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It’s normal to feel nervous in some social situations. For example, going on a date or giving a presentation may cause that feeling of butterflies in your stomach.
How do I stop thinking so much in social situations?
Stop and slow down: When you do have extreme feelings of social anxiety, don’t react. Instead, try doing some relaxation exercises, write in your journal (as described above), or practice meditation. Engaging in these adaptive behaviors will break the cycle between anxious thoughts and runaway emotions.
Social anxiety can cause you to overthink and take desperate actions to avoid or get through social situations with severe distress. It interferes with your ability to learn how to handle difficult interactions and read and react appropriately to verbal and non-verbal social cues.
Is social anxiety lifelong?
For some, social phobia is confined to a few very specific situations, such as public speaking. For others, social phobia is more pervasive and extends to nearly all social situations. The bad news is that, if left untreated, social phobia is usually a chronic, unremitting, lifelong disease.
Most people with social anxiety feel comfortable with a few specific individuals—such as a best friend, a parent, or a sibling. Interacting with other individuals can lead to a serious spike in anxiety. Often, taking a “safe” person to the grocery store or a social gathering makes interactions a lot less scary.
How do you release your anxiety?
“My way of releasing my anxiety is often to talk and talk and talk. I feel so self-conscious, and my anxiety makes me try to predict any negative feedback and address it before it happens. So I can keep talking a lot.
7. You can be a confident woman and still be socially anxious. People with social anxiety may actually be very confident in other skills or parts of their lives, even though they lack self-confidence when it comes to meeting new people or interacting with a group.
How do people with social anxiety disorder imagine embarrassing themselves?
They imagine embarrassing themselves. Whether they’re about to meet a new person, or they’re walking into a social gathering, people with social anxiety disorder envision horribly embarrassing scenarios. They worry that they’ll say or do the wrong thing, and they picture that behavior horrifying other people.