Removing the use of avoidance and safety behaviours

When we are socially anxious, we tend to avoid social situations (e.g. parties; speaking in front of small groups, asking for a refund etc). However if we keep avoiding the situations we fear, we never get the chance to prove to ourselves that we can cope in them and our confidence remains low. Similarly, whenever socially anxious people do enter the situations they fear, they tend to use 'safety behaviours' (e.g. sticking tightly besides a good friend at a party; staying silent when in a small group to avoid looking foolish etc). Although these behaviours seem to help in the short term, upon closer inspection they are actually unhelpful. This is because they stop people from learning that they could have coped fine without relying on such precautions. Instead, someone may believe: "I only coped during that party because I had my best friend besides me" so their confidence remains low. Therefore, like avoidance, safety behaviours stop us from learning that we can cope in such situations and our anxiety towards them continues.

Reducing internal focus during social interactions

When we are socially anxious, we tend to spend a lot of time concentrating on our own bodily sensations during social interactions. This is because we fear that our anxiety is visible to others. For example, we may spend time trying to judge whether we are sweating, shaking, or blushing.

Although we do this in the hope being reassured that we are not visibly anxious, this strategy actually just makes things much worse. This is because we tend to overestimate how visible our anxiety is and this of course makes us feel even more self conscious. Also, by focusing on ourselves, we are prevented from fully concentrating on the conversations around us. This naturally makes it more difficult to join in properly and we usually end up interacting less well than we could. This typically strengthens our beliefs that we are no good in such situations. The reality is that anxiety is a lot less visible than we think. Often we have no idea if someone is anxious or not and it can help to remember this.

How to challenge unhelpful thoughts

Once you have recognised an unhelpful thought the next stage is to challenge it. To do this, you can ask yourself a serious of questions. See the example below:

Situation: You are due to meet your friend's work colleagues.

How you feel: On edge, self conscious.

Unhelpful thought: I'll have nothing to say and they'll think I'm an idiot!

How can I overcome my social anxiety?

Listing unhelpful thoughts

The way that we think about things has an impact on our social anxiety. Many of these thoughts occur outside of our control, and can be negative or unhelpful. It is therefore important to remember that they are just thoughts, without any real basis, and are not necessarily facts. Even though we may believe a lot of our unhelpful thoughts when we are socially anxious, it is good to remember that they should be questioned as they are often based on wrong assumptions.

The following section will help you begin to recognise if you are thinking about things in an unhelpful or unrealistic way, and discuss how you can start to make changes to this. By doing so, you can learn to see things in a more realistic light which can help to reduce your social anxiety. You might have unhelpful thoughts about all kinds of things. Here are some examples:

What prevents us overcoming social anxiety?

Fortunately, there are a number of strategies that we can use to reduce our social anxiety. These include:

1.    Learning how to challenge our unhelpful thoughts and see things in a more realistic light.

2.    Reducing our tendency of focusing on ourselves during social interactions.

3.    Removing the use of avoidance and safety behaviours and gradually confronting our fears.

Unhelpful Thoughts:

People's unhelpful thoughts and predictions make it more difficult for them to overcome their social anxiety. As discussed earlier, socially anxious people often hold unhelpful thoughts about themselves and their ability in social situations (e.g. I'm dull; I'm weird). This of course lowers their confidence and makes it harder to become involved in social situations. This, in turn, means they rarely get the chance to test out their social skills and prove they can interact well.

What causes social anxiety?

Behavioural Explanations:

One theory suggests that we develop social anxiety because of our past experiences. For example, if an infant touched an oven door, the pain from this experience would quickly teach them that oven doors are dangerous and should be avoided in the future. Similarly, it may be that social situations which once posed us no fear were influenced in a similar way. For example, if someone felt embarrassed or humiliated in a previous social situation (e.g. when talking to a small group of people), they may worry that similar situations will go the same way in the future. As a result they begin to fear and avoid them.

Social Anxiety

•Do you feel anxious or self conscious during social situations (e.g. parties; eating in public; or one to one conversations)?

 •Do you find it hard to participate in the things you want to because of your shyness?

 •Do you tend to avoid speaking to people when you can?

•Do you worry that people think badly of you in social settings?

•Do you worry that you have nothing interesting to contribute to conversations?

•Do you worry that you are the centre of attention and everyone can see how anxious you are?

If the answer to any of these questions is 'yes,' you may be experiencing symptoms of social anxiety

What is social anxiety?