Social Anxiety - Stop Playing the Victim

I stopped self-pitying a long time ago. I'm much less negative than I used to be.

OMFG! I still have SA. :🙁:

A lot of people are tired of going round and round in circles and want to get out of that self-destructive pattern, no matter how hard they try to change they still end up deluding themselves, because it takes more than just a change in perceiving the self for one to become happy; one needs to see the changes and see them last {that was seriously maybe the most difficult way in the world of explaining my point, but it's late and I'm about to go to bed^^}.

Hoth said: ↑

For people who acquired SA from bad experiences that's certainly true. But personally, I don't think my beliefs are really the issue. Irrational fear which runs contrary to my beliefs is the issue.

SA is always a result of past experience. There is a belief behind every fear. The fear is actually the result of beliefs. For example, a newborn baby has no fear of fire until he's been conditioned to fear it. The ONLY fear that human beings are born with is a fear of loud noises. Every single other fear is the result of conditioning based on beliefs. Teach a baby that fire is dangerous and he'll believe it. The same goes for social phobia/social anxiety.

Hoth said: ↑

You want to be brainwashed? Odd, but good luck. I'll keep my current brain, I only want minor tweaks to it.

I purposely quoted Wikipedia's definition of brainwashing because it works in this context.

Wikipedia said:

Brainwashing (also known as thought reform or re-education) consists of any effort aimed at instilling certain attitudes and beliefs in a person — beliefs sometimes unwelcome or in conflict with the person's prior beliefs and knowledge, in order to affect that individual's value system and subsequent thought-patterns and behaviors.

A change in beliefs is necessary for a change in thought-patterns and behavior. In that way we need to brainwash ourselves to replace our negative, irrational beliefs with positive, rational ones.

SickJoke said: ↑

SA is always a result of past experience.

Heh. So you believe we're all repressing horrible backstories we've wiped from our memories, or what?

For example, a newborn baby has no fear of fire until he's been conditioned to fear it.

Every sane person has a fear of pain, they just have to find out what causes them pain. The fear of fire doesn't come from being socialized into thinking fire is bad, it comes from getting burned.

The ONLY fear that human beings are born with is a fear of loud noises. Every single other fear is the result of conditioning based on beliefs.

Well then, feel free to jump in the fire and play on the freeway etc if your goal in life is to abolish fear. For the rest of us, the fact that it hurts is the problem.

Socializing doesn't hurt normal people like fire does. It hurts social phobics. The reasons it hurts are varied, but certainly not always related to experiences. If you want to be really pedantic you can say that the fear comes from the experience of the pain, but you're just purposely missing the point, which is that it hurts. It would be stupid to try to address the fear while ignoring the fact that it hurts.

Teach a baby that fire is dangerous and he'll believe it. The same goes for social phobia/social anxiety.

Nice argument for social phobia being a necessary and very good thing as important as avoiding fire, but your analogy has some flaws. Certainly nobody taught me to fear people, I was probably afraid of strangers before I learned to talk. And that, of course, is actually a useful evolutionary fear to an extent -- just some of us are mis-wired such that the fight or flight response is triggered far too often and always goes with flight.

I grew up with a cat (from kittenhood) who was even more socially phobic than me. Do you think it was because of her false beliefs and experience, or could there possibly have been a genetic component?

By the way, chatty people are loud noises.

we need to brainwash ourselves to replace our negative, irrational beliefs with positive, rational ones.

If your beliefs are irrational, reason them away. Incidentally, excess positivity is irrational... neutrality or reserved judgment is often a more rational target, and occasionally negativity is justified and important to personal growth.

SickJoke said: ↑

When you start to pity yourself, your brain releases chemicals that make you feel depressed, sad, frustrated, etc. You can actually become ADDICTED to those chemicals, those emotions.

Ok, understood, so now what do you do to de-program the brain. Some SA people say CBT. It's not enough for me.

Hoth said: ↑

Heh. So you believe we're all repressing horrible backstories we've wiped from our memories, or what?

Past experiences have shaped us. Observation and feedback throughout our lives led us to develop the irrational, negative beliefs that constitute SA.

Hoth said: ↑

Every sane person has a fear of pain, they just have to find out what causes them pain. The fear of fire doesn't come from being socialized into thinking fire is bad, it comes from getting burned.

The point is that the fear does not exist until we are either told that fire is painful, or we touch it and see for ourselves. If we never encountered fire and were never told about it, we would never fear it.

Hoth said: ↑

Well then, feel free to jump in the fire and play on the freeway etc if your goal in life is to abolish fear. For the rest of us, the fact that it hurts is the problem.

Not all fears, just irrational fears. The ones that cause SA: fear of being judged, ridiculed, rejected, devalued, etc as a result of socializing.

Hoth said: ↑

Socializing doesn't hurt normal people like fire does. It hurts social phobics. The reasons it hurts are varied, but certainly not always related to experiences. If you want to be really pedantic you can say that the fear comes from the experience of the pain, but you're just purposely missing the point, which is that it hurts. It would be stupid to try to address the fear while ignoring the fact that it hurts.

Pain doesn't stop social phobics from socializing, fear does. That fear is the result of painful memories which have driven into the subconscious and formed the belief that socializing leads to pain, which makes socializing scary.

Hoth said: ↑

Nice argument for social phobia being a necessary and very good thing as important as avoiding fire, but your analogy has some flaws. Certainly nobody taught me to fear people, I was probably afraid of strangers before I learned to talk. And that, of course, is actually a useful evolutionary fear to an extent -- just some of us are mis-wired such that the fight or flight response is triggered far too often and always goes with flight.

Social phobia is an irrational fear; fear of fire is rational. You could train a baby to fear anything under the right circumstances. Fear of strangers is a learned belief. We teach our kids "Don't talk to strangers!" otherwise they might hop into some guy's van if he offers them candy. The only fear we are born with is the fear of loud noises.

Luna_LL said: ↑

Ok, understood, so now what do you do to de-program the brain. Some SA people say CBT. It's not enough for me.

CBT can be a huge help, but in the end, only we can change our own beliefs. We can train ourselves to recognize when we're thinking negatively/irrationally. As soon as we catch ourselves, we can focus on something else: our breathing, a song, a positive thought, anything except that negative thought. We can get better at this and start noticing negative thoughts immediately and cutting them off. The better we get, those negative thoughts will start happening less and less.

freestylemonster said: ↑

man I'm so glad you're on this forum! You really inspire me and have awesome advice! I kinda figured this out on my own a while ago. All I wanted to do was sit at the computer listening to sad music and I realized it was because when I was doing that I was getting sympathy from myself and it made me feel comfortable. I was addicted to my own self-pity like you said.

But now I really try to tell myself how much I've done to overcome SA and how far I've come etc.

Anyway thanks for your posts!

I too would also like to thank sickjoke, I've seen his other posts and they have certainly helped me recognize and help my fears. Its wierd but sometimes feeling depressed and particpating in my own pity does feel good.

Everyone's different and certainly have their own causes to their SA but I do 100% believe that its root cause is fear.

Hoth said: ↑

I don't see how self-pity even helps at all in stopping the fight with anxiety. Why not just give up the fight without self-pitying? That's what I usually do. It feels a lot better to sit safely at home avoiding people without self-pity than it does with self-pity. Consider it as a logical decision to enjoy life better (short term, at least). And just because you accept you can't win at the social game (at least for the moment) doesn't mean you can't like other things about yourself and realize you're better off than many people in a lot of ways.

Right, avoidance is different to self-pity and sadness. Not mutually exclusive though. Avoidance is just putting the pain on hold. Feeling self-pity and sadness is when you can no longer avoid it and you give into it so that you can 'reset' yourself and ultimately lower the fear and anxiety..temporarily at least. It's the vicious cycle of trading sadness for fear and then fear for sadness over and over.

I see self-pity in this sense more as a symptom rather than something to try to control. The majority of the posts on this forum are of the self-pity type because its comforting to us to temporarily lower the fear we deal with. It's neither right nor wrong.

We really can't fight or control self-pity directly, just like we can't fight or control anxiety directly. If we truly choose to see improvement and desire improvement (not the desire to stop the pain) then we ultimately won't need to constantly feel self-pity. Alot of it is knowing what to fight.

I want to thank everyone for actively posing questions, because it's helped me to express myself more clearly. I've edited the original post to include the responses from my later posts.

Try to challenge the irrational fears and the associated beliefs with rational and logical thoughts.
For example:
You are afraid you will panic and pass out in public.
BUT: Fear / danger activates the sympathetic system and it supplies the body with oxygen and prepare it for fight or flight, which results in increased heart rate and blood pressure. That's why you could hardly pass out. Your body is not designed like this. What would happen if animals pass out because of perceived danger? They will surely be killed and eaten.

Fear is really an effect of beliefs. You can pick a fear and a piece of paper, and ask yourself, "why am I afraid of this?". List all the reasons that come to your mind. Ask yourself, why these reasons? Well, if you collect your past experiences, you will eventually find out. But you may also find this harder than it seems. Maybe the answer is in the following lines...

Past experiences are a key factor. What psychology misses here is when they begin. Loud noises are probably described in books as the only fear human beings are born with. However, this doesn't mean it's the whole truth and I am not convinced it is. Possible past lives are beyond the scope of modern psychoanalysis and medicine, but they can be a good explanation of some predispositions and even fears people have. In this case, they are rooted deeply in the subconsciousness. This has helped some people to explain and understand themselves.
I am not asking anyone to believe in past life, I am stating and considering the possibility. There are people, including specialists, who think it is ridiculous and easily refuse it, but it's not more ridiculous than ignorance and a closed mind.

Western medicine has always refused to acknowledge the link between the body and the soul and this is the pit where most of its failures lie.

If shyness was result of wrong thinking, what about shyness by animals? For example, I once found 2 very young kitten. They weren´t shy at all, on the contrary, were looking in protection in me and wanted to cuddle. Then one of them got lost again and when it was found after several weeks, it was terribly shy. The other, which kept in contact with us didn´t develop any drop of fear, on the contrary became almost suicidaly trustful, didn´t fear people, anything.
So do you think the first kitten is guilty of being shy because it has negative thinking?
One more thing is, these matters are (IMO) fixed in the earliest age, the older you are, the more difficult or even impossible is to change your shyness.

We are not talking about shyness, but about phobia that prevents you from simple everyday routines.

You don't know the experiences of the kitten while it has been lost.

There are lots of homeless dogs here. Unlike other dogs, most homeless dogs tend to be terribly afraid of people. If you try to get close to them, they run away. If you say "bow", they run as fast as they can. That's because of their experience - they've been chased and maybe even beaten by people. I see the fear in their eyes. They are mistrustful and perceive me as dangerous even if I am careful with them. It's hard to even feed such a dog. If you don't throw the food away from you, they hardly come to get it. After several tries, step by step, they come closer to you and carefully show appreciation, but a single loud noise or fast movement is enough to make them run away.

Lea said: ↑

If shyness was result of wrong thinking, what about shyness by animals? For example, I once found 2 very young kitten. They weren´t shy at all, on the contrary, were looking in protection in me and wanted to cuddle. Then one of them got lost again and when it was found after several weeks, it was terribly shy. The other, which kept in contact with us didn´t develop any drop of fear, on the contrary became almost suicidaly trustful, didn´t fear people, anything.
So do you think the first kitten is guilty of being shy because it has negative thinking?
One more thing is, these matters are (IMO) fixed in the earliest age, the older you are, the more difficult or even impossible is to change your shyness.

Yeah that makes perfect sense. Events like that have can have a drastic impact on the way people think (or kittens or any mammals).

I say it's never impossible to overcome SA, but the older we are, the more "stuck in our ways" we might seem. The longer we live with a belief, the truer it becomes for us, because we have years of experience linked to it, supporting it. It might take longer, it all depends on how willing we are to change our beliefs.

Bumped for new people.

FlirtyandDirty said: ↑

Brilliant thread Sickerjoke! I agree with all that you have said. Apart from the heroin thing, but lets not go into that.

Haha, thanks 😀

FlirtyandDirty said: ↑

It is all down to the way you think and what you believe. Think the world hates you and you have nothing to offer, and you will not have anything to offer. Believe you are as good as everyone else and that you have as much to offer, and that will be seen by others.

Exactly!!! I couldn't have worded it better.

FlirtyandDirty said: ↑

I was 43 when I started to deal with my social anxiety. I also suffered from agoraphobia and depression.

I am now 47 and do not have social anxiety. I am studying and have friends. I am still a little anxious when I meet new people, but that is only for as long as it takes to say hi. People in my class have commented on the way I am now. It was pointed out to me that when I first started my class in September, I looked like a timid little mouse, on the edge of the group. However, it was not long before I became as vocal and friendly as the others. We did a group presentation two weeks ago, and before we made our presentation, I was as nervous as everyone else, but only as nervous as. When I had to get in front of the group and do my part, I was brilliant!! No anxiety at all.

WOW, that is truly inspiring!! I hope everyone reads that and sees that there is always hope!

FlirtyandDirty said: ↑

Was not long ago when I believed that everyone was against me and that I was doing the world a favour by staying away from them all. Now I believe that the everyone is on my side, until someone does something to prove otherwise. Then, I shall take it up with that person and not judge the rest of the world.

That's probably the most healthy attitude you can have.

FlirtyandDirty said: ↑

The change has to come from within. And if you believe it and work at it, it will happen. There is no way that it cannot.

Absolutely!! Thanks for the awesome reply 😀

SickJoke said: ↑

SA is always a result of past experience.

No, SA is a result of our brain's physiological make-up. I know for myself that I was very anxious from as early as I can remember. Past experiences may trigger our SA and other anxiety disorders but they are not the cause of the anxiety disorder. It is extremely unlikely that people with SA just have unique experiences that nobody else has. An example of this is PTSD. With PTSD, many people experience exactly the same events but only a certain percentage of those people develop PTSD from the event.

There is a belief behind every fear.

What we experience is anxiety. Anxiety is an emotion that has evolved so as to keep us out of danger. We have an inbuilt ability to sense dangerous situations. Social situations were important situations for human survival and so the human brain has evolved the ability to notice facial language and so on that it perceives as threatening or negative, just like it has developed the ability to notice when an animal is about to attack. These are not core beliefs, these are inbuilt mechanisms. Another example is physical attraction. Humans feel physically attracted to someone based on various human attributes such as their body shape. This isn't some kind of core belief that you can unlearn, it is part of who you are.

Often, when a person with SA is in a social situation they will feel that "something bad will happen" if they don't get out of the situation quickly. This is also not a "core belief", it is just a feeling that occurs due to the fight or flight mechanism. If a person is wired to go into flight or fight mode when they should instead just be mildy anxious, you get the dysfunctional symptoms of SA.

The fear is actually the result of beliefs.

The anxiety does not have to be a result of the beliefs. Further, beliefs are generated by our brain. Let me now give you the example of a normal person who is depressed after a series of bad experiences. The depressed person starts to think all kind of irrational things like the idea that there is no way out and so on. Give them a few days to get over the events and suddenly all of their beliefs change back to normal. As you can see, beliefs are an outcome of the brain's chemicals and processes. Another example is the effect that alcohol has on a person with SA. Suddenly all of their beliefs are different when under the influence of this drug.

Further, beliefs can develop as a result of anxiety and other stimulus such as pain. This is known as fear conditioning. For example, if you paired a foul odor with a particular room, you would start to fear that room before you even entered it. Now imagine that a person's brain becomes highly anxious in various situations, and think about how a person then learns to fear those situations.

An even more complex take on the role of beliefs in anxiety disorders can be found in OCD. With OCD, the person knows that their beliefs are irrational but due to the overwhelming emotion, they cannot convince themselves of this fact. Despite the person having all the ability to rationalise things as everybody else, they cannot do so due to the emotion. Further, these beliefs are often created at the time and the number of them can be infinite.

The ONLY fear that human beings are born with is a fear of loud noises. Every single other fear is the result of conditioning based on beliefs.

But anxiety, just like the feeling of arousal, is something that is built into humans. You cannot teach somebody to be gay for example. We are hard-wired to get anxious at certain times otherwise we would not survive. You appear to just be refering to conditioned fear. It is only an aspect of social anxiety disorder and certainly not the cause.

It's never impossible to overcome SA, but the longer we've lived with it the more "stuck in our ways" we might seem.

A person experiences physiological changes over their lifetime. Certain hormones go up and down at different stages in a person's life. SA usually arises during our younger years because evolution has probably dictated that this is an important time to be performing socially. Therefore, as you get older, you may find your symptoms decrease or go away without doing anything in particular. As the chemical levels change, so will your beliefs.

Medication can mask the symptoms, but as long as those beliefs still exist, SA will find a way rear its ugly head.

The beliefs themselves are just a symptom of SA. People do not talk of a cure because the main catalyst of SA is a lump of matter that we can only influence to a certain degree.

With social anxiety, it's EASY to play the victim. It's easy to pity ourselves. It's easy to blame past experiences, genetics, our family, our friends, and so on. It's easy to say that things are hopeless. It's easy to give up.

Things are not hopeless. People achieve a lot while still having an anxiety disorder. There are also some things that can probably help to manage the disorder.

CBT can be a huge help, but in the end, only we can change our own beliefs. We can train ourselves to recognize when we're thinking negatively/irrationally. As soon as we catch ourselves, we can focus on something else: our breathing, a song, a positive thought, anything except that negative thought. We can get better at this and start noticing negative thoughts immediately and cutting them off. The better we get, those negative thoughts will start happening less and less.

From past experience, all this has resulted in is that I have become a neurotic basketcase that is focused on the internal workings of my brain and body when that is the last thing I want to do.

By the way, what you are suggesting is just a form of avoidance. Avoidance is in itself is a major aspect of anxiety disorders and is what helps the anxiety disorder to persist. If you are in a social situation and are focused on a positive thought or some kind of neurotic internalisation, you are in fact just avoiding the situation while still being there. I think this is what triggered my OCD. You see, with OCD, you go into a situation (eg a social situation) and your brain starts to distract you with something and you start to reorganise the position of book or whatever instead of focusing on the conversation. So when I was getting this kind of therapy, I would go into the social situation and start thinking of positive thoughts and repeating them over and over again as my brain started to notice that the distraction decreased the anxiety. This is called negative reinforcement.

SickJoke said: ↑

I've edited the original post to include the responses from my later posts.

I checked your orignal post, you edited out points that people argued with you about, these points you made appeared harsh, peoples replies on here seem now out of place, I will post the original parts of your original post so there is proper continuity:

SickJoke said: ↑

With social anxiety, it's EASY to play the victim. It's easy to pity yourself. It's easy to blame past experiences, genetics, your family, your friends, and so on. It's easy to say that things are hopeless. It's easy to give up.

Not only is all of the above easy to do, but it FEELS GOOD in some sick way. It feels good because it's a DRUG. When you pity yourself, you get to feel those lovely emotions that you've become so ADDICTED to: sadness, depression, anger, frustration, hopelessness, and so on. When you pity yourself, it's the same as the HEROIN addict sticking the needle in his arm.

Ask yourself, do you TRULY want to change? Or do you want to continue to wallow in your own pity, to FEED your emotional addiction, to be no better than the heroin addict? As long as you continue to play the victim, you WILL NOT CHANGE. It's time to take responsibility for yourself, for YOUR life, because no one else will: not your parents, not your friends, not your spouse, not some idealistic girlfriend, not your therapist. Only YOU can decide when you're ready to change. Hopefully the answer is NOW.

personally I actually prefer the more confrontational approach

Remus said: ↑

I checked your orignal post, you edited out points that people argued with you about, these points you made appeared harsh, peoples replies on here seem now out of place, I will post the original parts of your original post so there is proper continuity:



personally I actually prefer the more confrontational approach

And what is the more confrontational approach?

What was it that he said that you disagree with?

People do get comfortable with the state that they are in. It feels comfortable and safe. We say we want to change, but the feelings that we have are so familiar that we hold onto them, because we believe that this is better than putting ourselves out there and trying. I know this from experience and you know me so know how hard it was. And even when we put ourselves out there, many times we end back where we were because it doesn't feel right.

Am not trying to be argumentative, but I really cannot see what was wrong in what he said.