What I have learnt during my experiences with social anxiety

Hi everyone,

I decided to start a topic about the things I learnt when I was and still am (to an extent) recovering from social anxiety. Hopefully this will help people who are currently experiencing social anxiety.

The first thing I learnt was that 'there will always be people who will dislike us'. Everyone has their own unique combination of preferences, attitudes, beliefs, interests, likes, dislikes, behaviours, personalities, values etc. Some people prefer people who are fun and like to party, others prefer people who are mature, some prefer people who caring, others prefer those who are masculine. We cannot have every quality, and hence we will not appeal to everyone. So expect some people to dislike us and we to dislike others. We cannot gain everyone's approval.

Secondly, there are some people for whom we shouldn't worry about what they think about us. In each person's life, there are significant people and people who aren't as important. Significant people would include family, friends and other significant people. For other people who aren't as important, it doesn't really matter what they think about us. Also, there will be many people in our lives that we only see once in our lives so it doesn't matter what they think of us. It is unlikely we would see them again.

Thirdly, even people do have a negative impression of us, it is not catastrophic. I've embarrassed myself, said the wrong things, looked lost and confused, been laughed at. Whilst all these situations were unpleasant at the time, they were tolerable. I used these as learning experiences and I've become better in social situations because I learnt from my mistakes.

Fourthly, don't compare yourself to other people. I did this a lot in the past (and I still do sometimes) and it made feel miserable. I looked around and saw people my age talking to others, having girlfriends or boyfriends, students laughing, people chatting with each other at lunch whereas most of the time I was on my own studying and walking around campus. The fact is that there will always be people who have better social lives and if we continually compare ourselves with others, we will always feel miserable. Focus on goals that are meaningful to us and direct our energy and time on our goals and not on comparing others. It is okay to be inspired by other people's social life and want to have a social life like them, however, frequently making comparisions will always leave us feeling miserable. We would rather spend our time working on our social goals rather than feeling miserable.

I hope this helps.

Thank you for posting this Rainbowstar

Your welcome!

very good post, and very very true

Interesting perspective and very truthful.

Those are some great points Rainbowstar. I know that I've especially struggled with comparing myself to others. Especially when hearing about what former classmates are doing with their lives, whether they've bought their first home or moving in with their bf/gf or got married, although I'm happy for them, I tend to compare it to myself and that tends to bring me down a bit.

Thank you everyone for your positive feedback!

Most of the information on my first post comes from cognitive behavioural therapy. CBT has improved my life dramatically. Many of the self defeating, irrational and realistic thoughts have been replaced by rational and realistic thinking. These changes in thinking have had a positive impact on how I feel. I recommend people who have social anxiety to use CBT for treatment.

Also, a lot of what I've learnt comes from mistakes I've made in social situations. I've made mistakes socially and yes they were unpleasant, however, there were learning experiences for me and my social skills have improved because of I learnt from mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable in life. At the each of day, I write down what I've done well and I reflect and learn from the mistakes I've made during the day to help me improve.

Also about comparing ourselves with other people. The reason why we shouldn't compare ourselves with others is that we are guaranteed to feel miserable if we compare. There will always be smarter, more beautiful, more successful people. This is a fact. Also, if we compare ourselves with others, our happiness and self esteem is affected by other people and this is unwise because it increases the chances of us feeling miserable. Instead, if we build our self esteem from within (inside us) and not be affected by other people, we protect ourselves from unhappiness when we see others do well.