You’ve probably felt nervous about a social situation before. Maybe you needed to give a presentation in front of a big group of people or you were invited to a party where you didn’t know anyone but the host. It’s not just big groups, either. You might have felt a pang of panic before meeting your partner’s parents or a first date. Although these are all experiences with anxiety, they may not fully constitute social anxiety.
In fact, it’s important to distinguish between situational anxiety and diagnosable social anxiety. When you have social anxiety, you experience the symptoms for at least six months and they get in the way of your quality of life.
Fortunately, there are some approaches that can help you manage this condition. Before we get into them, though, let’s take a quick look at social anxiety in general.
The basics of social anxiety
Social anxiety is a type of anxiety disorder. To reiterate, to have it, you need to experience symptoms for at least six months and they need to interfere with your quality of life.
Symptoms can physically manifest before or during a social interaction, including:
- Sweating
- Blushing
- Trembling
- Rapid heart rate
- Feeling sick to your stomach
- Tension throughout your body
- Using a too-soft voice
But symptoms can also show up in the form of a deep sense of dread before socializing, your mind going blank and not knowing what to say when you’re talking to someone, expecting the worst possible consequences because of a negative experience, and feeling self-conscious all or most of the time.
Ultimately, living with social anxiety means you persistently worry that people around you are scrutinizing and judging you. This leads to hyper-self-analysis.
If you avoid certain situations or make life choices (i.e., steering clear of specific jobs or avoiding other life-fulfilling experiences, such as dating) because of these feelings, you might have social anxiety.
What causes it
So, how come this is happening? There are a few potential reasons. Social anxiety, much like many other forms of anxiety disorders, is likely caused by a combination of both biological and environmental influences. Some of the supposed causes include:
- Biological traits: These can be potentially passed down through genetics or learned within family systems.
- Brain structure and function: At times, the fear response system in the brain — known as the amygdala — can be hyperactive. This means it’s trained to detect fear at accelerated rates, making it much more sensitive in social situations. You can think of this like the smoke detector in your brain. Sometimes, our smoke detectors detect smoke when there isn’t really a fire.
- Trauma-related: Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can often begin to have a negative impact on social interactions. This is because trauma can cause feelings of shame and guilt, making it much more challenging for us to interact with people.
These are just some of the things to consider when determining the cause of your social anxiety.
Tips that can help
If all of that sounded familiar, an excellent place to start is with a therapist. A trained mental health professional can help you work through this. Together, you and your therapist can develop strategies and tools to help you not just cope with but ideally overcome your social anxiety.
Your therapist might recommend employing some tips like:
Trying situational exposure
When it comes to addressing this anxiety disorder, you have to face your fears. But this doesn’t have to be all at once.
Start with coffee with a friend you feel really comfortable with. Once that doesn’t feel intimidating, scale up to a few people. Give yourself time to get more and more comfortable. As you ease into larger social situations, you can use the skills from your previous social interactions to help yourself through.
If you’re already working with a therapist, ask them how they can help to support you with situational exposure in sessions. They may practice imaginal exposure through role-play scenarios, for example.
Asking for support
You don’t have to go it alone. If you’re heading to a party and feeling anxious, for example, ask a friend to come with you. Tell them what you’re feeling. Knowing you have someone in your corner who’s there to support you can go a long way.
Giving yourself time
Working through social anxiety doesn’t happen overnight. As you work with your therapist and expose yourself to social situations, you make progress. But it might be baby steps. That’s totally okay. In fact, that’s normal.
Celebrate your wins and give yourself grace when things don’t go the way you want.
Remembering that no one’s looking at you
When you have this anxiety disorder, it often feels like everyone is watching you and judging you. But here’s the thing: they’re almost always a lot more focused on themselves.
Think about it. You might leave an event and fixate on every little word you said wrong. But do you harshly judge the person with mustard on their shirt or the one who tripped over their words? No. In fact, you’ll probably never think about it again.
As individuals, it is natural for us to have a certain level of self-awareness and concern about our appearances, which can sometimes overshadow our focus on others. So try not to forget this while taking a deep breath.
And remember that we’re here to help. To work with a therapist on your social anxiety, contact us at the Ventura Counseling & Wellness Center in Ventura or the West Valley Counseling Center in Tarzana.
