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Last Updated: Oct 23, 2019
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Social Anxiety - How You Can Overcome Your Condition?

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Kiran Institute Of Ent Mental Health & Neurosciences(kiemhans)Psychiatrist • 17 Years Exp.MD - Psychiatry, MBBS
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Social anxiety is the term used to portray an extreme state of shyness. Everyone feels on edge in certain social situations, yet for a few people it can be somewhat more extraordinary and overwhelming. For instance it might influence their decision to attend a university, do a certain job or even their love life to some extent. Situations where individuals regularly encounter social nervousness include:

  1. Public speaking
  2. Conversing with power figures
  3. Conversing with a gathering of individuals or a person
  4. Eating in broad daylight
  5. Any performance based circumstances

However, there are a few ways in which one can overcome social anxiety. These include:

  1. Getting rid of unhelpful thoughts: The way that we see or perceive things affects our social anxiety. A number of these musings happen outside of our control, and can be negative or unhelpful. It is hence essential to recollect that they are only thoughts, and are not really truths. Despite the fact that we may trust a ton of our unhelpful thoughts when we are socially anxious, we need to address them since they are generally built on wrong assumptions.
  2. Increasing external focus during social interactions: When we are socially on the edge, we have a tendency to invest a great deal of our energy in focusing on our own sensations. This is because we expect that our tension is noticeable to others. For instance, we may invest energy attempting to judge whether we are sweating, shaking, or blushing. This technique aggravates things even more. This is because we tend to overestimate how obvious our tension is and this obviously makes us feel much more unsure. Additionally, by concentrating on ourselves, we are kept from completely focusing on the discussions around us. This normally makes it even harder to participate and we wind up connecting less than we could or should have.
  3. Getting rid of avoidance and safety behaviours: When we are socially restless, we have a tendency to dodge social circumstances (e.g. parties; little gatherings, requesting a discount and so forth). In any case, if we continue maintaining a strategic distance from the situations we fear, we will never find the opportunity to explain to ourselves that we can handle them and our certainty stays low. At whatever point socially anxious people do enter the situations they fear, they tend to utilise safety practices (e.g. staying close to a good friend at a gathering; remaining silent when in a gathering to avoid looking absurd and foolish).

The most ideal approach to diminish your anxiety towards social circumstances is to continuously stand up to them, without depending on safety practices. Obviously, going up against social circumstances or situations can be overwhelming, particularly given that our anxiety levels frequently increase when we do so. Therapy can also be used to get over these tendencies.

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