Social Anxiety to Social Confidence

Blushing and Sweating are two common concerns of the social anxiety sufferer. To some, blushing is a sweet and endearing quality, but for the social anxiety sufferer it can feel like a nightmare. For them, rather than a slight pinkness in their cheeks, their blushing can often be more describable as looking beetroot red, feeling like their face is on fire and something that not only affects their face, but spreads in a blotchy manner to their neck and chest.

Likewise, for the social anxiety sufferer who is concerned about sweating, it is often not just a matter of a slight dampness under the arms on a hot summer’s day. Many report profuse sweating on the palms their hands, face, armpits and other areas of the body. This is usually exaggerated when in social situations where they least want it to appear and it can be particularly problematic for people whose job involves shaking hands a lot.

When we get anxious, our sympathetic nerve activity is increased. This results in various changes in our body, including blushing and sweating, which serve to help ready us for an adverse situation. In the distant past, most adverse situations usually involved a physical danger that needed to be run away from or fought off. This can still be true, but is less so in the world we live in today. Both running away and fighting involve physical activity and that produces excessive body heat. To make our bodies more efficient and increase our chances of survival, humans have evolved to start cooling themselves through sweating when danger is anticipated. This is great when the danger is a swarm of killer bees and you need to run as far as possible, but it is not so great when the danger is the potential rejection of your colleagues when giving a presentation.

Blushing seems to be less explainable than sweating. Scientists have not figured out exactly why we blush when we are anxious or embarrassed. It is possible that it serves to communicate our remorse to others which may mean we are treated less harshly when we get things wrong, but the exact reasons for it’s function remain elusive.

Although blushing and sweating is a natural and healthy part of being human, many social anxiety sufferers end up feeling very self-conscious and anxious about these physical traits. The big problem is that getting self-conscious and anxious makes one blush and sweat more rather than helping with the situation. People often get stuck in a vicious cycle where they fear the onset of blushing and sweating in social situations and then this causes them anxiety which then actually creates the very blushing or sweating that they feared happening in the first place. The thought of other people noticing this then causes more anxiety and consequentially more blushing and sweating and so on.

Although it often does not feel like it for the sufferer, the main issue that needs to be resolved is not the actual blushing or sweating, but rather the fact that they think something bad might happen if other people notice their blushing and sweating. Once these psychological issues are resolved and the cycles are broken, blushing and sweating will not be exaggerated by anxiety and they will cease to be a problem.

Often the ways that people have come up with to try and cope with these physical traits, such as habitually hiding them, tend to only serve to worsen the problem in the long-term. This can lead to people feeling like they are fighting a losing battle and like they are stuck with an excruciatingly embarrassing physical problem they cannot solve. This desperation is reflected in the increase in the number of people who risk irreversible surgery to reduce their visible anxiety symptoms.

For some, operations such as Sympathectomies can seem like the best escape route out of their suffering, but these operations can sometimes lead to worse problems that cannot be easily solved, or solved at all. These include permanently increased sweating elsewhere on the body and abnormal facial features. These risks can be avoided if people get the appropriate psychological help to address the root cause of their severe blushing or sweating.

It is fully understandable how when someone feels stuck with a problem, and when their own efforts to overcome it result to nothing, they turn to such drastic measures to seek relief. People considering this option should know that there are effective and risk free alternatives that actually address underlying psychological issues rather than just treating the symptom. Ponder the question: If someone has a spider phobia, would you treat them by killing all the spiders in the world, or would you work to help them come to terms with the fact that the everyday spiders they are scared of pose no threat to them?

Birthdays – are they a time for celebration for you? When a person is socially anxious, times for celebration can become associated with stress, anxiety and depression. You may dread the added attention that birthdays can bring. Things such as surprise parties, receiving gifts, birthday phone calls and singing happy birthday can turn what is supposed to be a joyous event into an endless stream of anxiety provocation. Avoiding telling people about your birthday might seem like the solution, but this can leave one feeling depressed as it can seem like no one cares.

I remember my 21st birthday. With being quite socially anxious at the time it was an achievement that I actually went out to a pub with some people I knew that night, but a celebration it certainly was not. In my usual style back then I spent most of the evening sitting quietly and not speaking to anyone. It so happened that everyone was celebrating someone else’s birthday who I did not know that night. The result was that no one gave me a card or wished me a happy birthday while I sat and watched them celebrate someone else’s.

As with many other birthdays of mine, I felt sad and hurt that no one had recognised that it was my birthday and made the effort to express their birthday wishes to me. I could blame these people for being insensitive and not caring but the truth is that it was mostly my fault. I had not invested much effort into building my relationships with those people, and in fear of too much attention being focused on myself or coming across as vain, I had also not made it clear to anyone that it was my birthday that specific night and I wanted them to celebrate it with me.

Although I was probably upset with the people at the time, I now take responsibility for what happened that night and can see that I did not put in what was necessary for me to have the experience I wanted on that night. By taking responsibility for the poor outcome I put myself in a position where there is a path for me to take to change that outcome. Although it may be hard for us to do sometimes, it is important to recognise that we need to take active steps to create the social experiences we want in our lives. We will get out what we put in and if we do not put anything into our relationships then we cannot make others solely responsible for the quality of our social experiences.

It may seem like a depressing situation where your relationships are unfulfilling because you do not put much into them while at the same time you feel unable to put much into them because of your social fears, but this view is only depressing if you believe you cannot change the situation. An alternative view is to see such situations as fuel for your motivation to change and improve your life. If social anxiety stands in your way then you must work on your social confidence until you can experience life as you want it.

A large part of becoming more socially confident is learning to accept that you are, or have the potential to be, a likable and lovable person. Social anxiety sufferers commonly find it hard to accept compliments and positive attention but it is an important to welcome it as part of making progress. You may not directly have a choice over whether you feel confident or anxious, but you do have a choice over your response to positive attention. If you choose to dismiss people’s or avoid positive attention then you may avoid feelings of embarrassment and having focus put on you, but you also harm your confidence and reject other people’s kindness. With this option no one gains. If you choose to allow yourself positive attention by not avoiding it and saying thank you to the compliments you recieve then you add value to your sense of self-worth and add to the other person’s sense of contribution without rejecting their kindness. It is important to remember that when someone gives you positive attention they want you to feel good about yourself and therefore they will not think negatively about you if you choose to accept it and enjoy it.

Birthdays are what you make of them and the meaning you give them. They can mean you are another year closer to death or they can mean you have successfully survived another year of life. They can be a trigger of negative emotions or they can be an opportunity to feel loved and positively connect with people. They can be a depressing reminder of your situation or they can be a motivator to change that situation. Choose carefully and put in the effort to make them what you want them to be, whether than means choosing to welcome positive attention or choosing to give your self the gift of time invested in building up your social confidence.