussed on it. Mindfulness helps develop concentration in that you are able to notice your own concentration, what it is focussed on, how focussed it is, and when the attention wanders. Then you can quickly re-direct it back onto the object.
26. Paradoxical Magnification
When you think something negative about yourself such as "I'm a weirdo", try to make the idea seem ridiculous by exaggerating it in an absurd fashion such as "I'm the biggest weirdo in the street, no the whole country, no, actually the entire planet". Imagine the President of the U.S.A making a daily comment about you being the most weirdest of weirdos on the face of the Earth. Imagine people everywhere stop and stare and point and call out "weirdo". They even call you up. Imagine people everywhere are driving around with bumper stickers of the you being the biggest werido ever. Everyone wears t-shirts that say the same thing. People drink coffee mugs with your face on there stating "WEIRDO". There are number 1 songs about you being a total weirdo. There are billboards of you on how weird you are. Millions of dollars are spent advertsising this fact about you on tv and radio. There is even a world's biggest weirdo public holiday. When you do something like this, the whole idea of the negative thought can seem absurd and you start to rethink the thought in the first place.
27. Examine the Evidence
If you are afraid of being rejected or humilated or insulted when you go out in public, ask yourself how you know that will actually happen. How many times has this happened before ? What are the statistics of people being openly humiliated when they go out in public ? How many people do you know this has happened to ? How often do you feel like humiliating someone in public ?
28. Experimental/Curiosity Technique
If you are afraid of other people's reactions towards you like being ignored or laughed at or being told off, how will you find out if these things are infact true ? You go in like a scientist undertaking a new experiment, with an attitude of pure curiosity. Drop all expectations and convictions and start
observing by paying attention. You are only testing to see what occurs. No emotional involvment, just detached observation, the kind you must have when visiting a violent crime scene or fatal accident or doing an autopsy.
This is one of the best ways of testing out alternative beliefs when undertaking cbt.
29. Survey Technique
Ask people if THEY wanted to do something but were scared of it would it just be better to stay put. Ask people if they have ever lost their train of thought or felt embarrassed or shy during a social encounter. You'll find most people have felt anxious or shy or embarrassed around others before. It is some comfort to know this since it helps to reduce feelings of being strange for having this issue of being afraid of others if you indeed feel that way.
30. Define Terms
When you apply labels to yourself like "loser", "inferior", or "idiot", what do they actually mean ? How much of a loser are you ? Do you always lose or only sometimes ? How much do you lose compared to others ? If you have won anything, are you still a loser ? Labels and names are just theories about yourself and others. You can play around with them, blow a bubble at them, discard them and just move on.
31. Threat Technique
You HAVE to do the thing you want to do. You have no choice. Eithe do it or suffer the consequences. your kneecaps will be smashed with a sledge hammer. Your sexual organs will be destroyed, a red hot pin will be inserted slowly into your eyeball. your tounge will be cut off and so on. Try to really imagine such a consequence will be waiting for you IF you don't get up and do that thing you want. Which would be more unpleasant intense physical pain or emotional pain ? If you were bullied or smacked a lot you might think that such things will happen again if you don't do the thing you want to do. Is going to the shop and buying the shoes you want so much worse than being punched up by 5 bullies or being belted hard on the arse by one of your parents ?
When an outcome such as severe physical torture is the consequence for not doing something like approaching an opposite-sexed person you like, the mind will normally become capable of doing the thing it fears. Therefore, try to find consequence that will be worse than the fear and it will usually overide the social fear.
32. Self-Punishment Technique
Everytime you give in to a fear and avoid, you punish yourself. You might touch the electric spark that ignites the gas stove. You might eat tasteless boiled vegetables for a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner or something else dull and boring you don't like. Put chilli sauce in your eyes. Put a bar of soap in your outh. Disconnect your tv and computer for a week. Give away half you paycheck to charity. Give up smoking for a month. buy somethign you really want then destroy it. Stay awake for 2 or 3 nights in a row. Havea cold shower for a week. sell or give away things you like such as dvds or cds. Slap yourself on the cheek 10 time really hard or use a belt on you arse - even get someone to do this for you. Explain to them why. Eventually you should reach breaking point and give in. I found pretending to be an authority figure doling out punishment for disobedience seems to help the whole process.
33. Positive Reinforcement Technique
Whenever you go into a feared social situation, you pat yourself on the back. Let's say you afarid of going outside and you just step out onto the front porch. You can reward yoursef by cooking yourself a good meal. This will help get the ball rolling with confronting more social fears. Everytime you succeed
in reducing a fear you reward yourself. Buy something you really like but didn't want to spend the cash on. Make yourself feel good by telling yourself you've done well.
34.Dream Technique
Have you ever had a dram where you are doing something that would scare you to death in real life. I'm talking something social. Do you do things inside
lucid dreams you would never do in reality ? The reason you are able to do such things is because there are no consequences. It is a state of mind. Practice pretending you are in a dream while awake and that consequences do not matter. CURIOSITY helps here. Pretend everything is a dream and that you will wake up soon.
35. Submit & Surrender Technique
Have you ever noticed how some people seem very shy but don't look worried or anxious or distressed ? These people just smile a lot, look down and nod to questions. They might just be acting coy or not be ashamed of being shy. But another reason may be because they don't try to avoid or fight against negative situations or feelings. They submit to them or surrender to them. They are able to humble themselves and swallow up all of their pride. When you have done something wrong do you fight the consequences or try to avoid it ? Or do you surrender to the punishment ? When you surrender the stress dissipates. When an animal is being hunted it runs away, when it is cornered if may fight back, but at some point it may just surrender and allow whatever it thinks will happen to just happen. It no longer experiences stress anymore. When you surrender to the things you fear will happen the same happens to you. Try to put your ego and pride aside in the moment and just submit and surrender. Again, CURIOSITY works well here as does MINDFULNESS. If you have a crush on someone but don't talk to them because you are too shy, try to feel love for them. Try to feel a deep sence of unconditional love, respect and comapssion for that person. This should help disolve pride, fear and shyness and help you to feel humble. And humbleness works against embarrassment and humiliation whereas pride seems to help encourage it in most cases. If you are rejected, your love and repect for the other person will help halt negative feelings of humilation and shame.
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