How to overcome social anxiety! A definitive guide

[jdp343]

So as I posted before, my life has done a complete 180 over the past year. It all started when I began seeing a psychiatrist. He put me on Paxil, which helped a little, but he had much bigger plans for me. His idea for a cure? Radical exposure therapy and I 100% promise you it will work IF you actually do it. No kidding, follow this plan and in a month you'll feel like a million bucks and develop confidence. Me - Little old shy me - is now a ladies' man and MORE confident and socially skilled than the average person! Social ability is a skill, not a character trait, and anyone can learn it... Our problem is for various reasons - anxiety, fear, a bad upbringing, etc. - we never learned it, but we still can! It'll be a grueling process but it's worth it! So without further ado, here's how to do it:

It's a two-prong approach: first get over your self-consciousness and then learn to talk to people. You will feel like you're having a heart attack the first time you do it and the second and third and fourth... That's a good thing! The idea is to face this fear head on!
Step one: make a fool of yourself! I mean do some really retarded and embarrassing stuff that will make everyone look at you and think you're crazy or strange or whatever else. That means to to a crowded place and scream at the top of your lungs. If you're a guy go shopping at Victoria's Secret. Order a Big Mac at Starbucks. Do push-ups in the middle of the mall. Pick your nose in front of people. If the idea of doing something scares you to death, the you MUST force yourself to do it!

Step two: talk to people
This advice is mostly for guys but should be adaptable to girls too. What's the scariest social situation for a guy? Talking to a cute girl you don't know. So do that! Go up to a girl you see in the street and tell her she's beautiful. Ask about what she's up to and tell her to give you her number. Her reaction is irrelevant, the key is to get over the fear of doing it. Say hello to every person you pass on the sidewalk, compliment their hat or shoes or shirt.

Repeat steps one and two a few hundred times and you are a new person!

Some pointers: take a friend along and take turns challenging each other to do this stuff because doing it on your own is really really hard. Preferably do this everyday, because even now if I slack I feel the anxiety returning. Fake confidence until it's real: keep your head up, never be the first to break eye contact, speak slowly and loudly.

And the best part of it? Immediate results. You will be scared to death doing it, but after even a few successful attempts the adrenaline rush is indescribable! And successful is defined as did the exposure task you set. If you try to talk to a girl and she gives you a **** off reaction, which will happen often, you still succeeded! Good luck and if you need more info ask for it! I live in the NYC area so if you're around here and want to do it with me, I'd love to help out!

 

[bsammy]

a decent guide but basically you recommending repeated exposure therapy...thing is, i know quite a few people with social anxiety that have done exposure therapy and at the end they still have SA..just because a program works for you doesnt mean it will be a magic bullet for everyone..many people need medications plus therapy and even then might not get over their SA...

believe it or not, cbt or exposure therapy has only a 50-60& success rate

 

[Pacific_Loner]

I'm very sceptical about this whole "make a fool of yourself and ask random people their number and be cured in less than 30 days" theory, but I'm glad it worked for you. Exposure worked for me as well, but it was smoother exposure (travelling alone, talking on the phone, going to parties and bars, small talk with neighbours and co-workers, challenging myself and building some self-esteem), and success was on a much longer term (years). Less of a trauma.

 

[jdp343]

The way I saw it was desperate times called for desperate measures... If SA has a moderate impact on your life then taking it slow makes sense. If it's to the point of get better or kill yourself, then for me I say slow and steady won't cut it.

 

[jdp343]

And fwiw my psychiatrist has 100% faith in this system

 

[bsammy]

The way I saw it was desperate times called for desperate measures... If SA has a moderate impact on your life then taking it slow makes sense. If it's to the point of get better or kill yourself, then for me I say slow and steady won't cut it.

i think most therapists would disagree with you tbh..social anxiety disorder is not something you just jump into and throw yourself into the fire so to speak..if you have mild social anxiety then that approach could work but for people with actual disorders, they need a complete remodeling of their thought processes etc etc..the people i have talked to that have SA disorder, they have been treated with medication and exposure therapy and it has taken them years to even see small amounts of progress..some have made more than others..

u should just change thread title into "what helped me overcome my SA!"...

 

[jdp343]

All I can say is it helped me and multiple other people. And your right, most des would disagree. In fact mine told me he consulted with one of the top experts on SA about this plan and they thought the idea probably wouldn't work. Doesn't matter, cause it did! And my SA was truly severe and lifelong. As far as changing thought patterns goes, fake it till you make it really is true. Thoughts affect actions but actions also affect thoughts. And I think most of us here spend too much time thinking to begin with. I sure do.

 

[bsammy]

so you have completely overcome your SA?bam its gone for good or do you have to keep doing certain things to keep it submerged?

i def agree, many of us think entirely to much...lol

 

[MotherWolff]

So as I posted before, my life has done a complete 180 over the past year. It all started when I began seeing a psychiatrist. He put me on Paxil, which helped a little, but he had much bigger plans for me. His idea for a cure? Radical exposure therapy and I 100% promise you it will work IF you actually do it. No kidding, follow this plan and in a month you'll feel like a million bucks and develop confidence. Me - Little old shy me - is now a ladies' man and MORE confident and socially skilled than the average person! Social ability is a skill, not a character trait, and anyone can learn it... Our problem is for various reasons - anxiety, fear, a bad upbringing, etc. - we never learned it, but we still can! It'll be a grueling process but it's worth it! So without further ado, here's how to do it:

It's a two-prong approach: first get over your self-consciousness and then learn to talk to people. You will feel like you're having a heart attack the first time you do it and the second and third and fourth... That's a good thing! The idea is to face this fear head on!
Step one: make a fool of yourself! I mean do some really retarded and embarrassing stuff that will make everyone look at you and think you're crazy or strange or whatever else. That means to to a crowded place and scream at the top of your lungs. If you're a guy go shopping at Victoria's Secret. Order a Big Mac at Starbucks. Do push-ups in the middle of the mall. Pick your nose in front of people. If the idea of doing something scares you to death, the you MUST force yourself to do it!

Step two: talk to people
This advice is mostly for guys but should be adaptable to girls too. What's the scariest social situation for a guy? Talking to a cute girl you don't know. So do that! Go up to a girl you see in the street and tell her she's beautiful. Ask about what she's up to and tell her to give you her number. Her reaction is irrelevant, the key is to get over the fear of doing it. Say hello to every person you pass on the sidewalk, compliment their hat or shoes or shirt.

Repeat steps one and two a few hundred times and you are a new person!

Some pointers: take a friend along and take turns challenging each other to do this stuff because doing it on your own is really really hard. Preferably do this everyday, because even now if I slack I feel the anxiety returning. Fake confidence until it's real: keep your head up, never be the first to break eye contact, speak slowly and loudly.

And the best part of it? Immediate results. You will be scared to death doing it, but after even a few successful attempts the adrenaline rush is indescribable! And successful is defined as did the exposure task you set. If you try to talk to a girl and she gives you a **** off reaction, which will happen often, you still succeeded! Good luck and if you need more info ask for it! I live in the NYC area so if you're around here and want to do it with me, I'd love to help out!

Finally! Something positive and encouraging to see here at Social Phobia World. Woo hoo! I love this guide. I will have to save this to my laptop. I know this works cause I have done it subconsciously. However, I am still a very introverted woman cause sometimes I wanna be alone and withdraw from people. The way I see it, I should have the right to choose who I wanna speak to. Some days I may speak to an individual and other days I will avoid eye contact with them. I don't think it has anything to do with SA. I just don't want to be bothered. But this guide is very true to its word. I absolutely loved it. Great job! Keep up the positivity!:thumbup::bigsmile:erfect:

 

[jdp343]

Glad to help motherwolff! And you're right, sometimes it's not SA, it's just that we are introverts and don't feel like talking, or other stuff in our life has us stressed and socializing is just too much.

Bsammy- it's an ongoing process, if you don't talk to people for awhile you'll slip, but that's true of everything: did you practice your foreign language after high school? If not you probably suck at it now. I've realized action is better than thought usually.

 

[megalon]

I don't doubt that it works, but it's much easier said than done. Obviously it would require a lot of motivation and you'd need to focus on that objective at all times. Probably mentally exhausting, but manageable in small doses.
I'm usually on the lookout for ways to step outside my comfort zone, albeit not to the extreme you described. It has been somewhat successful. Looking back I can see that I'm a different person than I was a few years ago, before I found out what this affliction was. There are still plenty of times when my confidence leaves me and I regress into old habits, and start acting like a frightened lost puppy.

 

[BlueDays]

*reads through the thread*

*sticks layers of duct tape over her mouth*

*calmly walks out of thread* .........

 

[Kiwong]

Facing fears sounds the way to go. I wouldn't want to get arrested though.

 

[Pacific_Loner]

An idea: Maybe the kind of exposure you are proposing is the way to go for extroverted social phobics, but smoother exposure is the way to go for introverted, because even without SA we wouldn't want to go out there and annoy people anyway, so it's kinda irrelevant?

 

[jdp343]

Quite possibly, I'm not saying you have to do exactly what I did. For me, I was at the point of fix this now or throw myself in front of a car, so you can see why I decided to just say **** it and go all out. But my main message is the only way to get over SA is to face it head on. You can think and think about it all you want but that won't fix it. You learn to play the guitar by playing the guitar... You learn to talk and not be self conscious by talking and not being self conscious , no matter how scary it is!

 

[jdp343]

And it's funny about annoying people, I hate feeling like I'm bothering someone but at the same time I needed to be more assertive. So if I saw a girl walking around in headphones I'd signal to her to take them off, and then just say whatever. The mindset I learned was that you don't need permission to talk to someone or ask them a question. For us introverts we think actions like that are more aggressive than they really are

 

[Bronson99]

*reads through the thread*

*sticks layers of duct tape over her mouth*

*calmly walks out of thread* .........

Not that I'm a strong advocate of his approach (I assume it will work for some people in varying degrees) but in your opinion is there a better way to combat SA? Not trying to put you on the spot, just wondering if you have some other insight toward this.

As for the approach itself, it simply seems too extreme for me.. i mean if things go bad, you have to wonder if that's going to affect your reputation, if people will remember this "odd man/woman" doing things clearly out-of-character... etc. Not such a good thing!

 

[Bronson99]

An idea: Maybe the kind of exposure you are proposing is the way to go for extroverted social phobics, but smoother exposure is the way to go for introverted, because even without SA we wouldn't want to go out there and annoy people anyway, so it's kinda irrelevant?

You make a good point there. Extroverts tend not to mind the impression they make on others, good or bad.

I'm thinking this approach is simply NOT for a highly sensitive introvert who's wary of everyone.

 

[cosmosis]

Not worth it. If all I wanted was to be outgoing and not be afraid, then something like this would likely work. But it requires disconnection from people. I was born to care about what people think, to want to deeply connect with others. I would rather be afraid than disconnected.

 

[skins]

well I'm glad you think the therapy has helped, but I dare say time will test you...there is natural fluctuations in the severity of the condition over time if you ask me, some days maybe even lasting weeks, depending on my mindset and mood etc, I feel the anxiety is not so severe...if I just so happened to be doing therapy during one of these less severe times I may too have been fooled into thinking it was the therapy, the placebo of it then kicks in and you grow even more confident, all the more keeping the anxiety at bay with this renewed confidence and you start thinking hey i'm completely cured!!...hot dang!


I can almost gurantee you however at some point in space and time down the track, be it at a party, an interview, or talking to the hot check out chick at the local grocer you will suddenly come to the realisation "hey my anxiety is just as bad as it has ever been right now" what now..