Social Anxiety to Social Confidence

Did you know that improving social skills is not the answer to social anxiety? Because of the continuous social struggles people with social anxiety face, many people come to believe their problem is social inadequacy. It then seems logical that improving social skills is the answer, but this is not the case.

It is true that many people with social anxiety lack social experience and may not have had the opportunities to hone their social skills, but there are also many people with social anxiety who have perfectly acceptable social skills. This gives us our first reason to doubt that social inadequacy is the problem for people with social anxiety. A second reason is the fact that there are many people in the world who are very confident in themselves, but yet have atrocious social skills. Surely, if social anxiety was caused by a lack of social skills, then all people who lack social skills would experience social anxiety, and conversely, all people with social anxiety would lack social skills, but this is not what we find.

Instead, what is usually the case is most people with social anxiety believe they are socially inadequate, because of their struggles, but it is actually their anxiety that causes their struggles rather than a lack of skill. This means problems with socialising are a symptom of social anxiety rather than a cause of it. What people with social anxiety experience is usually more like hindered social ability, rather than social inadequacy. It is the way anxiety causes symptoms such as poor concentration, and also how we react to anxious feelings (i.e. avoidance) that stop us interacting with people effectively, not poor social skills. Once the anxiety is absent most people find that their natural ability to socialise shines through, or at the very least, improves greatly.

People can easily get caught up in trying to read social skills books to learn the ‘correct’ social rules that it seems everyone else seems to know, but this can mean people with social anxiety end up trying to achieve social perfection before they have had much social experience.  This is a recipe for feelings of failure and anxiety. Really, social skills need to be learnt through a trial and error process where mistakes are made and sense of what works is developed.  A well written social skills book may help to some degree, but nothing beats experience and books on social skills will not remove the anxiety.

Confidence is developed through learning that we can cope with our mistakes rather than through being socially perfect. This is a key point as many people with social anxiety are trying to achieve social perfection to gain confidence, but that is fairly unattainable as well as unstable. It only takes one mistake for it all to come crashing down, so better to be confident about your mistakes rather than your abilities.

As already mentioned, people with social anxiety really can lack social skills due to a lack of experience, and improving them can help in some ways, but doing this should not be seen as a solution to social anxiety. In fact, putting lots of effort into improving social skills with the aim to overcome social anxiety can do more harm than good. This is because however hard they try to improve socially, they still experience anxiety, which then carries on affecting their ability to socialise. Since they do not make much progress, feelings of frustration and hopelessness can set in which only feeds their sense of inadequacy further. This can then increase anxiety in social situations and make socialising even harder. It is a paradox where the thing that seems it should help, only makes the situation worse.

Make sure you are not feeding your sense of social inadequacy with social skills books and tips. A series of videos I have made on this subject can be viewed here.

I promise not to make this a blog about the Britain’s Got Talent TV show, I am not even a great fan of TV, but both contestant Susan Boyle, and now Jamie Pugh, represent different sides of social anxiety that warrant some discussion.

Last Saturday, 37 year old Jamie Pugh, described as possibly ‘the most nervous contestant we’ve ever had’, sang ‘Bring Him Home’ from Les Miserables, and he sang it very well! He sufferers from severe stage fight (a common form of social anxiety) and wanted to go on the show to confront his fears. He gave the distinct impression that overcoming his fear of stage fright was much more important to him than winning the contest, although I am sure he would like to win too! I am sure anyone struggling with severe social anxiety knows only too well that overcoming it would be a bigger prize than singing in front of the queen. You can see Jamie’s performance by clicking on his picture below.

Some of you might be wondering that, if he has social anxiety, then how could he do something so bold? The answer to that really is, we do not know, only Jamie knows, but there are some distinct possibilities. Firstly, while some people with social anxiety find almost all social situations painful, for others only specific situations will fill them with fear and dread. They do not necessarily feel less anxiety though, it is just that they do not feel so vulnerable in other social situations. Secondly, while some people are mostly avoidant and hardly ever enter the situations they find most anxiety provoking, others will be determined to not let social anxiety hold them back and will endure experience after experience of painful anxiety to carry on with life. It sounds likely though that Jamie has been avoidant up until this point and now his desires to fulfil his dreams, and possibly a little encouragement from family and friends, has driven him to face his worst fears.

Like many people with social anxiety, Jamie’s worst fear is that his performance will leave him in a vulnerable position. He states that he fears he will just freeze and not be able to perform, but the fear will go deeper than this. Most likely he not only fears that freezing will mean he could miss his opportunity, but more so that he will be judged negatively and ridiculed for appearing vulnerable, which is actually quite possible given the judges comments to other contestants. But respect where respect is due and despite Jamie’s nervousness on stage, his talents are recognised by both the audience and judges. In fact, it is quite likely that his vulnerability will inspire compassion and the public will not only vote for his talent, but also because they want to see his life change for the better. It will be up to Jamie now to put in the work to boost his confidence as I suspect it will take more than one performance to shift his lack of self-belief, but I hoped to be proved wrong.

He will have to work hard on giving himself encouragement, having faith in his abilities, having faith in the public to be kind and trusting himself to cope with whatever is to come. It will most likely be a fear that he cannot cope with rejection that is the even deeper root fear that lies behind his fear of being judged negatively. Social anxiety is not so much a lack of trust in other people, but more a lack of trust in ourselves to deal with the situations that go wrong for us. When he can learn to take actions that reflect the mindset of self-belief his confidence will grow and his fears will fade. As with so many people struggling with social anxiety, Jamie obviously is very harsh on himself at the moment and this is reflected in his inability to accept and enjoy praise. You can see the disbelief on his face as he tries to process the extended applause the audience and judges give. It is such contrast to what goes on inside his head and how he views himself that it is almost hard for him to bare. He cries as for this this brief moment he feels loved enough to let his guard down and be vulnerable, I just hope for his sake that he can learn to leave it down and place trust in not only himself, but also other people. Best of luck to you Jamie.

I was scanning through the new blog entries in my feed reader this morning for anything of interest when a new entry by Stephen Covey caught my eye. I thought this might be a good time to introduce him to you.

If you have not heard of him, Stephen is one of, if not the best selling personal development author in the world. He is very popular in the business world, although what he teaches is equally applicable to all people. The focus of his work is quite limited, but it is so profound that it does not require expansion. There is infinite wisdom to be gained from his timeless principles.

I was lucky enough to stumble across his work when I was overcoming my social anxiety and it definitely played a significant role in the changes I made back then. I started listening to his “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” audio book and found only true wisdom that challenged how I had been living my life.

What he teaches does not focus on helping people with social anxiety or even mention it at all, but it is well worth learning. Do not expect to find quick fixes or magic answers, his work  is for serious students who are willing to put in the effort to create the life they desire. As you may know by now, I am not into quick fixes as they generally do not fix anything and only delay the process of change,  so I would encourage you to become a serious student of life. I promise, the rewards are far greater than the effort invested.

I shall leave you with the blog entry I read today. It is so true and timeless, as is all of Covey’s work. I hope you recognise the wisdom in it.

Find Success by Doing the Things You Dislike

Please listen to this blog entry by pressing the play button…

Audio Transcript

“We’re over two weeks into the New Year and I’m willing to bet that a lot of you have made a new year’s resolution to make some progress with overcoming your social anxiety. So how’s it going and what plans do you have? I really hope that it is going well for you and that you have a great plan in place that works, but I know that many of you will be struggling with knowing what path to take, so in this blog entry I wanted to offer a little direction for those who are seeking it.

Over the years I’ve spoken to a lot of people about their plans for overcoming their social anxiety and there is one type of response that crops up time and time again. It is usually along the lines of ‘I am going to go out and be more socially active’, or ‘I am going to face the situations I find difficult’, or maybe that, they are going to go out and meet more people. There is nothing wrong with these goals at all, but people nearly always do not fulfil them, because they are their only goal. Year after year thousands of people with social anxiety aim for this same type of goals without success because their goal do not include learning anything new or making any changes within themselves. Effectively they are doing that age old thing of trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Some people actually do experience different results by doing this, but unfortunately it is usually their social anxiety getting worse rather than better. The repeated perceived failures that build up as they try to go into more and more social situations while still feeling just as anxious as before add up, lowering their self-esteem and therefore leaving them feeling more vulnerable and more anxious than ever. Don’t let this happen to you, be different! Do be more socially active if that is what you want to do, but back up your plan with other changes that will help you benefit from it fully.

If your goal is to be more socially active to overcome your social anxiety then the reasoning behind it is probably that, by facing your fears you will overcome them, just as if someone with a water phobia keeps getting in the swimming pool, then they will start to learn that being in the water is not dangerous and that they can handle it. This kind of ‘facing your fears’ strategy can actually work for social anxiety, but the problem is that people are often just too scared to face the situations they find difficult, or that when they do face them, they are not facing them fully because they are still using subtle avoidance tactics. For example, if you find you get very anxious at parties, so try to address this by going to lots of parties, but still avoid talking to people, or you drink alcohol to boost your confidence or only stick to safe topics when talking to people then you are not actually facing your fears and will not benefit from the process. This is because parties are not what you’re afraid of, so being in them doesn’t make any difference. What you’re actually afraid of is probably something like opening up to people or allowing people to get to know you. Just putting yourself in the party situation is not enough and can actually make your anxiety worse because it reinforces your feelings of inadequacy when you don’t make progress.

For most people, they are going to need to do more than just facing the situations they find difficult. Most likely they will need to work on changing the way they think about themselves and other people so they can have the courage to face their fears, and also change how they behave in response to their anxious feelings and challenging situations so they are actually facing their fears fully. The changes that need to be made are not always immediately obvious, so some investigation, experimentation and learning will be required by you. I’d really encourage you to take the time to learn more about how your social anxiety works and what else you might need to do to successfully increase your social confidence other than just facing your fears. Take advantage of the growing collection of information available on social anxiety and make sure that when you face your fears you are prepared, and know what changes you need to be making. Don’t expect to get it all perfect first time. Change if often difficult at first, but if you are persistent then it can be surprising how quickly things can get better. If you keep going, keep seeking new answers and keep making changes, step by step you will achieve the social confidence you desire.”

While Christmas can be anxiety provoking with work parties, family get-togethers and present giving and receiving, New Year’s Eve can be a depressing time of year for those with social anxiety. I hope for all it is not, but unfortunately, for many it will be.

Our loneliness and isolation can be amplified when we know others around us are socialising and having fun. We may even feel jealous or envious with a sense of unfairness about the situation, and even though we know this is unhealthy, we may find it hard to shake the feelings.

It is good to know that some of the social anxiety sufferers I know are getting together this year to celebrate the new year and I hope that many other people with social anxiety have enjoyable celebrations lined up too, but I know there will also be many on their own, or who will feel alone while in the company of others.

I have had my fair share of New Year’s Eves that I do not wish to remember. Many of them were times when I felt very alone. If you are alone this New Year’s then I understand why you may be feeling sad or even depressed. Unfortunately, I cannot take that sadness away for you, but I encourage you to use it to your advantage.

There may not be enough time to find the confidence you need to fully enjoy this New Year’s Eve, but you have a whole year to make sure that next year’s is a different story. Use your sadness to drive you to start making steps towards building your confidence. You may not know how to yet, but when we have a strong need for something and start actively searching for answers, usually we will find them. It is quite probable that they will not be the answers you were expecting, so be prepared to search beyond what seems immediately obvious. When you step into 2009, make sure you have a plan to make this year different.

Make New Year’s Eve a time for you to reflect on the last year and put in place plans to make the next year your best to date. What better time than the last day of the year to plan for a life-changing year ahead. Others may be out having fun, but while they are out doing that, you could be taking the first steps towards something great. Make the last day of the year really count.

Whether you will be planning a new life or just enjoying the moment, I wish you all the best for the new year. I hope your plans for the year ahead will be all that you hoped for and more.

If you are a social anxiety sufferer then it is quite likely that there has been a time when it has felt like people are laughing at you. Sure, everyone gets laughed at a few times in their life, but the difference with social anxiety is that, it feels like people are laughing at you, but they are not.

I used to be so self-conscious and paranoid about how I appeared to others that I would frequently feel like people were laughing at me. Was I walking oddly? Was there something stuck on my back? Was my hair sticking up? Maybe my flies were undone? Or perhaps, did they think I just looked pain weird? I did not feel able to, for example, check if something was stuck on my back because it felt like I was playing into the joke or would just look odd checking nothing. I would end up trying to look in shop windows to check how I was appearing to others, but struggled to find a way to do it discretely. As with many people with social anxiety, my self-focus was not an act of vanity, I was trying to manage what felt like an intimidating and vulnerable situation.

Even though my appearance was not great, I now understand that there was nothing about myself that warranted other people to laugh at me and those people probably did not even notice me at all. My feelings felt very real, but as much as I tried to convince myself that they were probably laughing at something else, doubt kept in creeping into my mind. Eventually, though, I did overcome this problem. This was quite an ingrained problem and was one of the last aspects of my social anxiety to leave me.

Although not a complete solution, an important part of overcoming this paranoia is to look up at the people who are laughing. That can be hard to do as our natural response is often to be submissive and look down or away, but through looking away we starve ourselves of any information that may counter our paranoid assumptions. By looking up at the people who are laughing, we get to find out if they are really looking at us. As you might know logically, it is quite unlikely that they are, but by actually seeing for yourself you get real evidence, and that can have a powerful effect on your feelings. Of course, it may be that they really are looking in your direction and laughing (although this is rarely the case), but in this situation the exercise can still be valuable. What we see with our eyes is usually not as bad as what our imagination can create for us, so by looking up we still help ourselves.

Sometimes when we are anxious and it feels like other people do not like us, then we can react in a negative way when there is actually nothing to react to. This can sometimes cause the situations we fear happening, to actually happen. So when you look up at people who are laughing, make sure you are operating from an attitude of curiosity rather than defence. Just take a quick look and do not stare. Also, if you make eye-contact, then give a quick smile and keep going about your business. It is always best to take the approach of innocent until proven guilty. It is often more our reactions to situations that give them meaning than people’s original intentions.

Everyone’s experience in unique, so please feel free to share yours by posting a comment.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is considered by most accademics and clinicians to be the best long-term solution for people with severe social anxiety. So what is CBT and does it really work? Academic reasearch says that, yes, for most people CBT does lead to significant improvements, but there is a lot more to the phrase ‘does CBT work?’ than first meets the eye.

Firstly, CBT is an evolving therapy. This means that CBT today is not what CBT was 15 years ago. CBT for social anxiety used to mostly be about learning relaxation through controlled breathing, visualisation techniques, simple exposure, and replacing negative self-talk with cognitive coping strategies. These may still be used today, but through research CBT has moved on. Today, if you visit a well trained CBT practitioner your therapy might well be more focused on using behavioural experiments to gather evidence to counter negative beliefs, eliminating the use of safety behaviours, focusing outwardly to reduce self-focused attention, video feedback, and even exposure through virtual-reality.

The basic premises of CBT have continued to be the same; we can change our feelings and increase our quality of life through changing our thoughts and behaviour, but how we do that has changed over time. This is an important point to make for those who may have tried CBT a good few years ago or have been unlucky enough to visit a therapist who has not updated their training. If CBT has not helped you much in the past then it is quite possible that it could be more beneficial if you tried it again with more up-to-date techniques.

Much of the help I offer people resembles CBT and I may even use CBT terminology from time to time. In many respects it is CBT because I focus on helping people change the way they think and behave to overcome their social anxiety, but some of the theory and techniques I employ are unique and would not commonly be found in a typical course of CBT (although I hope that they will be in the future). So when answering the question, ‘does CBT work?’, the answer is not so straight forward. It really depends on what that CBT consists of. Not all CBT is the same.

A second point to make regards the relationship between therapist and client. In CBT this is commonly called the therapeutic alliance. It is important that you get on well with your therapist and feel like they are someone who can understand and help you. If you do not gel well together then it could be a significant barrier to progress. The idea of the therapeutic alliance is not so much that the therapist is there to help you, but rather that together, as a team, you can work through your difficulties. If you wanted to visualise this then you might like to see you and the therapist sitting together facing the problem as opposed to you sitting opposite each other with the therapist looking at you with the problem. If your therapist is not someone you can feel understood by, trust and cooperate with then sooner or later it will get in the way of the therapeutic process, so another answer to the question, ‘does CBT work?’ is that it depends on your relationship with your therapist.

Some personalities fit together better than others and it is not necessarily a failing of your therapist or yourself if you do not connect. If you do not get on well with your therapist then be brave and bring up the matter with them, it could lead to a major break-through in your progress. If things still are not working out, ask to see someone else. It is possible that they can refer you to a colleague who will be a better match. I understand that this can be difficult to do when you have social anxiety, but it might be a key step towards you making significant progress.

Finally, CBT never works for anyone. What I mean by this is that CBT is just a set of theories and techniques. It has to be you who puts in the time and effort to turn those theories and techniques into changes in your life. Although most people understand this, and it can seem patronising to state the obvious, the unfortunate truth is that a lot of people still stand back and take a passive approach to therapy in the hope that change will happen to them. Fear of failure is a big reason for this, but it is important to remember that if we do nothing, then nothing will change, and worse, our situation could even deteriorate.

As you can see, when someone asks the question, ‘does CBT work?’, the answer is not as straight forward as a simple yes and no. CBT does help many people overcome their social anxiety, but your success will depend greatly on what exactly your CBT consists of, how good your relationship is with your therapist and whether or not you are ready to make the commitment of time and effort that is required by it.

What have your experiences of CBT been?

The downfall of many social anxiety sufferers is that their main goal is to eliminate their anxiety. Of course, when we have a problem that is significantly restricting our life and feels unpleasant it is natural to want to be rid of it, but we must first correctly identify what the real problem is. If we are not addressing the right problem then our efforts could be hindering us more than they are helping us.

It is important to recognise that although anxiety is the most prominent part of having social anxiety, it is actually more an effect of the problem rather than the actual root problem. Certainly anxiety interferes with our ability to socialise and that helps keeps us locked in the social anxiety vicious cycle, but we can’t directly control our feelings (except through artificial means) and therefore we need to address what causes us to feel anxious in the first place. What causes us to feel anxious is the way our mental focus and behavioural response to our feelings and situations cause us to feel vulnerable. It is therefore changing these to build inner strength, rather than eliminating anxiety, that needs to be the main goal if progress is to be made.

Anxiety is a natural part of being human. It is supposed be feel unpleasant. It works to motivate you away from potential danger so that you do not get harmed. It is therefore unwise, as well as futile, to make eliminating anxiety your goal. Anxiety is your friend and not your foe and by fighting it you only end up making yourself feel more vulnerable and therefore, more anxious. Rather than putting your efforts into fighting anxiety, put them into building strength so that you feel less vulnerable and therefore, less anxious.

The setbacks people can experience when trying to overcome their social anxiety are often not setbacks at all, but they are percieved as setbacks because people are working towards the goal of eliminating anxiety rather than building inner strength. When the main goal is to eliminate anxiety, success is measured by how much anxiety is felt rather than what has been achieved. This is a particularly problematic because building inner strength often needs to involve working through anxiety provoking situations and feeling the anxiety fully. It is learning that we can cope with the anxiety and will be ok in social situations that matters most for the social anxiety sufferer, rather than reducing anxious feelings. When eliminating anxiety is the goal, anxiety provoking situations are seen as potential moments of failure rather than potential opportunities to build strength. In addition to this, people will often feel like they are making progress when they feel less anxious and that they are failing when they feel more anxious, but this actually may not be true. The example of Sam will help illustrate this.

Sam used to work in an office but found that he spent most of his life feeling anxious. The constant interaction between colleagues, the meetings and work related social events were very anxiety provoking for him. Eventually the stress and anxiety made him decide to quit his job. While unemployed, Sam spent most of his time in his house as he only had to pop out for food and the occasional visit to his parents house. After a while he noticed that he had been feeling less anxious than before, which he was pleased about. Sam interpreted this as progress and thought that the break from working life had helped a lot, but he had misinterpreted the situation because his goal was to eliminate anxiety rather than to build strength.

What actually happened is that Sam had been feeling less anxious because he was avoiding the situations he felt vulnerable in and he unfortunately had made no progress with overcoming his social anxiety. In addition to this he was in a more vulnerable position than before because quitting his job had undermined his confidence in what he felt able to cope with. This became apparent when he was invited out to dinner with his old colleagues. Since he had been feeling better in himself he initially accepted the invitation, but on the evening of the dinner he started to feel more anxious than ever before and decided not to turn up. Sam felt depressed about the experience and interpreted the event as a massive failure and setback in his progress. Not turning up to the event further undermined his confidence and as a result he ended up reducing his exposure to the world even more.

The truth is that Sam had not worked at building up his inner strength at all and he had therefore not made any real progress.  The addition of the undermining effects of his avoidance meant he experienced cripling anxiety on the evening of the dinner, but this was not setback as he had not been making any progress to lose. The anxiety he felt was just a reflection of how vulnerable he was feeling at that point in his life and was a signal that he needs to take action to start building up his inner strength. Sam’s downfall was not that he quit his job, but that he did not then set about actively finding ways to make himself mentally stronger.

In contrast to Sam, some people have made significant progress but will perceive a sudden anxiety attack as a major setback because their goal is still to eliminate anxiety. Social Anxiety had affected Kerry for much of her life leaving her lonely and depressed, but through reading self-help books and attending a local support group she had started to build a social life and was feeling more able to cope socially. She had been experiencing much less anxiety while spending time with her new friends from the group. All seemed to be going well until she had to give a presentation as part of an evening class she had started. Since things had been fairly good the amount of anxiety and self-consciousness she experienced while giving the talk caught her by surprise. She ended up cutting the talk short to escape her anxious feelings, but felt like a failure as everyone else did a longer talk. She left the course because she felt too embarrassed to face the other students again. She was mortified by what she perceived to be a massive setback. This made her feel like all her efforts were for nothing and she started to feel depressed about ever getting over her social anxiety.

Unlike Sam, the anxiety Kerry experienced while giving her talk was not because she had not been making progress. It was because she was making a big step up in pushing her comfort zone. It is natural for us all, whether we have social anxiety or not, to get nervous when doing things that are significantly more challenging then we are used to. The strong anxiety Kerry felt was not a sign of a setback, but her responses to it significantly undermined her confidence and ultimately caused one. If Kerry had made her goal to build inner strength rather then eliminate anxiety then she might have understood that it was more important to let herself experience the anxiety, finish her talk and continue with her course than it was to escape the anxiety. It is important to recognise that Kerry’s response to her anxiety caused her setback rather than the actual anxiety or anything else out of her control. Since it was something she did, it is therefore something she can change. This means that there is a path to progress for her and she need not feel hopeless and depressed about overcoming her social anxiety.

I will be providing more detailed information about how to build inner strength in my audio product. Until it is released, think about Sam and Kerry and what their stories can teach you about your current strategy for overcoming social anxiety. Has your goal been to eliminate anxiety?

Why do you feeling socially anxious? Could your genetics be partly to blame? Do you have a ‘chemical imbalance’? A new artical now available in the free downloads section starts to answer these questions and make sense of the evidence available. If you have any comments you wish to share on this article then please post them below this blog entry.

Register here to access the socialanxiety.co.uk free downloads.

The older a person is the more likely they will think that there is no hope of them being able to turn their social anxiety into social confidence. There are several lines of logic that result in people thinking this, but they are all based on mistaken beliefs. Three common beliefs that back up ‘too old’ thinking are described and diffused below.

I’ve been this way too long…

Many people think that because their social anxiety has developed over so many years that it will take an almost equal amount of time for them to undo it. It is true that a person’s social anxiety may have developed over many years or decades, but this does not matter. The mistake made with this line of thinking is that social anxiety has to be unlearned. Because of the way our brains work, it is fairly impossible to unlearn anything. Overcoming social anxiety is actually all about learning new things and therefore it does not matter how long you have been socially anxious.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks…

Well you actually can teach an old dog new tricks, and people too. Many people believe that the older they are the more difficult it is for them to change. It is true that children learn new things faster than adults, but adults can still learn new things as a very reasonable speed too. It is true that older people will have more deeply ingrained habits, but since overcoming social anxiety is all about developing new habits, change is very possible. The extra motivation that older generations have to change along with their added maturity easily makes up for any decreased ability to learn.

I should have got over this by now…

As the years go by and no progress is made with reducing social anxiety, many people start to feel more and more embarrassed about the fact that they have struggled for so long. This embarrassment can prevent them from seeking help as they do not want to appear stupid or inadequate in front of someone else (a common social anxiety fear). Without additional help or information, it can be very difficult to overcome social anxiety. This is because many of the things that feel like they should help, actually make the problem worse and keep it going. Because of it’s paradoxical nature, very intelligent and capable people can still end up being stuck with anxiety or depression for many years. Do not beat yourself up for not having overcome these issues yet. The most intelligent thing you can do now is seek help. As you may have learnt by now, social anxiety does not easily disappear with age.

Better late than never…

Older generations tend to be less open to dealing with emotional difficulties as they have been more of a taboo subject in the past compared to the present. This, along with the above, prevents those who have seen a few decades from reaching out for help, but as has been explained, it should not. Regardless of how old you are, it is extremely possible for you to go from social anxiety to social confidence, so do not let your beliefs about what you can achieve hold you back. They may not be as well supported as you think.

Are you an older person with social anxiety? Leave a comment sharing your age to encourage others to seek change.