Exposures: helpful/harmful

[Abandon]

It seems to me that in a majority of the kinds of therapy that work for social anxiety, exposure to social situations is a key element. The problem that comes up with that is: Each of us has been exposed to many more social situations (that make us anxious) over the course of our lives than we could possibly encounter in any sort of therapy. And this has not made us get better.

So, the question that I asked myself was: what makes some exposures theraputic, and others not? I did some research and thought about my own experiences, and this is what I came up with:

Social anxiety is a disorder that twists our perception of social situations. When we are exposed to a social situation which, by all objective criteria, has a neutral or positive outcome for us, we will often interpret it as a negative outcome. The exposure will therefore only make us more anxious the next time we are in a similar situation.

So, here is a list of five ideas that I came up with (with the help of the research that I did) to make exposures helpful rather than harmful:

1. Remember that nervousness does not equal failure. If you're not nervous, then you aren't exposing yourself to a feared situation, which you need to do to get better.

2. Remember that you aren't trying to be perfect in the social situation, you're just trying to expose yourself to it. If you've exposed yourself to it, regardless of how well that exposure went, you suceeded.

3. When you start to analyse the situation afterwards (which, at least, I know I can't keep myself from doing), try to evaluate the outcomes objectively. Did anything go wrong? If something did go wrong, how bad is it really? One tip for staying objective is to remember the last time you saw someone act similarly in a social situation and think about what you thought of that person.

4. Start small. Don't immediately go into the situations that you fear most, because it will be hardest to keep yourself from having a twisted perception of those situations. You need to build up to those scarier situations.

5. Use relaxation techniques before/during the situation. I've started to use something called autogenic training, which seems to be working well. Here's a link: http://www.guidetopsychology.com/autogen.htm

Hope this helps some people!

Geoff

 

[phoenix1]

Great post!

I agree that exposure by itself isnt that effective because its not an unnatural fear. For example, someone who is overly terrified of dogs, could be exposed to dogs and realize that they arnt really that dangerous in normal situations. But with Social anxiety, our own brain can make anything negative. In fact its worse - Because its anxiety itself that we hate so much, and the more we fear, the more damage we get. So any experience can be bad experience.

Like you said, the trick really is to go in with the right frame of mind when trying exposure.

I really love the 5 tips and I think we should definately keep it in mind.

If I could add anything, it would be to make sure NEVER go into a situation thinking about how you can avoid saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing. This is what we do everytime and this is that will take you right back into anxiety and pain. Stop focuing of preventing the pain and failure. That will create the negative experience itself.

We need to go into situations with the mindset on the positives aspects of succeeding. Think about the experience you will receive. Think about the confidence of doing what you want to do socially. And immediately reward yourself for doing well. Even if you just utter a sentence or two. It's work well done.

 

[Butterflies]

Interesting - I agree. The key is BALANCE. I know that if I push too hard I come off worse.

I try and balance the 'IN' and 'OUT'. If I have been 'OUT' too much then I just set myself up for disaster.

And slow steps - let's celebrate each small accomplishment - and know each time we become stronger.

 

[redneck]

I think that it would be a good idea to do this exposure stuff gradually, not to throw yourself in at the deep end. Start with some basic social interactions and then, when you built on confidence try to undertake some more challenging projects. Try to change your thinking before changing your behaviour. Start to question your anxious predictions.Do not be so hard on yourself after your experiment is finished..Praise yourself for all your efforts ( "I could have run away but I am here and this my success!!! I made it". so later when you approach similar situations you can say to yourself that I' ve been here before- I could have handled this stuff back then so I would be able to manage this situation now either !) and definitely remove "failure" from your personal vocabulary. There is no such thing as failure when doing your exposure stuff it is just a new experience which would contribute to your ultimate success!
Have you ever tried to act "as if" how I would act if I was confident person", how would you approach that particular situation then?