Hello, there...
First off I am not sure if I have social anxiety or shyness but I think any help would be relevant to either. My anxiety is marked mostly by fear rather than avoidance. I get nervous walking down the street, I grow short of breath as I pass people but I can comfortably go for a run without feeling anxious. I am able to go to certain places, alone, to watch a football game but other times I'll hesitate to go into a building I haven't been in before or sometimes avoid people...like getting up at 6am to go to the uni. library before it gets full of people I might know. So I think I have elements of SA.
I am willing to bet that there are some like me who have tried to use alcohol to cope with social phobia. I know now that it is the wrong way to go about it...but I am able to socialise well when I drink which leads me to believe that we all have the ability within us but there is a mental block which alcohol helps us get over.
Does anybody have a tip or a trick that they are sometimes able to use to get over this mental hurdle, without the use of alcohol, without using prescription medication. I've tried herbal supplments such as St. John's Wort which just made me irritable and I don't know if I've been getting the right brands. I've tried St. John's Wort, 5-HTP (which after research was at a much lower dosage than needed to be useful, so may try that again) and Rhodiola Rosea with a Vitamin B-12 Supplement which doesn't seem to do much. All of them were brough from Holland and Barrett's, I'm not sure how effective those brands are.
First off I am not sure if I have social anxiety or shyness but I think any help would be relevant to either. My anxiety is marked mostly by fear rather than avoidance. I get nervous walking down the street, I grow short of breath as I pass people but I can comfortably go for a run without feeling anxious. I am able to go to certain places, alone, to watch a football game but other times I'll hesitate to go into a building I haven't been in before or sometimes avoid people...like getting up at 6am to go to the uni. library before it gets full of people I might know. So I think I have elements of SA.
I am willing to bet that there are some like me who have tried to use alcohol to cope with social phobia. I know now that it is the wrong way to go about it...but I am able to socialise well when I drink which leads me to believe that we all have the ability within us but there is a mental block which alcohol helps us get over.
Does anybody have a tip or a trick that they are sometimes able to use to get over this mental hurdle, without the use of alcohol, without using prescription medication. I've tried herbal supplments such as St. John's Wort which just made me irritable and I don't know if I've been getting the right brands. I've tried St. John's Wort, 5-HTP (which after research was at a much lower dosage than needed to be useful, so may try that again) and Rhodiola Rosea with a Vitamin B-12 Supplement which doesn't seem to do much. All of them were brough from Holland and Barrett's, I'm not sure how effective those brands are.