Ok, how I overcame my social anxiety phobia...

[microeye]

Hello,

Here I would like to share with my experience and how I minimized my social phobia to a great extent, and I say minimized because I don’t want to sound dramatic and say eliminated (which is really what happened).

I’m posting it here because this is where I started, I will make it on three posts, if I can help even one person, then I have achieved my goal

Post 1

I will try for it to be short and sweet.

People for an extremely long time believed that emotions (feeling of anger, fear,…etc) were caused by outside events, someone provokes you and you become angry, something scares you and you become scared. However by closely studying this theory, they discovered that this is not as true as it sounds, they discovered that the same event happened to a group of people and their reactions were as different as their finger prints!

From here evolved the theory that it is our interpretation of the event that provokes different emotions in us. Aha ,…that is very important to understand in our steps towards recovery.

So it is the way we interpret the events that caused us to start having emotions…..wait a minute here…..so you mean to tell me that it is not an automatic process !!!!!....so when I meet people and stand there stunned or sweating or trembling, it is not an automatic reaction……my answer is YES it is not automatic, so by breaking up the process of what happens the minute you meet people or think you will meet people or even see them or answer the phone or think about that presentation you plan to make next week, you will be able to identify the broken piece and simply fix it……YES I is that simple !!!

Ummmm………….so how????

Ok first we need to understand something about our brain.

( Quote from “how to control your emotions” text)

Our brain is made of three parts:

R-complex or the reptilian brain:

The most ancient of the three brains is called the reptilian brain or the R-complex. The R-complex evolved around 200 million years ago, odd enough it still performs in much the same way as it did for our remote ancestors. Much of human behavior can be described in reptilian terms, especially those involving aggression and territoriality.
In addition, the R-complex also influences our emotions. Our brains are a kind of biological computer, then just like all computers, they are run by programs. Furthermore, the older and more primitive a brain, the fewer programs it has to choose from; it also tends to rely almost completely on genetic programs which have been "hard-wired" into the brain. The primitive reptile brain is basically a survival brain, possessing only a few dozen or so ancient programs to choose from.
The human body has a built-in ability to regulate itself; it maintains the settings of various bodily conditions within certain established parameters. Take, for example, body temperature. We have a kind of thermostat which regulates the temperature of the body, just like we have thermostats attached to the heating and air conditioning systems in our homes. We have many of these thermostats regulating and adjusting various bodily factors.
For the most part, the aim of these thermostats is to keep our various bodily systems in balance - something called "homeostasis." The oldest function of emotions was to change the bias or setting of our bodily systems. To illustrate this, imagine a rabbit feeding on some vegetation. In this quiet and calm state, its internal systems are biased at a low setting. Now imagine a fox suddenly shows up. Noticing this, the rabbit reacts by abruptly shifting its internal setting. It has rebiased its homeostasis setting to "emergency." This is similar to suddenly moving the thermostat pointer in your house from 78° to 44° and the heat (or cool air if it's summertime) starts pouring in. When the rabbit changes over to the emergency setting, the drastic changes in various bodily systems prepare the animal for immediate action. "This emergency shift of bias," says Hart, "lies at the heart of what we call emotion."
Now, it is important to keep in mind that in humans, although our reptile brains are fully functional, the various parts of the brain are all interconnected and, consequently, influence one another. Next, we take a look at the old mammalian brain, also known as the limbic system.

The Limbic System
The old mammalian brain, or the limbic system. This brain is about 60 million years old and is far more sensitive and sophisticated than the R-complex.
The limbic system is much concerned with the emotions. Brain physiologists have discovered that the amygdale, a small almond-shaped structure located in the limbic system, plays a major role in both aggression and fear. When the amygdale of a placid domestic animal is stimulated electrically, the animal is roused into a high degree of fear or frenzy. Conversely, if the amygdale of a naturally ferocious animal is surgically removed, it becomes docile and will even tolerate being petted.
The limbic system also seems to be the origin of altruistic behaviors.
As a biocomputer, the old mammalian brain contains a much greater number of programs than its predecessor, allowing it a far wider range of response. In addition, the limbic system plays a major part in the generation of our emotions; in fact, we could call it our "emotion brain."

The Neocortex
The newest brain, the neocortex or new mammalian brain, has only been around for a few million years. In humans the neocortex is also the largest of the three brains - accounting for about five-sixths of the entire brain.
In order to see what role the neocortex plays in our emotional responses we need to back up a little. The R-complex is essentially a survival brain; it is capable of only a handful of behaviors. The limbic system is capable of a much wider range of behaviors, especially those concerning the emotions. As we have already seen, a component of the limbic system, the amygdale, plays a major role in fear and rage. The limbic system is largely responsible for the resetting of various bodily systems during our emotional reactions.
But in order for me to react to something with fear, I need to perceive or interpret that situation as warranting a fearful response. A part of my brain needs to say: "If you've ever had the need to be afraid, it is right now!" If I am walking along the street and suddenly encounter a street gang wielding baseball bats, before I can feel afraid, I need to interpret this situation as a threat. By the same token, if I had been informed by someone that I would come across life-sized puppets in the form of a street gang, I would feel no fear at all; for I now interpret the situation as non-threatening. It is the job of the neocortex to detect patterns and interpret the "meanings" of situations.


End of post 1

 

[aboterika]

interesting topic

go on

waiting for the next post

 

[depressed]

Very interesting indeed, thanks a lot! It revived my interest in biology, especially "evolutionary biology" (viewing living beings as biological computers who algortithms and processing powers evolved etc.)

 

[jenny_uk]

thanks

thats a good point of view you have, waiting for further posts

 

[microeye]

Post 2

First of all, we need to know a very important feature of our brains.

Our brain does not differentiate between living an actual event and imagining living it, in other words if you are on the beach, relaxed on the sand enjoying the sun light on your face, your brain fires neurons that makes you experience this event, oddly enough, sitting in your living room, if you close your eyes and imagine the same scene, your brain fires the same neurons……….that’s why they say the brave dies once but the coward dies a thousand times, its because the coward imagines dying over and over again so its like actually dying over and over again.

This feature of our brain is very important towards our cure, but what is more important, is that the neurons fired are not fired randomly but are rather fired in paths in our brains, so lets say you are planning to mow the lawn, you know exactly what you will do because your brain simply passes the neurons towards the same path it did the first time you learned how to mow your lawn, however the beauty of the human brain is that it can enhance and evolve or in other words alter the path of the neurons of a specific task to create new paths that makes you do the same task better and better, once you reach your desired level, this path is engraved over and over again so you become a master in what you do.

Another important feature is, the more times you fire the neurons in the same path, the deeper and the easier it is for your brain to fire your neurons to travel down that path again. On the other hand the less times you fire them towards a path, the lighter and less easier for your brain to fire your neurons to travel in that path.

These two features: imagining and paths will be very useful to us social phobias,

Now apply the above two facts to a social phobia who is about to go and meet some people, what do you do?

You imagine over and over again the situation, so you brain (which does not know the difference between a real situation and an imaginary one) will keep on firing the same neurons over and over again down the same path that gives your body the message to be anxious, as much as you imagine as many times you fire, in the meanwhile you are actually engraving even deeper the path of neurons that cause you to be anxious, and the more brain finds it more convenient to go down the same path, so its like teaching yourself unconsciously how to be anxious much like you were teaching your self how to mow your lawn, you do that
UNTIL YOU BECOME A MASTER IN BEING ANXIOUS.

Congratulations!

Next post we will use this to our advantage, first thing though is to look up with your eyes as if you’re trying to see the inside of your brain and tell it “You will no longer control me but it is time I control you!”

End of Post 2

 

[depressed]

Excellent, as always.

 

[microeye]

Post 3

BREAKING NEWS ALERT …………………..

“It’s all in your mind”

End of Breaking News.


In other words, you are your own enemy, but probably you knew that all along but always thought you could do nothing about it, largely because you did not know who your enemy was, you knew it was inside of you, but was it the sweat glands that drenched you in social situations , or the veins in your face that made you go red, or was it your voice chords that trembled or maybe was it your heart, how many times you wished to dig out your heart while it was pumping hard nearly about to jump out of your chest, and just throw it away? Who the hell was it? ………

Well now we know our enemy, it’s our brain……surprised?

Social phobias are people who LOVE people, the mere idea of not being able to interact with people hurts us, yet we can’t, and we torment ourselves for it……awkward right?

Now that we know our enemy, lets make it our friend……

Your brain is very cowardly, i.e. it will try to push you down the roads you hate but once you show it that you are aware of what is going on, you can turn it into an alley.

Learning how to monitor your thoughts is not difficult. It is simply a matter of turning your attention inward and tracing back the series of thoughts which ran through your head just prior to experiencing the emotion. Since most people tend not to be aware of their automatic thoughts, the most important step is to know that you need to start looking for those thoughts.
It may also help to start practicing the skill of recalling the images and ideas which floated through your stream of consciousness during the last few moments. To do this, sit quietly and allow your mind to wander. After a minute or so, ask yourself what you are currently thinking about. Once you've identified that, ask yourself what led you to start thinking about what you were thinking about. Continue tracing your thought stream back as far as you can. Usually there is some connecting factor between each set of thoughts. For example, you may discover that you were just thinking about your Apple Macintosh computer. What brought up that topic in your mind? Well, just before that, you were thinking about how your neighbor wanted some advise on purchasing a computer. And what led you to start thinking about your neighbor? The fence between your house and your neighbor's driveway needs to be repainted... You get the idea. You can then apply this skill to tapping your automatic thoughts.

The following example comes from Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders.
A man became frightened whenever he came close to a dog even when there was no chance of being bitten or attacked by the animal. He would even feel nervous when passing a dog which was chained or fenced in or too small to harm him. The man was asked to try focusing on the thoughts which entered his mind the next time he saw a dog. He reported something which escaped his notice before; each time he saw a dog, he had the following thought: "It's going to bite me." By focusing on his automatic thoughts, the man was able to understand why he felt anxious whenever he saw a dog. By repeatedly recognizing his automatic thoughts when exposed to dogs, the man was able to overcome his anxiety and long-standing fear.

FREEZE-FRAMING
A simple, yet highly powerful technique for gaining immediate emotional control is something called "freeze-framing." The term "freeze-frame" comes from the image of a movie projector projecting a movie onto a screen. Many of us tend to get so caught up in the movie (what is going on in the present moment) that we become a kind of ping-pong ball which simply bounces around and merely reacts to the environment. Someone interrupts us while we are on the phone and we automatically react with irritation. We get held up in traffic and we automatically experience frustration. What is wrong with all of this is that we mechanically and unthinkingly indulge in our emotional responses. And furthermore, our emotional "indulgences" - and all emotional responses amount to self-indulgence - color our perceptions and influence our choices and actions. How many times have you found yourself swept up in a tide of emotion, only later to wish you had called a time-out before you made a decision or took a certain action?
Well, with freeze-framing, you can. You can call a time-out and momentarily slow down the movie projector. This enables you to maintain a clear, level-headed perspective even in the midst of all your stress and frustrations. We've all noticed how easy it is to help others to regain their emotional poise. But when it comes to our own stress and strain, it is as if we were powerless to keep ourselves from being swept up by our own emotions. And to further exacerbate the problem, when we find ourselves caught up in negative emotional reactions, we tend to feel such a response is perfectly acceptable and warranted. Freeze-framing enables you to call a time-out and get a clearer perspective of what is happening on the screen.
Doc Lew Childre, the inventor of freeze-framing, describes it as:
"...a technology that gives you the conscious ability to self-manage your reactions, gain clarity and have more quality, fun and well-being in the moment. You gain the power to make better choices and decisions and not be victimized by your reactions to people, places and situations." [my emphasis]
That last phrase is of critical importance. To what extent do we create our own problems and miseries by the way in which we automatically and emotionally react to the world around us?
Freeze-framing is essentially a tool for handling stress. Most of us find ourselves automatically slipping into various emotional responses when we are under pressure, and in doing so, we loose our ability to keep a level-headed perspective. When we freeze-frame, we shift ourselves into neutral; we maintain a high level of clarity and insight even when we are in the middle of the stressful moment.
How to Freeze-Frame
The following are the five steps of the freeze-frame technique:
1) Recognize your stressful feelings and make the decision to freeze-frame (call a time-out). The key skill in this first step is to realize that you are feeling stressed and that you need to disengage before you get swept up in the situation and allow your emotions to take control of you. In this sense, the first step of the freeze-frame technique is like pressing the pause button on a VCR. The key is to begin pressing the pause button at the moment the stress starts to build up. You may find that your emotions take control so quickly and automatically that you are unable to recognize your need to freeze-frame until after the fact. In that case, you simply need more practice. Eventually you will reach a point where you are able to take a time-out while feeling stressed.
2) Shift your focus away from your racing thoughts and emotions. Focus your attention instead on the area around your heart and for about ten seconds or so, pretend you are breathing through your heart. Since the purpose of this technique is to disengage yourself from your disturbed emotions, it is essential that you move your attention away from your thoughts and emotions. This enables you to quickly gain a more clear-headed perspective, which in turn allows you to consider more effective ways of handling your current situation. In doing so, you will experience a major increase in your personal power. You remain in control, rather than allowing your emotions to take over. The reason why your personal power increases is because you are able to immediately step back and get a more objective view of the situation. It is like soothing a worried friend. Since you are not caught up in your friend's emotional state, you are able to see the situation with much more clarity.
The benefits of step #2 are analogous to making a movie. The actors in the movie are necessarily caught up in the middle of the movie-making process. Consequently, their viewpoints are quite limited. But the director needs to stand outside of the entire process; he has a much wider and clearer perspective. Says Childre, "If you want to be the director of your own movie, you have to stop being just one of the characters and step back to see the whole picture."
3) Think about a fun time in your life, a time in which you felt positive. Try to re-experience that moment in your mind. The importance of this step is that it helps to neutralize your negative reaction. When you shift into neutral, you are better able to see the options available to you in the present moment.
4) Ask your heart for a more efficient and effective response to the situation you are freeze-framing. The answer will come from your intuition or source of common sense. As you practice the freeze-frame technique, your ability to both access and recognize answers from your source of common sense or intuition will improve. It is also helpful to develop a sense of confidence in your own ability to give yourself an answer. We are all in possession of vast sources of intelligence and creativity; we need only open ourselves up to them.
5) Open yourself up and listen to the answer your heart gives you. As you practice the freeze-frame technique, it starts to become second nature to you. After a while you will no longer need to think about the steps involved. You will start to do them automatically.
Here is a shortened version of the five steps for quick reference:
1) Recognize your stressful feelings and make the decision to freeze-frame (call a time-out).
2) Shift your focus away from your racing thoughts and emotions. Focus your attention instead on the area around your heart and for about ten seconds or so, pretend you are breathing through your heart.
3) Think about a fun time in your life, a time in which you felt positive. Try to re-experience that moment in your mind. (Note: freeze-framing can be much more effective if you decide beforehand what experience to focus on.)
4) Ask your heart for a more efficient and effective response to the situation you are freeze-framing. The answer will come from your intuition or source of common sense.
5) Open yourself up and listen to the answer your heart gives you.
• The Benefits of Freeze-Framing
The following is a list of some of the main benefits of using the freeze-frame technique. This list is not comprehensive, and I highly recommend reading Freeze-Frame to get a more complete sense of the benefits of this tool.
• Increased emotional control. Freeze-framing enables you to shift into neutral by stepping away from uncontrolled (particularly negative) emotional reactions. It is important to note the difference between suppressing your emotions and neutralizing them. When you suppress your emotions, you don't necessarily rid yourself of them; in a sense, you are just pushing them away, like a gardener pushing seeds into the ground; although you can't see it, the seed is still there. Neutralizing your emotions - freeze-framing - is a matter of disengaging your emotions, like pressing the clutch and taking your manual transmission out of gear. Also, when something is neutralized, it disappears; a neutralized emotion vanishes and no longer has the ability to influence you and your perceptions.
• More productive at work. Using the freeze-frame technique at work can bring you numerous benefits, including most of the other benefits listed here. One specific benefit is that it may help you in dealing with difficult people. By taking a time out when interacting with difficult people, you improve your mental clarity and cease to identify with any negative reactions. You then become more sensitive to that other person's needs by paying attention and listening more. If this difficult person happens to be a client, for example, you may boost your potential of closing a sale. Once you realize just how robotic and mechanical most of us operate, you will realize how ridiculous much of the fiction and negativity between individuals really is and that it could be easily avoided.
• Gives your mind more clarity. This goes to the heart of the freeze-frame technique: maintaining inner poise, emotional control and mental clarity in the face of stress and strain.
• Bring more quality to your relationships. The freeze-frame technique will help to minimize or even eliminate knee-jerk negativity in your personal and professional relationships. (See below for additional information on knee-jerk negativity.)
Using this technique could also help you to form new powerful and positive relationships. One of the areas of our lives where we experience a significant amount of pressure and stress is the area of personal relationships. To the extent that you can help keep the relationship positive and healthy, you will benefit both yourself and the other person. Such a relationship is mutually enhancing, enables both individuals to move toward actualizing their innate potential, and increases personal power.
• Help eliminate the victim mentality. Using the freeze-frame technique enables you to feel more in control of your life rather than feeling a victim of circumstance or fate. This is especially true when it comes to our emotions. Many of us tend to behave as if circumstance and other external factors directly cause our emotional responses. Someone forgets to unlock the door and we feel we can't help but become angry. But this is clearly not the case. By practicing the technique of freeze-framing and increasing your emotional control, you will quickly begin to see just how much choice and control you have in your own life.
• Help you to take back control of your life. This is closely related to what I just said about eliminating the victim mentality. Not only does freeze-framing enable you to gain more control over your emotions, but it gives you more control over your life in general by helping you to think more clearly and reducing your automatic reactions. When you step back from your own emotions, a kind of mental black cloud lifts and you can readily see all of the options available to you, including perhaps, a much more effective way of responding to any given situation.
• Maintain emotional and inner poise. We are all aware of the ebb and tide of our emotions from day to day and even moment to moment. Your mechanic tells you your engine needs to be overhauled and suddenly the world caves in; you have another major problem on your hands. Half an hour later, an old friend who you haven't seen for years drops by your office to say hello and the two of you laugh over old times; suddenly the world is not such a bad place after all. But 20 minutes after your friend leaves, you hear the latest crisis on the news and your pleasant mood evaporates into a bitter cynicism... According to Childre, "Freeze-frame is an opportunity to make on-the-spot attitude adjustments so life doesn't entrap you in an emotional roller coaster."
• Gain more strength, flexibility and common sense in dealing with whatever you encounter in your life. The ability to maintain emotional poise increases your general level of personal power. It also enables you to become a more effective decision-maker, which enhances your probability of success.
• Eliminate knee-jerk negativity. Many of us who have not yet taken the time to become aware of and even resist our automatic reactions may find ourselves indulging in knee-jerk negativity. For example, your wife comes home from work in a crabby mood and complains that you didn't fix supper. You immediately and without prior thought, lash back out at her telling her that you are tired of always being the one who has to be responsible for dinner. And then she fires back and the conflict begins to escalate rapidly. Before long, you don't even know what you are really fighting about. All that is happening is a process of knee-jerk negativity where one person slanders the other and is slandered in return, and on and on. Freeze-framing enables you to side-step this entire process. You can look on and respond to someone else's negativity with a calm detachment. (For those who are familiar with report #05B: Freedom Steps, it is interesting to note that freedom step #16 is "confront compulsive knee-jerk negativity without reacting in like fashion." For more information on the effects of compulsive knee-jerk negativity on personal freedom and power, consult the freedom steps report.)
• Enhance your decision-making abilities. An important factor in good decision-making is being aware of the options available to you in any given situation. When we get pulled into a storm of negative emotions, we loose our ability to think clearly and therefore do not readily see the array of options at our disposal. Furthermore, when our emotions take over, we are no longer calling the shots. In such a position, our options drop down to zero.
In addition, the freeze-frame technique can assist you in making your decisions more consciously. This technique gives you the "conscious ability to self-manage your reactions."
• Greatly improve your ability to communicate with others. Since so many of our responses are purely mechanical and robotic, especially those involving a strong emotional charge, we can vastly improve our ability to communicate with other people by using the freeze-frame technique and taking a time-out. When you approach someone in a strong, negative emotional state of mind, their automatic response is likely to be some sort of defensive stance. By taking a time-out and pulling back from your emotions, you can find a much better response to the situation.
• Begin handling situations more efficiently and effectively. To the extent that you can remain calm and clear-headed under pressure or stress, you will find yourself handling all types of situations much more efficiently and effectively. Whenever there is some sort of emergency situation such as a collapsed building or a tornado strike, there are always a few individuals involved who remain calm and confident while everyone else panics. (In fact, those who panic are downshifting; see the above section on brain physiology.) When we prevent our emotions from taking over even in emergency situations, we increase our power and efficiency, and consequently, our chances of survival.
• Physical benefits of freeze-framing. The freeze-frame tool can go a long way towards improving your physical health and preventing any further damage from emotional stress. With this tool you can: improve the health of your heart, improve your immune system, and even help slow the aging process. Consult chapter 4, "The Scientific Basis of the Freeze-Frame Technology," in Freeze-Frame for a detailed discussion of how this tool can enhance your physical well-being.


Last words,

- If you every catch yourself involved in negative feelings, just shake it off, don’t live the situation before it happens.
- Replace the negative image with a positive one, by that you are engraving the first path in your brain towards freeing yourself from social phobia.
“You are making a presentation tomorrow, the more you think about what will go wrong, the more you training your mind to go down the “go wrong” path, the more you think about yourself in the situation as a success, the more you train your brain to succeed, the easier it will be for your brain to go down that path while you are in the actual event.

- Go out and enjoy the nature, even if you think that you are depressed and out of your mind, go out to the beach, or even watch a nice movie, the catch is, you do not know how your brain benefits from this, well it does BIG TIME, you might not feel it at the moment but it will pay off later.
- When that phone rings answer it ! do not be afraid, it’s a vital step towards cure, small steps make huge results.
- Believe that it is all in your brain and that you are the master of that brain.


Hope the above can help you as it did for me.

If you wan to email me, my email is [email protected]

End of Post 3 and Posts

 

[New_thinking]

This is great

 

[Sophornox]

Overcoming SA intellectually .... hmm, it could work?