does exposure/experience help you?

[rado31]

Well, in my case not...No matter how many 'successes' i have it is not a guarantee that this panicky monster wont repossess my body again ,
so , i want to normalize my feelings , to become more flegmatic.
The problem is that it so hard to change every single bit of my personality.

 

[InDeepshit]

I know- i find it a struggle to not be emotionally labile in social situations, but found exposure has helped reduce my anxiety. I still freak out a lot and it definitely hasn't changed my personality- so i have come to the conclusion that you need to approach social situations with acquired skills, otherwise your putting yourself out there without knowing what your doing wrong and you don't know how to change it, so you go on making the same mistakes. So i really think it's more to do with not having the right social and coping skills in social situations, which can probably be learned through cognitive behavioural therapy.Thelonger you let it go on, the harder it is to change your pattern of thinking.

 

[livingnsilence]

With increased exposure i have increased anxiety but decreased depression. upping my exposure just gives me more things to wory about (ie. more things i think I said or did that I consider embarassing)

 

[Richey]

The more i include myself at parties or around people, the more exposure, does it help?

i still feel like my conversational skills are just so weak but the fear of showing up goes away slowly, like i could turn up to almost anything im invited to but that doesn't mean i'll be the life of the party ...i'm still very anxious and a nervous wreck being around egos and arrogant, different types of personalities...

its a real challenge being around those who have spent their lives being social butterflies, let me tell you ..people that have many stories and a great memory seem to excel in these situations

Often i find myself taking my phone out and pretending im texting people or i go for a walk without telling anyone ..just to escape the madness.

 

[steel_sparks]

I believe you have to have a certain amount of confidence going into a situation for it to be of any benifitial use, otherwise the anxiety will just take over. I go out every weekend wether i feel anxious before hand or not and i find that If i'm on my own I generally just sit in a corner drinking and occasionally, but not very often someone will come and invite me to dance or say something to me to which i'll generally just stay sitting where I am and try and get rid of them, but if i'm with friends I hardly get anxious at all, I can dance and to a degree i can talk.

 

[Argamemnon]

It usually makes things worse for me. I can't imagine other people having a similar level of social anxiety as I do. I know that's not true of course, but I still can't imagine it.

 

[Infected_Malignity]

absolutely. especially if i'm pushed into an extremely scary/awkward situation. i almost get a rush out of thinking 'oh, so THAT'S the worst thing that could happen?'. the more safe you stay, the more scary your problems are. it's almost like being scared of a shadow in the dark; when you shine light on it, you realize there was never anything to be afraid of... it may have looked terrifying at first, but if you never turned the light on, you'd remain scared to death forever!

 

[Sacrament]

Well, the more you lock yourself up in your own home refusing to get out, the harder it'll be to go out and just be human. You'll feel ugly, disgusting, inferior, and it just doesn't help staying inside for too long.

If you go out often, even if you are not planning to go anywhere in specific, and you go somewhere where there are a lot of people, you may feel some anxiety, but at least you'll feel like you belong.

Don't stay inside for too long, as you'll feel worse and less human everyday.

 

[Tryin]

I know that exposure/experience is important and I am getting loads of it (school, work, volunteer activities, going to pubs, visiting friends).

Yet there are voices in my head (that are sometimes overscreaming everything else) that go like: "This stinks, everyone's looking at you, everyone's thinks what a freak you are, everyone sees your anxiety and pities you and you can't do it and you are failing and failing again and you should have stayed at home, oh yes, you should have stayed at home, that's where you are safe, happy, productive etc."


I know that exposure/experience is important, yet I find it unpleasant. I too often feel that I'm messing up. My socializing situations often feel like so much failure.

 

[sabbath92001]

Trench coats for everyone!

Exposure to me is everyday errands: going to work, greeting people, going to class, asking questions, going shopping, telling the bag boy you'll do it yourself (double paper), etc.

Hello everybody, this is your action news reporter
With all the news that is news across the nation
On the scene at the super market
There seems to have been some disturbance here
Pardon me sir, did you see what happened?
Yeh, I did...I was standing over there by the tomatoes
And here he come
Running thru the pole beans, thru the fruits and vegetables
Naked as a jay-bird
And I hollered over at Ethel...I said don't look Ethel
It was too late, she'd already been incensed...

[Chorus:]
Here he comes, boogie-dy, boogie-dy
There he goes, boogie-dy, boogie-dy
And he ain't wearin' no clothes
Oh yes, they call him the streak
Fastest thing on two feet
He's just as proud as he can be
Of his anatomy
He's gonna give us a peek
Oh yes, they call him the streak
He likes to show off his physique
If there's an audience to be found
He'll be streakin' around
Invitin' public critique...

This is your action news reporter once again
And we're here at the gas station
Pardon me sir, did you see what happened?
Yeh, I did...I was just in here gettin' my tires checked
And he just appeared out of the traffic
Come streakin' around the grease rack there
Didn't have nothing on but a smile
I looked in there and Ethel was gettin' her a cold drink
I hollered...Don't look Ethel
It was too late...She'd already been mooned
Flashed her right there in front of the shock absorbers

[Chorus]

He ain't rude, boogie-dy, boogie-dy
He ain't lewd, boogie-dy, boogie-dy
He's just in the mood to run in the nude

Oh yes, they call him the streak
He likes to turn the other cheek
He's always making the news
Wearin' just his tennis shoes
Guess you could call him unique...

Once again, your action news reporter in the booth at the gym
Covering the disturbance at the basketball playoffs
Pardon me sir, did you see what happened?
Yeh, I did...half-time, I was just going down there
To get Ethel a snow cone
Here he come right our of the cheap seats
Dribblin'...right down the middle of the court
Didn't have on nothin' but his PF's
Made a hook shot and got out thru the concession stand
I hollered up at Ethel, I said don't look Ethel
It was too late...She'd already got a free shot
Grandstanded...Right there in front of the home team

Here he comes...look...who's that with him?
Ethel, is that you, Ethel?
What do you think you're doing?
You get your clothes on!

Ethel, where you going?
Ethel, you shameless hussy
Say it isn't so Ethel
Ethel..................

 

[maggie]

Well, in my case not...No matter how many 'successes' i have it is not a guarantee that this panicky monster wont repossess my body again ,
so , i want to normalize my feelings , to become more flegmatic.
The problem is that it so hard to change every single bit of my personality.

i'm the same as you..no matter how many successes..my anxiety is still lurking somewhere underneath..waiting to pounce :evil: ..but pushing myself to accomplish these small (but really huge) victories, makes me feel less depressed..and definitely improves my self-confidence :wink:

 

[AngelsTears85]

Stress Inoculation
Two pioneering techniques have made a huge impact on the treatment of anxiety and phobia: systematic desensitization and stress inoculation. Systematic desensitization was developed by behaviour therapist Joseph Wolpe in 1958. Wolpe assisted anxious people in developing a hierarchy of stressful scenes related to their phobia. The hierarchy stretched from scenes that produced almost no anxiety all the way to images that were terrifying. With a hierarchy in place, Wolpe provided training in progressive muscle relaxation and helped people desensitize to the frightening scenes by pairing these scenes with deep relaxation.
Systematic desensitization is a simple process: first you relax, then you imagine a stressful scene until it produces anxiety. The scene is immediately erased and the process repeated until the scene no longer evokes any anxiety. Because each new scene is only slightly more anxiety evoking than the one before, you progress in gradual increments all the way to the most frightening items in the hierarchy.
Systematic desensitization teaches you to master your anxiety. The expectation is that you’ll feel little or no anxiety in situations you have desensitized yourself to. This is simultaneously the strength and the weakness of the technique. You feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment and freedom when you’re relaxed in situations that formerly provoked anxiety. But what if anxiety begins to creep back in? What if you’re suddenly hit with a wave of the old panic? Systematic desensitization offers nothing to help you cope with this situation. You’re supposed to be anxiety free—but you’re not.
To solve this problem, Donald Meichenbaum developed stress inoculation. He taught people how to cope with their anxiety—whenever and wherever it occurs. Meichenbaum argued in his book Cognitive Behaviour Modification (1997) that a fear response can be conceived of as an interaction of two main elements: (1) heightened physiological arousal (increased heart and respiration rates, sweating, muscle tension, chills, the “lump in the throat”) and (2) thoughts that interpret your situation as dangerous or threatening and attribute your physiological arousal to the emotion of fear. The actual stressful situation has very little to do with your emotional response. Your appraisal of the danger and how you interpret your own body’s response are the real forces that create your anxiety.
Stress inoculation training involves learning to relax, reducing stress by using deep breathing and muscle relaxation. But there’s more to coping with fear than merely relaxing your body. You also learn to create a private arsenal of coping thoughts. These are used to counteract habitual thoughts of danger and catastrophe that arise in your phobic situation.
As with systematic desensitization, you develop a hierarchy and use deep relaxation prior to imagining each scene. But that’s where the similarity to Wolpe’s technique ends. You don’t cut off each scene when you feel anxious. Instead you continue to imagine the scene for up to a minute while using relaxation techniques and coping thoughts. Instead of trying to master anxiety so it never comes back, you learn effective coping strategies so you develop confidence in your ability to handle any situation, no matter how frightening it may feel.
There is one problem with stress inoculation as a technique to treat phobia. Staying in the stressful scene and coping, if you experience high levels of anxiety, can be unpleasant to the point where you are discouraged from further practice. Research indicates that extensive exposure to high-anxiety situations results in a much greater drop-out rate from treatment than gradual exposure where you’re permitted to escape (Jannoun et al. 1980; Mathews et al. 1977). Conversely, if you are allowed to escape a scene when anxiety reaches a critical threshold, it gives you a greater feeling of control and reduced overall anxiety (Rackman et al. 1986) while losing none of the treatment’s effectiveness (Emmelkamp 1982).
Edmund Bourne, author of The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook (1995), recognized this issue and modified the stress inoculation technique to make it a more user-friendly treatment. Bourne follows the same approach as Meichenbaum—deep relaxation and coping thoughts applied to a hierarchy of phobic scenes—but he gives people a way out if they get too anxious. You continue to cope in the scene unless you reach a threshold of marked anxiety. Then you shut the scene off and return to deep relaxation, exactly as Wolpe’s recommends in systematic desensitization.
In the opinion of the authors, Bourne’s modification of stress inoculation is the best available imagery technique for treating phobias.

Symptom Effectiveness
Stress inoculation and systematic desensitization have been proven effective with a wide variety of phobias in dozens of outcome studies. However, it appears that their effectiveness depends on additional in vivo (real life) exposure. In other words, you actually have to do the things you’ve avoided to successfully complete a phobia treatment program.
Neither stress inoculation nor systematic desensitization is indicated for panic disorder without phobia, generalized anxiety, or interpersonal situations that require assertive behaviour.

Time for Mastery
Learning the relaxation techniques necessary for stress inoculation will take a minimum of two to three weeks. You can construct your hierarchy at the same time you are learning to relax. The systematic visualization can be done daily. Results will usually be noticed in the first several days, but the average phobia will take a week or more to treat effectively with the imagined scenes.
Complete recovery from a phobia requires you to expose yourself in real life to the situations you’re imagining in stress inoculation. Only when you learn to enter situations in vivo that you used to avoid will you be certain that you can learn to cope with your fear.

If anyone wants any more info on this PM me and I'll send you the rest

 

[Jacky1980]

rado31
exposure therapy can surely help you, but it depends on how you handle it. what is your purpose of going through exposure, if you do it for success, for consciously becoming more and more talktive, yes, how many successes you have, you will never rid yourself of social phobia.try using it for a contrary purpose, means you don't expose yourself for becoming brave or talktive, just show your nervousness rather than conceal them, show your timidity,blush as well, than gradually your mental conflict will be relieved and you will natuarally say goodbye to your past.

by the way, I don't know the magnitude of your social phobia, maybe you should do it under the guidance of therapist, good luck!