SA is overcome by gaining higher opinion of ourselves!

[of_darkness]

Referring to the original post....

I think low self esteem is a huge part of it, i dont exactly actively think "oh he/she is more popular/better than me" but i definately thnk that is one of the sources of ,my SA.

Recently i have been tyrying to think of myself in a more positive way, and actually comparing myself to other people. It is quite easy to think you have it bad, but if you look around everyone is 'the same', in whatever way. They would have a reason to comment on an aspect of you that is odd, but instead all i get comments on is my quietness.

Before, i was always extremely self conscious, but once you get rid of that and see yourself as an individual with your own tastes and opinions, everything just changes. I try not to give the intimidating (or attractive etc.) people a reason to appear intimidating to me, they probably aren't like that in their eyes. :?

(those are my thoughts, and it definately works in my situation.)
It sounds so simple, and it really is

 

[charlieHungerford]

Blackcap, I am not going to try and undo my fears, I am simply going to work at gaining confidence in myself. That is the whole point of why I am so excited about this, I don't believe CBT is correct to be honest. Its all about my value of myself rather than fearing people. Instead of thinking of myself in such a negative way I am going to really rapidly start focusing on liking myself and believing in myself. It isn't about addressing fears of the people I fear or fears of being anxious, etc.

I am sorry if you feel I am writing this post in terms of believing I know how others suffer, I don't, it is purely me focusing on my own problems. This is the correct way for me I am totally convinced.

As for you, well I have read that habbit is such a huge factor in SA issues. You got into the habbit of fearing strangers from the beginning and have based all beliefs on this habbit, without ever analysing why the fear was real to you. But now because you have such strong deep rooted beliefs it is going to take some effort to change these. What is it your fear? If I was you I would brainstorm reasons for this fear you have of strangers. Write in a centre of a page - Why do I fear strangers - and write reasons you fear strangers. I do think some of the reasons why is because you have no confidence in yourself around strangers - i.e. don't feel you are capable of handling the situation as you have little positive experience of interacting with strangers, you don't feel confident in your ability to perform well and succeed when interacting with strangers. You clearly have no confidence around strangers. Is that fair? But why else do you fear strangers? Do you feel you cannot trust them? Do you feel they are going to harm you?

Sorry if that reads poorly, I am at work and its hard to write more than a line at a time. I can understand what you are saying blackcap, my fear of strangers for example is because of avoidance because of low self esteem, lacking confidence in myself and my abilities to perform to the level I feel I want to. You seem to fear strangers because you felt uneasy around strangers from the beginning. But surely you can start learning that strangers are not a danger and a threat. You need to analyse the beliefs you have of strangers because something is wrong and irrational. But in order to overcome the fear you would need confidence in yourself and in your ability to perform around strangers and that you will cope fine.

Is that fair assessment?

 

[charlieHungerford]

I just wanted to explain what I said about CBT not being correct in my opinion. Has anyone tried CBT, if so how did they get on? Any progress ornot? I have read that CBT analyses reactions to situations and analysing fears and trying to replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts on the feared situation.

Here is a basic description of CBT: Addressing the way the client thinks in response to situations and developing more flexible thought patterns, along with reducing the avoidance of activities. If, as a result, the client escapes the negative thought pattern, the feelings of depression may be relieved. The client may then become more active, succeed more often, and further reduce feelings of depression.

I have read that you have to do this with a therapist and they make you attempt situations and think in different ways about situations. I mean fair enough you may fear a situation, but CBT is using the premise that the fear is irrational. It may be irrational, but it is very real if you think a certain negative way about yourself.

CBT does not target building your opinion of yourself, believing in your own abilities, believing you can succeed, believing you are good enough.

I could successfully realise that being judged negatively is no big deal, I could successfully realise the woman I fancy is not fearful, I could successfully realise that speaking out loud is not fearful and I will still go home and people will forget about what happened and life still goes on. I understand all these.

BUT if you have no confidence that you can successfully perform a task then how on earth can you go into such a situation with confidence? I have a real fear of speaking when anxious. I have no belief I can speak fluently when anxious. I just do not believe I can do it - past bad experiences of failing and going to pieces, speaking out loud is something I have zero confidence I can do, I feel so self aware when doing it that all attention is on me, so aware I don't feel I can do it, so self aware that this is too much for me to handle. It doesn't matter if you have desensitised the situation as being nothing to be afraid of. If you have no confidence in your ability to do it then you can only fail.

I could change the woman I fancy loads and see she is not dangerous or fearful, she is just a nice woman. But if I have deep beliefs that I don't look good enough, I feel so inadequate to her, feel so self conscious of my perceived flaws and that I am not good enough and don't have the confidence to approach her and talk all calmly because I am not calm. It doesn't matter if I change my beliefs that she is not fearful, if you feel so nnegative about yourself and so negative about your beliefs that you will perform and cope well, then you can only fail. It doesn't matter what your thoughts are about the situation.

The whole point is, those who are very confident socially, they have real confidence in all social situations. Think of people on tv you see - newsreaders, tv presenters or people at work who are confident people. Are they confident do you think in one or two situations but not confident at all in other situations? No! You don't see confident people then anxious in situations. They can handle any situation with confidence, sometimes they may become slightly shy but not to the extent we are, because they hhave confidence in who they are. Confidence that they are good enough, high self worth, high self esteem, they have a high opinion of themselves and are not self conscious or self aware of flaws. Confidence in situations comes from boosting the opinion of yourself, boosting your self worth, believing you are good enough, believing in your abilities to cope. Its not done by aiming to remove fears. Fears only exist because of your own negative beliefs on yourself, not because there is a situation you are simply scared of for no reason.