New member-I just realized I am a social phobic

[freesprit]

Yesterday I was thinking about why on earth I am so tense around people and it poped in my mind that I might have a social phobia. I researched the net all night and visited many forums and now I realize that a lot of people suffer from similar sympthoms.

Yesterday me and my co-workers went out for lunch and as usual i started feeling very tense as we took off. My hands were sweating and I was feeling dizzy. i have been working at his place for 2,5 years and I still feel nervous around people. The very weird thing is I think i am very good at hiding it. Everybody thinks that I am this pretty, self-confident and cool girl. But the reality is I am exhausted trying to hide the anxiety I experience dealing with all social situations. I am usually better at one-to-one interactions but sometimes even one-to-one communication become arduous.

Being so tense hinders my communication abilities. For example sometimes my thoughts freeze and I do not know how to respond to people. Sometims when i am asked a question I say something stupid which makes me feel ashamed. The worst is with jokes. When interacting with people I am never comfortable enought to make jokes or respond to other peoples jokes in a smart fashion. Despite all what I feel people seems to like spending time with me and are attracted to me. Sometimes I wonder if I am creating all of this in my head. Maybe I am being to harsh to myself.


I want peace. I want to be comfortable with people. I want to stop acting like I am not. Anybody feeling the same??

 

[Marvolo]

(...)Being so tense hinders my communication abilities. For example sometimes my thoughts freeze and I do not know how to respond to people. Sometims when i am asked a question I say something stupid which makes me feel ashamed. The worst is with jokes. When interacting with people I am never comfortable enought to make jokes or respond to other peoples jokes in a smart fashion. (...) I want peace. I want to be comfortable with people. I want to stop acting like I am not. Anybody feeling the same??

Hi.
I understand you very well; also with the fear of saying something stupid in response to some questions - I'm often afraid that I'll make a fool of myself by saying (or not saying something proper...) sth stupid about a quite simple or obvious topic; do you have this feeling too?
Welcome to SPW, here are many people feeling the same... :wink:

 

[LittleMissMuffet]

Hi FreeSpirit,

Let me offer you a technique that so far has truly helped me. And I have been dealing with some for of social anxiety most of my life, and the last 8 years or more have been the most difficult.

Try this simple technique whenever you are anxious and/or worried about your anxiety... It is called Mindfulness. Without analysing or trying to do anything at all about your anxious symtoms or even trying to 'change perception' -only focus on being aware of your feelings, thoughts and sensations as they come to you. Watch them with the attitude of an Impartial Observer.

...So far, the more familiar I am with doing this technique and the clearer it is established in my mind, the more my worries seem to dissipate.
There is a very insidiuos trap with anxiety that can be so easy to get stuck in ...so I am offerring you this piece of advice in hope that you don't waste time trying to find other ways that could very well actually exasperate the problem. You may of course be able to find a solution on your own, however, at least you could try this method to see whether it works for you. Yet I have to say from personal experience that it can be very easy to get into a trap of trying to do something about anxiety which has the inadvertent effect of making it worse.

Mindfulness steers well clear of judgements and this is so important when it comes to any kind of 'vicious circle'. ...I still don't have a great understanding of how and why other methods I used before did not help and may have even made things worse; and why it is that since I've been using Mindfulness that situations have become manageable for me again. Each day seems to be a bit better and it is like I am slowly waking up.

The beauty of it is that the whole attitude is based on acceptance of how I feel and that through this acceptance I can bring order and balance to my emotions, rather than trying to 'discipline' them or control them. With this method, making a 'mistake' is not so awful because I base everything that means anything upon just observing and being conscious of what is happening and how I think and feel. -I'm not lost with nowhere to anchor my self to -I base my self on doing this and 'the goal' is 'the process'.

If I let in my thoughts they find they don't want to stay so much -my feelings and thoughts. IT is like developing a patience with my self and my strong -even hyper- sensitivity. And that is really all that I think I am developing with mindfulness -a greater tolerance to outer stimuli and an 'emotional stamina' to accept and be patient with my strong reactively inclined emotions.

So this is my piece of advice to you. To use Mindfulness as a way of letting your feelings, outer sensations and your thoughts have a place within you and that with the acceptance of these strong feelings,sensations,and thoughts that you develop a greater tolerance. This way you won't demonise your sensitivity and in turn judge yourself -which is a losing battle and this maintains a vicious circle and inner conflict. Instead you will develop stamina to give your sensitivity room to be and then controlling it comes naturally.

Well I hope it works for you. It has been helping me.

 

[freesprit]

Marvolo: You have understood me so good ! Thank you for replying The worst is the simple and obvious conversations. They require spontainity which I lack most of the time I envy people comfortable enough to just let go and not afraid of what to say. Will we be like that one day ? :?

LittleMissMuffet: Thank you very much for sharing your experiences. Impartial Observer is not a foreign concept to me since I have been practising Raja Yoga for the last 2 years and as we call it-Detached Observer-is the key element to how one meditates through Raja Yoga. I am very happy that this has worked for you. Knowing that one of us has managed to step out of this problem has given me hope. I will try the Detached Observer mindset during my interaction with people. What I am wondering is, while you are focusing on being aware of your thought and feelings are you able to carry on a conversation with a group of people. Usually during yoga I shut down and it is much easier to do this in silence.

A couple of question to both of you: I am new to this concept so I am just curious if you have ever considered taking medication or therapy? Therapy could be quite expensive and medication could be addictive so I am not sure if I would resort to either one. But would you? Do you know anyone whom has?

Last question: Do you think low self-esteem is the probable cause of this phobia?

Thanks,

 

[LittleMissMuffet]

Hi Freespirit,

I don't at all find it too difficult to watch -or rather to be aware- of my thoughts, feelings and sensations. In fact, this is a welcome change from the enormous effort that goes into my anxious thoughts and feelings. Being that I am often so engrossed on the initial strong feelings and thoughts and also in the struggle to repress and control such strong feelings and thoughts ...so concentrating on what I am feeling and thinking, is very much a welcomed relief. It is a walk in the park by comparison.

And perhaps also it is a question of habit. That once a person has practised this techniques enough in social situations, it is easier to implement next time. ...For one thing, I don't need so much to tell my self to be aware of my thoughts and feelings and seem to do this more automatically.

As for therapy and medication... I have been using the first for about 6 months now. Unfortunately the therapy that I use and which is most effective in my experience was not the kind that my psychiatrist had been using -she had been using CBT. Unfortunately, psychiatrists only know so much and also Mindfulness based therapies are quite new to Western Psychotherapy. Only in this last decade really, to my knowledge, has such style of treatment been catching on in the West (I believe that it has much to do with new technology which has made it possible to study the brain's of meditators and led to meetings between the Dalai Lama and prominent Western scientists nad psychotherapists).

So, by all means look for a therapist. However, watch that they do not undermine your own individual authority. I think that professional psychiatrists have a tendency to be a little arrogant -all the while using methods that may not actually work. And they may also have a tendency to make the patient feel intrinsically flawed -creating this all too marked dividing-line between patient from therapist ...and making a patient feel considerably worse coming out than they did going into their consulting room. So, be careful. I would basically trust first and foremost my own experience. -It is interesting and even important to note that 1 in 4 professional therapists will actually diagnose a healthy person as having a 'mental disorder'; and it is also interesting to see the statistics that the mentally ill in the third world (where they are called 'special' rather than emphais placed upon their defects) do considerably better than the mentally ill in the First world, where we have whole fields of study devoted to pyschological 'disorders', medication etc -at least this is what my councellor told me.

..I see a councellor as well as a psychiatrist (initially just because I had started seeing her months before my first appointment with the psychiatrist). This is one way of getting a second opinion -which I think is important when a person is at a fragile stage, as I was about 6 months ago, and their confidence can take a sharp hit if the wrong advice or information is given. So, take how vulnerable you feel into consideration -some psychiatrists unfortunately are prone to taking a bit of a power trip. If you do not believe me, I feel that you will likely find this out for yourself. So I am just preparing you. (-some of course, no doubt, will be excellent, however.)

Medication.... I still figure that I try to change things through my thinking. THis is a whole debate in it self. Some people find medication a sort of 'easy way out' and relying on a quick fix that won't actually solve the problem. Others see it more as an aid, and an extra advantage to even up the odds a bit so that then the new thinking they are trying to put into place sticks more effectively. And if a person feels one way about medication, they are prone to not being able to see the other side's point of view. THis is why the choice to use medication or not is usually a firey issue.

I would, again, trust my own experience. So I won't tell you what yours is of course.

For me, I side more towards not wanting to use it but being open to possibly using it one day if my struggle persisted and probably only as a temporary aid to give me some leverage to get out of a rut -I don't think I would want to rely on it forever. ...Why not see how things go for you, going with what you think is best for you, whilst finding out information and keeping an open mind. -Kind of what you are doing now by asking!

 

[Edon1987]

Hi, welcome to SPW. if you need someone to talk to just look up my past posts and find out my info im looking for friends to talk with so i never relapse into the world of fear i fell into.

 

[Marvolo]

Marvolo: You have understood me so good ! Thank you for replying The worst is the simple and obvious conversations. They require spontainity which I lack most of the time I envy people comfortable enough to just let go and not afraid of what to say. Will we be like that one day ? :? (...)

It's nice to know that somebody else understands your feelings, isn't it?
Yes, the times when I was able (sometimes, obviously...) to feel free among others and even joke a bit (true, that it sounds strange? :?) are so far, that I can hardly believe it was really me...
But today is the holiday of also hope - so let's have hope that we'll be like the other, average people...

 

[lolly23]

go to youtube and theres a video on how to do eft.ITS AMAZING you have to learn practice for about half an hour but it WORKS!!!!!!!!!!
I TRIED IT THE OTHER DAY AND I WILL CARRY ON USING IT.

 

[lolly23]

go to youtube and theres a video on how to do eft.ITS AMAZING you have to learn practice for about half an hour but it WORKS!!!!!!!!!!
I TRIED IT THE OTHER DAY AND I WILL CARRY ON USING IT.

 

[lolly23]

go to youtube and theres a video on how to do eft.ITS AMAZING you have to learn practice for about half an hour but it WORKS!!!!!!!!!!
I TRIED IT THE OTHER DAY AND I WILL CARRY ON USING IT.