What has worked for you?

[BrighterLife]

Hi, I run a social anxiety support group in Southampton Hampshire, and i'm interested in creating a resource of techniques that people with social phobia have found useful. I work a lot with neuro-linguisting programming and have found that working with imagery and anxiety reduction techniques has been very helpful.

If anybody would like to share their experiences of successful therapy, or of techniques you have developed yourself for dealing with social anxiety I would appreciate it.

Best wishes, Sasha.

 

[terrified]

My SP is closely related to PTSD that I experienced from my childhood. I was on EMDR for awhile and that helped me to lessen the feeling of "Terror," that I have been feeling often. Now I just feel high anxiety but rarely, I feel the "Terror."

I have tried half dozen of medications but has caused me a great deal of side effect.

About a year ago I found out that I have low thyroid and low iron. I take natural thyroid and iron supplement. I also take comprehensive multi-vitamine, fish oil, 5-HTP, and melatonine for sleep.

Exercise is also very helpful but I have hard time keeping up.

I went through the program called Attacking Anxiety by Lucinda Basset. It has very good information on anxiety. It helped me understand that I'm not crazy and all I'm experiencing is anxiety.

Ideally, I think it would help me a great deal if I had more family support. I think it takes such a great deal of strength for SP person to come out of her shell. If it's not the family or other support, it's very difficult to do it alone.

 

[villacjs]

Vigoruous exercies has been the best for me, even though I slack off and don't do it for weeks at a time. It MUST be intense exercise, walking around is not enough you need to do running, bike riding etc.

CBT did nothing much for me. I would come out of the session fully like I could take on the world but the next day I was back to my normal self.

Drugs have been a life saver for me, mainly in terms of depression. For SA/SP benzos are easily the best, my current strategy is using benzos for situations where I usually have fear.

For people with SA/SP give everything a try.