Tools to cope with Social Anxiety

Today I want to talk about something I'm getting a lot of letters about: social anxiety. A lot of people seem to suffer from it, and it can be paralyzing and crippling for many, at many levels, from shyness to deciding not to take a job or promotions for fear of talking publicly, not going out with friends, not doing family parties, not enjoying life: isolating, and life becomes smaller and smaller. And it's quite tragic, because there are strategies to handle this. But the roots of social anxiety are in the family of origin, from lack of support, or in the school system, there's bullying, acne, teasing, or sometimes it's just a chemical imbalance that causes cognitive distortions, so they're perceiving life differently than it is. So let's look at some key tools and strategies, and I encourage you to use them.

The first thing is, your brain is in fight or flight, and it perceives danger where there is no danger. The biochemistry is flowing in your system as if there were danger. In order to reverse that, something very simple: slow your breath down. When you're in a danger situation, your breath is shallow and fast, so you need to signal to the brain, “I am not in a danger situation,” and you need to reverse the perception, for instance with a deep breath in. Hold for a count of four, then slowly breath out. And you can do it through the nose, then mouth, but I like nose only. It's really powerful just to slow your breath down. Do 10-15 of those.

Secondly, an important strategy is to relax your muscles. There's a simple yogic way to do it: you tense a muscle, your arm for instance, tense, tense, tense, then relax. Then your other arm, each leg, then your whole body, and relax after each. This gets the body into a biochemical experience of releasing and relaxing. And you want to work with these two important tools of breathing and relaxing.

Number three: the cognitive. You need to identify the beliefs that are going on within you. You may be saying, “I'm going to say something stupid, so I may as well not go out,” or, “I'm going to drop something and look like a fool,” or, “I'm going to fall and people are going to make fun of me.” You need to identify the beliefs that exist and are coarsing through your brain, and the neural pathways, which are your beliefs, that are reinforcing the social anxiety. Write them all down. “I am afraid of being made fun of. I feel afraid of looking stupid.” Whatever they are. Write all of your feelings and thoughts down, and start to keep a journal of when they occur. “I go to the grocery store, and I feel this way, and this is the date. I go to the class, and this is what I feel, and the date.” Just get a log going so you can start to identify specifically when the social anxiety is occurring. Again, if you don't focus on what is wrong, you're never going to resolve it. So focus on it, and start to analyze when is it that your social anxiety shows up. And more importantly, what are the beliefs that are associated with that anxiety? Then I want you to go about a system of tracking these beliefs, and catching them as they are there, and speak with yourself rationally, as though you had a therapist dialoguing with you, and you need to ask yourself logically, “Am I 100% sure that I will be made fun of?” And clearly your answer needs to be no, because you're not 100% sure of just about anything. You're not sure that anyone is going to respond to you in any way. So you need to dialogue with yourself, take yourself through a process of understanding, “Is this realistic? Is this really going on? Is this something I'm really 100% certain of? Is my fear justified?” And write about that. Start to catch yourself, repeatedly, and rationally converse with yourself, in the moment you're feeling whatever you're feeling. The experience is that if you track and see what you're feeling, rather than just making it a huge monster, you're going to find that looking at it truly is going to make it a little less scary, and every time you do it, the fear will come down and down. So getting realistic thinking is very powerful, and reverses social anxiety.

The fourth tool: little by little, test yourself. Push the limits a little bit. While you're doing that, you're breathing deeply, and you're working with your muscles, so you're now coupling the situation that was once very scary to you, with a relaxation response, that is biochemically sending messages like, “There is no sabre-toothed tiger,” or, “There is no scary situation that is going to attack me.” So you need to work with yourself very patiently. I would also love to recommend fish oil: large doses of essential fatty acids, 2000-4000 mg, to help the brain calm. Also, Bach remedies has a wonderful remedy called “Rescue Remedy.” I recommend that you get a little spray bottle, and put a couple spray under your tongue when you're going out. It's got a variety of flower essences to bring the energy of anxiety down. Also, check out my Emotional Freedom Technique video on You Tube www.youtube.askvictora , which really helps to neutralize difficult emotions. I'm hoping that this will assist you, because all you have to do with social anxiety is focus, pay attention, and work to analyze, undo, cancel and correct those automatic responses that are not realistic.

Watch Your Negative Running Commentary

I want to talk about your running commentary, that's going on in your brain. Very important. You've got to watch it, because that is setting up your vibration, and whatever your vibration is—I've said this many times—is what you're attracting towards you. If your running commentary is constantly the worst possible thing is going to happen, the what-if's, the worst-case scenario, constantly sitting in a negative state of mind, you will be attracting towards yourself negative states of being. I want to remind you to watch your running commentary. What I often tell my clients to do, and what I do myself when I catch myself in a running commentary that is negative, is to halt it, I stop immediately, and I begin to do positive running commentary. And don't take my word for it; watch the transformation begin to occur. Watch your life start to really change once again, because life is fluid, it's not rigid, and you need to remember that. People think, “This negative thing happened to me in the past, and sure as anything, it's going to happen in the future.” No, life is much more fluid than that, and much more attentive to your vibration, so get busy getting your vibration—determined by your thoughts—into a positive state of being. I encourage you to do an affirmation like, “Everything is working out better than I expect,” which takes care of any negative expectations. “The universe is conspiring in my favour. All is well. I am safe.” Even just saying, “All is well,” helps get that negative running commentary neutralized, and it will help anxiety come down as well, which a lot of people suffer from, with the way the world is, the economy, all the craziness, the terrorist attacks.
(2:10) People generally gravitate to a negative state of running commentary much more easily than to a positive state of running commentary. Also gratitude: going immediately into gratitude, even in a negative situation, being grateful for whatever, even for being alive in a negative situation. Just try to find something to be grateful for, and you'll find that your entire vibration, your thinking state, will shift quickly. As soon as you go into the vibration of gratitude, watch yourself immediately change! So watch your negative commentary, because it is not serving you in the least.