Social Anxiety to Social Confidence

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.