Social Anxiety to Social Confidence

I have prepared this document which is intended as information for people who are new to the subject of social anxiety. It is mainly designed to help individuals educate their family, friends, carers and health care professionals about social anxiety and social phobia, but you may find it useful and interesting as a sufferer yourself. When trying to explain your social anxiety to the people who are in your life it can often be helpful to have to have some information sourced from neutral third party that clearly explains everything so you do not have to. This is what this document aims to do. It answers the following questions and can be downloaded using the link below.

• What is social anxiety and social phobia?
• How common is social anxiety and when does it start?
• Is social phobia a recognised medical condition?
• Isn’t social phobia just a term made up to sell medications?
• Are socially anxious people anti-social?
• Are socially anxious people just shy?
• Are socially anxious people fearful around everyone?
• How does social phobia develop?
• What is most likely to be the cause?
• Does anxiety involve your body as well as your mind?
• What happens in the body when you are anxious?
• What are the consequences of this?
• Is social anxiety the same experience for everyone?
• How do socially anxious people manage their fears?
• Do the safety behaviours used help?
• Is anxiety only experienced when around other people?
• What kind of thoughts do socially anxious people have?
• Won’t alcohol and just putting yourself out there sort it out?
• What kind of situations do socially anxious people find difficult?
• Why don’t they just snap out of it and pull themselves together?
• What other feelings accompany social anxiety?
• Does social phobia commonly occur with anything else?

Click here to download the ‘Information on Social Anxiety’ document

“It’s not surprising that if you fear interacting with other people, particularly authority figures and that means you find it hard to seek professional help for your social anxiety, then you’re going to be prone to seeking whatever solutions are at hand. Often that means self-medicating with recreational drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine, amphetamines or more commonly alcohol.

Obviously this can then lead to additional health problems, financial problems or addictions, but aside from those issues, what I want to discuss in this video is the other processes at play when we use these drugs to cope with anxiety.

Essentially, these drugs, and by saying drugs I’m including alcohol, are attractive to people with social anxiety because they do things such as relieve anxiety, reduce inhibition, provide relaxation and increase a sense of confidence. In the short-term they provide almost immediate relief of anxiety symptoms but usually silently they are also keeping the problem going or even making it worse in the long term.

To just say that drugs and alcohol doesn’t work is a confusing message because it conflicts with the fact that when people use them they feel relief. In one sense, if your goal is to eliminate anxiety, then they do work, but the problem is that they are unsustainable and have other negative effects on our life.

As humans we have an amazing ability to physically adapt to our environment and when we are exposed to a drug our body often adapts to it. Eventually this means to get the same effect you either have to take more of the substance or wait until your body adapts to being without it. This may take a bit of time and because our body has normalised to being with the drug we then experience withdrawal, often including rebound anxiety, as our body adjusts back in the other direction.

This extra anxiety on top of existing high anxiety levels obviously isn’t good and drives a person to continue using drugs to gain relief, and too often leads to addiction. Not all drugs work this way, but many do. Although our body may adapt emotionally to the drug it cannot fully adapt to the ever increasing levels of toxins that are put in the body to get the same effect. Additionally, always being drunk or on drugs while building relationships, working or performing every day social tasks can severally effect your performance and introduce additional social problems into your life. It’s this that makes taking these drugs for social anxiety unsustainable.

So why not use them just for a bit of short-term relief? Well, apart from the problems mentioned already, such as rebound anxiety when not taking them, every time you rely on something else other than your self for confidence you undermine your belief in your own ability to cope with situations. Every time you use drugs or alcohol to cope socially you take another chip out of your self-confidence. Drugs don’t give confidence, they take it away. If you’re using drugs or alcohol to cope socially then when you do well or make progress that success is easily attributed to the drug rather than you. You miss out on the opportunities to build real confidence in your own ability and find sustainable ways of coping with your anxiety.

It can be hard to stop using say alcohol in social situations, because you feel so much worse without it. But really it’s not that you’re worse, it just that you have to face up to the full reality of the situation you’re in, and progress can’t be made unless you do that. Additionally, it’s hard to understand what really helps if any success you have can be attributed to drugs.

Consider that lasting progress will come though choosing to make your goal to increase confidence rather than to eliminate anxiety. That way you will not reach for instant relief in the form of drugs and you will see that it is through learning to cope with anxiety using yourself, rather than a substance, that solid self-confidence will be built.”

“I used to take drugs, mostly cannabis, but at around the age of 21 I started using other drugs – on the whole those other drugs were ecstasy, also known as MDMA, and like a lot of people do, I also drank alcohol. In one sense I used these because they were part of the scene I was involved in – involved is probably too strong a word there – and they were a form of enjoyment or fun, but I also used them to cope with my social anxiety.

Like so many people with social anxiety, I would sometimes have a drink or two before meeting people so I felt more confident and less anxious. And then while out with other people I would keep on drinking, partly as something to do and make myself look busy, but also to cope and try and make myself more sociable. Everyone knows that alcohol makes you feel more confident and takes away some of your inhibitions and this is why a lot of people with social anxiety self-medicate with it. By self-medicating I mean using a drug for your social anxiety without the advice or recommendation from a qualified medical professional. Because so many people use it in this way though, unfortunately lots of people do end up having to deal with alcoholism as well as social anxiety.

Luckily for me, it didn’t quite have the desired effect, in fact nothing would cut through my fear enough for me to be able to open my mouth and speak to people or dance. However drunk I got, and even when I no longer actually felt that anxious, I still couldn’t take that risk to say something and talk to people. I had a similar experience while using ecstasy. Although I felt free from fear and felt comfortable around people, I still couldn’t bring myself to socialise and talk to people. I’m not sure exactly why that was, but I believe it does go some way towards showing how drugs such as these more mask the problem than provide any kind of real solution.

Despite that, I still thought that ecstasy could be a solution to my social problems and for a short while I took ¼ of a tablet every few hours each day. I would then have the courage to go out in the world. I didn’t really have anywhere to go so I just used to go out into the city centre and be amongst people. Actually though, those times were some of my most lonely because while on the ecstasy I really felt a love and longing to be with people, and people were all around me, but I didn’t have anyone to connect with, and I still couldn’t approach people or speak to them. It was a bit like being really thirsty while stranded in an empty boat in the middle of the ocean.

Although I only made the connection in hindsight, it was at about that time in my life when I started getting strong panic attacks where my heart would beat really fast, I’d go pale, sweaty, my vision would fade out and I’d almost pass out. These anxiety symptoms didn’t happen when I was actually on the drugs, but I do believe my anxiety was worsened overall through taking them.

I stopped self-medicating and gave up all drugs including alcohol fairly soon after that. I realised that they weren’t solving anything and were just making things worse in many ways, and although it was really tough to start with; being in social situations without those things to help me cope, in terms of building solid lasting confidence, I think it was one of the best moves I ever made. Giving them up didn’t get rid of my anxiety, but it gave me the opportunities to build confidence without anything adding confusion. Being without those things really forced me to find other ways of coping in those situations, things that really did provide a solution, and if I hadn’t of given up those other unhealthy crutches I believe wouldn’t have really been able to work on those things that really do make a difference.

I’ve made a second video on this about how self-medicating can stop you making progress and how certain processes at play have a negative effect on you. So if this subject applies to you, I’d really encourage you to watch it. This video might be the one you can connect and identify with, but it’s the other video that contains the important information, so I hope you’ll join me for it.”

“Drugs did not cause my problems with social anxiety – I had social anxiety from a very early age. In fact, as far back as I can remember. But, in my mid to late teens and very early twenties I took recreational drugs. It was mostly cannabis which I smoked almost every day, but later it became ecstasy and occasionally magic mushrooms, amphetamines or cocaine.

The cannabis, I used to be really into that. I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. I used to think everyone should try it. I used to almost worship it because it relaxed you, was non-aggressive, it could be humorous, made you appreciate music more, maybe even made you think more deeply about things, but I didn’t realise what it was slowly doing to me over time. I didn’t realise that I was becoming more and more introverted and my paranoid thoughts were slowly getting stronger. I also didn’t realise that I’d become so passive and didn’t have any ambition or desire to better my life. And it was only when I read that it was bad for social anxiety and completely gave it up and my system cleared over a month or two that I realised just how much it had suppressed me and my life.

One day I was at someone’s house and I’d been smoking cannabis and I had all those paranoid thoughts going around my head about people hating me, not wanting me there and thinking bad things about me. On that day they go so intense that I seriously thought I was going completely crazy. I was really scared and I left and walked to somewhere safe on my own and just freaked out and cried. I had no idea what was happening to me and I was bad enough for a couple of other people to get concerned and come and find me. It was a really scary moment and not one I’d like to repeat.

There are worse things than cannabis you can put in your body, but is cannabis a good thing? At least in my experience, I really don’t think it is, especially if you’re experiencing some kind of mental health problem. You don’t need anything else clouding your thinking and making you think any more paranoid thoughts than you’re already thinking. And you really don’t need anything that will make you more passive and less focused on making progress.

I’ve met a lot of people now, or have read about their experiences, where they’ve told me that they’re fairly certain that cannabis played a significant role in triggering them to become socially anxious in the first place or have other mental health problems or it at least made their social anxiety get much worse.

It can be difficult to give up if you’ve developed a lifestyle around it and what social life you have revolves around it. There may even be motivations pushing against you because you’ve always been an advocate of it. But I think if you’re a sufferer of social anxiety and you really want to overcome it, I’m not sure what chance you have if you continue to smoke cannabis.”

This video simply provides a list of some of the situations people with Social Phobia / social anxiety find difficult and anxiety provoking. If you suffer with social anxiety but fear a situation that’s not on the list then I would be really interested to hear about it. Please leave your comments below.

More videos, but this time about being yourself and social anxiety. I explore how people with social anxiety find it hard to be themselves and offer some thoughts on the subject. I talk about people pleasing, adopting others opinions, identity, intimacy, honesty and expressing your feelings.

After many frustrating hours of messing about with video encoders I have popped up again on YouTube. Here are a few words about having social anxiety during Christmas and New Years. I talk about buying presents, giving and receiving them, family get-togethers, eating, parties and dancing.

Probably the most common fear people with social anxiety have is that their mind will go blank and they will not be able to think of anything to say to people. This was my most serious worry when I was socially anxious and it was what much of my social anxiety revolved around.  Of course, the more I worried about it, the more anxious I became and the more I could not think and focus on what everyone else was saying. The end result was that I could sit within a group of people for hours and barely utter a single word. There was just the great sense of anxious emptiness which became particularly prominent if someone put me on the spot and asked a question.

I am sure many of you have been there, sat in silence, feeling frustrated and inadequate because you could not get your mind to work and your mouth to move. Then, when you do actually manage to think of something to say the conversation has moved on and what you had to say would sound out of place. And, Because you have been sat their in silence for so long it seems like it would be a big deal if you spoke. So you leave early or endure the situation with worries that people think you are being anti-social, rude, boring or stupid. You then give yourself a good mental beating up and go and hibinate until you feel enough time has passed for people to forget the event.

There are two reasons why the mind going blank problem exists for many people with social anxiety. Firstly, when we get very anxious the way we think changes. Our conscious mind starts to switch off and we go into more of a reactive state rather than a reflective one. Our senses heighten, our muscles tense and we enter a total state of heightened readiness. This is very good for the quick reactions needed in fighting, dodging and escaping, but unfortunately not so greatly wonderful when it comes to conversation.

The second reason why this problem exists is to do with the very self-critical mindset that goes along with social anxiety. It is not so much that there is nothing to say, but more that nothing seems good enough to say. When we have this self-critical mindset we identify a problem with almost everything we think of and reject it before it manages to reach our lips. We think, ‘people might think it’s boring’, ‘what if it annoys them?’, ‘what if that’s something that upsets them?’, ‘it might sound stupid’, ‘what if I’m wrong?’. We hold our own conversations in our head and trial-run them before we put them out into the world, but the problem is that we always imagine the response to be one of ridicule, anger, boredom, or anything else we might fear happening. We reject every single word and sentence in fear that it will be wrong leaving us with nothing. We then proceed to criticise and reject our mental blankness, but of course we have nowhere to turn leaving us feeling frustrated and stuck.

If you struggle to find your words in social situations then I would love to hear your thoughts about it, but of course, I will understand if you cannot think of anything to say.

When you have a fear like being scared of speaking in a group of people, the strength of the anxiety you feel can seem unjustifiably strong. There seems to be no apparent reason why you feel so scared but yet you feel terrified. One of the reasons for this is that we often have deeper fears in our unconscious that lie behind the surface fears that we are consciously aware of. These deeper underlying fears relate well to the strength of the emotion you feel and tie in closely with your needs but at the same time they are fairly far removed from the reality of the situation. In contrast, your surface fears are very relevant to the situation you are in but are further removed from the intensity of the emotion you feel and seem less connected with your basic human needs.

This is actually quite a cleaver system that your brain has in place. Your deep fears cause anxiety to motivate you to take action to protect the fulfilment of you basic human needs while surface fears help you work out what action would be relevant to the situation. When our fears are appropriate to a situation this system works very well to keep us safe and helps us meet our needs, but of course when our fears are inappropriate to the situation, as is often the case in social anxiety, our strong anxiety and behaviours can of course be more of a hindrance than a help.

These deeper fears that lie in your unconscious are not so buried that they are unreachable. In fact, you may be aware of many of them already. They do not have to be uncovered through dream analysis or by describing ambiguous pictures as some very traditional therapists may have you believe. A simple line of questioning and some quiet thinking time actually suffices very well and gives much more accurate results. This questioning basically asks you what would you fear happening next if the thing you are currently scared of took place. You then keep asking this question for every answer given until you get down to a final needs related fear.

For example, if you had a surface fear such as being scared of blushing you would ask yourself, ‘well, what if I do blush, what do I fear would happen then?’. Your answer might be that you fear people would notice the blushing, so your next question would be, ‘well, what if people do notice the blushing, what do I fear would happen then?’. Your answer might be that you fear that people will think you are hiding something, so your next question would be, ‘well, what if people do think I’m hiding something, what do I fear would happen then?’. Your answer might be that if people think you are hiding something then they might not trust you enough to want to spend time with you, so your next question would be, ‘well, what if they don’t trust me and don’t want to spend time with me, what do I fear would happen then?’ Your answer might be that you fear that you will not be able to make them understand that you actually are trustworthy, so your next question would be, ‘well, what if I can’t make them understand that I am trustworthy, what do I fear would happen then?’ Your answer might then be your final needs based fear; that you will end up lonely and be unable to fulfil your social needs.

As you can see, the fears string together like a chain taking you from the situation to your needs with each link connecting the next. In the example, the deeper fears, such as someone rejecting you for being untrustworthy and you not being able to fulfil your social needs, are quite far removed from the original situation but are easily related to the strong feelings of fear, shame or embarrassment that you might feel in that situation. Also, the surface fears, such as fear of blushing and people noticing that blushing , are very relevant to the situation but seem more disconnected from the emotions until you peal back the layers and are able to relate them to the deeper fears. Understanding your own versions of these ‘fear chains’ can help you understand your emotional responses better and can help you take some of the power out of your fears. As discussed in the comments below though, this is not a complete solution to social anxiety and I will include the more significant steps you need to take in my audio program when it is finished.

Below I have set out the six main links of socially anxious fear chains going from surface situational fears right down to deep needs based fears. I have also given some examples of the types of fears that go with each. These six links are not strict and you may find smaller more subtle fears that link inbetween them.

SURFACE FEARS (Related to the situation)

1. Fear of showing vulnerability
Fear of showing signs of anxiety (blushing, shaking, being unable to speak, sweating etc.). Fear of doing anything embarrassing that might put you in a bad light. Fear of making mistakes or showing inadequacy. Fear of saying or doing something that annoys people. Fear of revealing personal opinions and preferences.

2. Fear of vulnerability being noticed
Fear of being put under the spotlight. Fear of drawing attention to yourself. Fear of people watching you. Fear of people staring at you. Fear of having your inadequacies and mistakes highlighted. Fear of people noticing your anxiety symptoms. Fear of people noticing your mistakes or inadequacies. Fear of people knowing personal things about you.

3. Fear of negative evaluation
Fear of people looking down on you. Fear of people judging you. Fear of people criticising you. Fear of people thinking bad things about you. Fear of people thinking you are stupid, boring, strange, weak, useless, unpleasant, anti-social, arrogant, ugly, repulsive or lacking in personality. Fear of people disliking you. Fear of people misinterpreting your symptoms and behaviours.

4. Fear of rejection
Fear of being humiliated. Fear of people laughing at you. Fear of people telling you off. Fear of people getting angry or aggressive with you. Fear of people physically harming you. Fear of people ganging up against you. Fear of people poisoning others against you. Fear of people leaving you. Fear of people not wanting to be with you romantically. Fear of people punishing you. Fear of being disadvantaged. Fear of people taking or damaging your possessions. Fear of being asked to move out of your home.

5. Fear of being unable to counter rejection
Fear of being assertive and standing up for yourself. Fear of not being physically strong enough to defend yourself. Fear of people not listening or believing you. Fear of not being able to correct untrue information or rumours that have been spread about you. Fear of not being able to make people like you. Fear of not being able to get people to understand you. Fear of not being able regain or replace lost relationships. Fear of not being able to cope with intense and unpleasant emotions.

6. Fear of needs being unfulfilled
Fear of being alone and lonely. Fear of being unable to fulfil social needs. Fear of being homeless. Fear of being seriously harmed. Fear of never being able to fulfil sexual and physical intimacy needs. Fear of having to endure unbearable emotional pain. Fear of not being able to achieve what you want in life.

DEEP FEARS (Related to your basic human needs)

If you decide to write out your own fear chains then be sure to avoid these common pitfalls.

• Giving your answer to what you fear happening as something that moves you up the chain rather down it. e.g. What do you fear happening next if people do laugh at you? – Then they might notice that I’m shaking. This moves up from link 4 to link 2 rather than down to link 5.
• Giving an answer that moves down the chain but skips a link. e.g. What do you fear happening if they do notice that you are quiet? – That they won’t want to spend time with me. This jumps from link 2 to link 4 without explaining why you think being quiet would make them not want to spend time with you. The inbetween link 3 might be that you fear that they think you are boring.
• Giving your answer as an emotion rather than a fear. e.g. What do you fear happening if people see you blushing? – I would get embarassed. Embarassment is an emotion rather than a fear.
• Not giving yourself enough time to identify what you fear happening. Often because it is not immediately obvious what the fear is people will conclude that they do not know or that they are not scared of anything. Because as you go down the links you are connecting with deeper and more unconscious fears you need to give you mind time to look for the answers. If you keep searching and think about the question, the answer to what you are scared of will eventually come to the forefront of your mind.

As a final note, notice that these fears cause anxiety and anxiety symptoms which can be the very object of our fears creating a loop. Also, the behaviours our anxiety motivates us to perform can have negative social consequences which can also be the object of our fears.  For example, fearing that you might make a mistake and that someone will get angry with you and harm you causes you to become very anxious meaning you are much more likely to make a mistake.  Breaking these vicious cycles is the main goal in overcoming social anxiety.

I hope the subject of this entry is as interesting for you as it is for me. My interest keeps me developing my understanding of social anxiety and I hope that through sharing my knowledge I can help you understand and overcome it. I also hope that through developing my own theories and understanding I offer insights that you will not find elsewhere. Thanks for reading

Public toilets seem to prove problematic for many people who experience social anxiety. Self-consciousness about performance, noise, smells, size, etiquette, time and technique can all be a source of anxiety potentially making this basic need significantly challenging. Understandably, such issues are often embarrassing for people to talk about meaning they do not realise that many others are struggling with them too and they often do not seek help to address them. The problems are generally associated with public toilets where privacy is more limited, but they can also extend to other situations such as using someone else’s toilet or using a toilet in shared accommodation.

One particularly common issue is that anxiety about going to the toilet can mean that it actually becomes physically impossible to go due to muscle tension. It’s a condition which has many names and applies to both urination and defecation. Being unable to urinate due to anxiety usually comes under the names of Paruresis, Shy Bladder Syndrome, Bashful Bladder, Urophobia and several other names, while being unable to defecate due to anxiety comes under the names of Parcopresis, Psychogenic Fecal Retention and Shy Bowel

As far as I know, being unable to urinate is a far more common problem than Shy Bowel and can be particularly problematic given that often we need to urinate several times a day. The problem can end up causing a restrictive lifestyle for a person meaning they do not travel far from their home or meaning that they do not go out for too long in case they need to urinate. People may also develop unhealthy habits such as restricting their fluid intake to manage how often they need to go. In more severe cases people may be so unable to urinate that they still cannot go even when they are in pain and in some cases this can cause damage meaning complications for them in the future.

Research seems to indicate that this problem is equally split between men and women, although it seems men are more likely to seek help with it. Although essentially the problem is the same for men and women – anxiety causing tensing making it physically impossible to go – there are some distinct differences. This is mainly due to the differences in male and female public toilets. Due to the exposed urinals that are commonly found in men’s toilets, men are more likely to be concerned with issues such as performance, other people seeing their private parts, etiquette and technique, while women can be more concerned with issues such as being overheard and taking too long when there is a queue. There is an amusing game that I am sure many men can relate to on the UK Paruresis Trust website. Just click on this link to play it. For my friends in the US there is the International Paruresis Association, although unfortunately they do not have any games to play.

Some people may not have so much or an issue about being unable to go, but may just get anxious about using public toilets in general. This was an issue for me and was something I developed at school, although it also extended to using toilets anywhere, including my own home sometimes. I seem to remember it started when some of the boys at my school realised that it was quite amusing to push someone on the back while they were using the men’s urinal trough meaning they had to put their hands on the splash-back to prevent them falling into it. After experiencing this one or two times and seeing it happen to several others I started getting anxious about using the toilets. As a consequence I stopped using them and would only go when I was really desperate. I remember I would often try and go the whole day without going which was quite uncomfortable at times. I have also suffered with Paruresis at times meaning I could only go when a cubicle was available, when I was really desperate or when no one else was in the toilet room. That is probably more about me than you wanted to know, but hopefully it is helpful for those who have experienced similar issues.

Both Shy Bladder and Shy Bowel are both considered a form of social anxiety, although Toilet Phobia can be related as well as unrelated to social situations. If you are struggling with Paruresis then there is a book called Shy Bladder Syndrome: Your Step-by-step Guide to Overcoming Paruresis which you may find useful. You may also like to try contacting the UK and US organisations linked above who offer workshops and may be able to put you in contact with a support group. Typically the recommended treatment is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, as it is with many issues relating to anxiety, although in the case of Paruresis there is an option to use a Catheter which is basically a tube that can be inserted into the urethra past the muscle that keeps the bladder closed meaning it can empty through the tube. Although this is not a very attractive option for many people, if you are desperate (literally) then it might be a serious consideration.