Social Anxiety to Social Confidence

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.

If you are a sufferer of social anxiety then you may find that you get tired a lot. This is because our bodies use up much more energy when we are feeling anxious than when we are calmer. When in a state of anxiety we may feel the opposite from tired, such as feeling hyperactive, alert and tense, but once the anxiety passes and we are able to relax more we may feel exhausted. Increased heart rate, racing thoughts, adrenaline release, increased muscle tension, shaking and general nervous energy all draw from our reserves and can leave us feeling totally drained.

It is good to be aware of this for a number of reasons. Firstly, it might help to know you are not suffering from some mysterious tiredness disease, although if your tiredness is having a significant impact of your daily life then it would be a good idea to discus this with your doctor. Secondly, it might help to know that your anxiety related tiredness is not just laziness and therefore your lack of energy is not something to beat yourself up over. Finally, it is good to know that once you have managed to feel more confident and less anxious, your energy levels will increase and you will feel able to do much more.

In addition to anxiety related tiredness, you may be experiencing depression related tiredness. It is common for people with social anxiety to also experience depression. This is because the fundamental thinking that is at the root of social anxiety is also at the root of depression and therefore it is possible for people to develop both social anxiety and depression separately, but also it is common for people to start to feel hopeless and depressed about not being able to fulfil their social needs as a consequence of social anxiety.

Depression related tiredness is a very different sort of tiredness to that resulting from anxiety. This kind of tiredness, very convincingly so, makes us feel like we have no energy and cannot do anything, but it is a block to accessing our energy rather than an actual lack of it that we are experiencing. When we are depressed we are generally feeling hopeless and because we think there is no point in trying to do anything our brains shut us down and produce feelings of low motivation to help us conserve energy for the times when there is hope and something worth engaging in.

When we are feeling depressed every fibre in our body might be telling us we are too tired to do anything, but this is not necessarily true, and if you get yourself to start engaging in an activity that brings you pleasure and a sense of achievement then your mood and energy levels are very likely to lift. Unfortunately, there is not time in this short blog entry to address the issue of feeling like nothing will bring you pleasure or a sense of achievement, but just remember that such feelings are always a lie that feels true.

For the social anxiety sufferer, the main issue with anxiety or depression related tiredness is that it can make it harder to feel motivated to work on improving one’s confidence. As already discussed, depressed feelings lie, so stay focused on encouraging (not forcing) yourself to take a first step. Once this step has been made, the subsequent steps will most likely be easier. With anxiety related tiredness, the best advice is to make sure you look after yourself well with regular exercise and a healthy diet to help the stress have less of an impact on your body. This may also take effort, but the rewards are worth it.

Overall, remember that you are feeling tired because of your social anxiety or depression and through working at overcoming it you will start to feel better and more energised about life. The more time and effort you invest in feeling more confident, the better you will feel and the easier things will get. So even when your energy is low, stretch to put in the work to improve your well-being and your life. We always have a little energy left, so keep going and invest it well

I have heard many social anxiety sufferers express being sensitive to noise or light and this has also my own experience. I used to find noisy pubs, loud voices and blaring music quite unbearable at times and around such noises I used to feel disorientated and anxious. Bright lights and sunlight were also intense for me, and although they would not trigger me to feel anxious they were certainly uncomfortable.

From this, myself and other anxiety suffers could come to the conclusion that we are highly sensitive people and that this is also why we get anxious and are very sensitive to criticisms. It is understandable how people may come to this conclusion, but it is an inaccurate one. It is not that we are anxious because we are sensitive, but rather that we are sensitive because we are anxious, and regarding sensitivity to criticism, this is a separate matter and it is not a sensitivity that works in the same way. Sensitivity to criticism comes from our perceived inadequacies or vulnerabilities and the way they cause us to take criticisms more personally.

Senses, such as vision, hearing, touch and smell, that become heightened do so because of the the ‘fight-or-flight’ response wich creates feelings of anxiety. The adrenaline that is released when we become anxious prepares us for danger and causes numerous physiological changes in our bodies. One of these changes is to heighten our senses and in evolutionary terms, this has most probably been important to our survival. For example, being better able to detect noises or movements in the undergrowth when faced with danger could mean the difference between running into danger or running away from it.

With social anxiety and other anxiety disorders we can end up so anxious, so much of the time, that we can almost be in constant state of alert. Therefore, we can end up being highly sensitive to light, noise, touch or even smell most of the time. This may lead us to think that we are just a highly sensitive person, but once we start to overcome our anxiety and feel more relaxed we will find our senses will return to a more comfortable levels.

I remember, years ago, accompanying my sister when she went to reunite with some old friends. At the time she told me she felt a bit anxious about it and although I had experienced anxiety for many years myself, I actually had no idea what she was talking about. I didn’t really know what the word anxiety meant and I probably replied with something like a slightly bemused, ‘oh right’.

It seems I’m not alone with this experience and have spoken to other social anxiety suffers who have also never really known what the word anxiety meant. For me at least, the reason for my ignorance was that my anxiety had been so frequent that it felt like a normal part of my life and that made it hard for me to comprehend what this thing that occasional cropped up for other people was. Of course, at the time, I had no idea that I knew very well what anxiety was.

It wasn’t until someone I knew who was a sufferer of panic attacks noticed my over-adrenalised composure one day and suggested to me that I was anxious. It took a while for it to sink in, possibly several months, but it was the key to me discovering definitions of social anxiety and therefore recognising that I might be able to change.

As many of you will know, many sufferers of social anxiety get depressed about their situation or experience depression for separate reasons along side of social anxiety. I tended to fall into the former category, but it wasn’t until quite recently that I came to recognise quite how depressed I was when I was younger. This I’ve concluded is for similar reasons as those described above. My sadness about my social difficulties had been fairly constant and without any kind of contrasting experiences to that sadness, or people explaining to me about sadness and depression, I just didn’t know that I was feeling depressed. Of course, not knowing didn’t make life any easier, but at least now I can explain why I didn’t ever try to do anything with my life back then.

Perfectionism is commonly associated with people with anxiety disorders which includes social anxiety. There is not time to explore this link fully here, but the aspect of it I want to explore here is how our perfectionistic drives change once we start to overcome our anxiety. Perfectionism has a useful side effect of making one put more effort into things than the average person and therefore this can lead to better than average results, but unfortunately for the perfectionist, satisfaction usually remains less than that for the average person. This is because what drives it is the thought that the slightest mistake or imperfection will lead to some kind of significant negative consequence and therefore anything but perfect is distressing. Even if the end result is outstanding, if it is not perfect, then for the perfectionist this is a disappointing failure that carries the risk of negative consequences for them.

Once we start to overcome our anxiety an interesting thing can start to happen. We start to lose our perfectionistic attitude and at the same time we can sometimes lose the drive to put in the effort get things perfectly right. The consequence is that we start making more mistakes or become more careless in our activities. Myself, I definitely noticed my driving deteriorate slightly as well as my attention to detail in certain activities, but the great thing about it was that I didn’t care and was able to enjoy what I was doing without anxiety and worry. Obviously it’s good to get things right and do things carefully, but there is not doubt about it, a slight drop in performance is a small price to pay to be free from anxiety and perfectionistic distress.

Perfectionism with better than average results is not always a part of anxiety and for some people their anxiety can significantly hinder their ability to do things well. Anxiety can significantly affect our concentration, awareness and co-ordination, with the result being that we make mistakes and are clumsy around others while we are normally fine on our own. I know I would certainly make more mistakes and possibly look a bit dumb if I had to do some kind of task while being watched compared to if I had to do the task on my own. This can be frustrating and embarrassing for the sufferer, but the good news is that once their confidence starts to grow, the mistakes will lessen and performance can even be boosted by the addition of an audience.

There is good news for the perfectionist too. Once you have overcome your anxiety, or even better, while you are overcoming your anxiety, you can start building a new attitude for your life that revolves around being outstanding rather than perfect. By focusing on outstanding we allow ourselves mistakes, but still set our standards high. Working towards outstanding is outstandingly rewarding compared to the dissatisfaction that surrounds perfectionism, so be sure to let yourself enjoy this change and make outstanding your goal.

The blog was looking a bit bare, so I thought it best to write something. This is not a new thought to me, but I wanted to write about it here to express my respect. Over the years of running the social anxiety support group in Bristol and contributing to Internet forums, I’ve been frequently touched by the caring and kindness of people with social anxiety. People who are looking out for the well-being of others while they themselves are suffering. I like to give a balanced view of things and this post wouldn’t be complete without me saying that it shouldn’t be assumed that all people with social anxiety are kind, but on the whole, I’ve seen a lot of kindness compared to the average group of people.

Who can really say why this is, but I think the obvious answer must be that those who feel misunderstood and who suffer seek to understand and end suffering because they empathise with people who are misunderstood and who suffer. Although people who are socially anxious will often not express much love for others, this is by no means a reflection of their love for others, which can in many cases be very strong. My respect goes out to all those who are in a place of distress but who still take the time to show kindness to others.