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.

Narcissistic Parent: Collateral Damage

Today I would like to speak a little about being the child of a narcissistic parent. Primarily I have gotten some letters from adult children of narcissistic parents. Narcissistic personality disorder is along the lines of borderline personality disorder. Essentially, in this disorder, the person is extremely superiority oriented, and has difficulty receiving any kind of criticism. They think of themselves as better than anyone else. Very self-centred, self-involved, in a very extreme way. We all have self-involved ways of being, but this is an extreme sort of way of being. It's very volatile; it's dramatic, emotional, you never know what's coming at them; the person's up, they're down, they're depressed, they're screaming, they're yelling; their problems are the centre; their emotions are the centre of the room, and nobody else's emotions or feelings really matter to that person very much. They have a real difficult time in relationships. They feel victimized usually. They feel basically that their needs, their wants, their experience, are the only things that matters. They have a really tough time empathizing with others, and in my field, the ability to empathize and have compassion for another person indicates a person coming into mental, emotional, and spiritual health.
So I want to address being the child of a narcissistic parent. As you can imagine, what I'm describing this is extremely difficult. And these people, children of narcissists, generally feel there's always something missing within them. Not only that, they're looking for their self—where is their self? They've been surrounded by either one or two parents—usually a narcissist will attract another narcissist, interestingly enough—and it is a perpetuating cycle. But these are people who have grown up not knowing what their feelings are. They have always experienced the environment with the parent's feelings as the most important thing, and their own feelings have taken a back seat. So children of narcissists feel like the outsiders in their own families. They're people-pleasers. They sometimes sabotage their own self in order to please others, as you can imagine the pattern of the parent being the most important person in the room. They're not interested really in taking care of themselves, because the kid has realized that in order to get some attention, some affection, some something, they're going to have to play the game of the narcissistic parent. So in order to fit into that particular model, they've got to do whatever is right for the parent. And usually that means that they completely lose their sense of what is right for them, and they grow up as individuals in the adult world, in relationships, often either completely lost in terms of their own needs, or they themselves become narcissistic in a bid to survive, and in a bid to find some sort of voice, so the only way they know how to do that is by imitation of the narcissistic parent.
Often the narcissistic parent will mock the child, as they are having feelings, or interrupt the child as they're speaking, so the child of the narcissist will often feel like they can never get a word in edgewise, they can never feel heard, they can never feel seen. It is very painful—frankly, these people call themselves survivors, survivors of the narcissistic parent. It is very, very painful, and I really want to acknowledge everyone out there who has been the child of the narcissistic parent or parents.
You have to watch for a few things. Number one, you have to watch that you yourself are not attracting into your relationships narcissists as well. Because, as I've stated in other videos, we tend to repeat and mirror in our adult relationships our parental issues, in a bid to resolve them, in a bid to fix them in some way, in a bid to understand them. So watch that you're not bringing into your life other personality disorders that are similar to your parents'. And also watch that you yourself are not becoming narcissistic—become aware. So a lot of the tools to handle all of this would be, as an adult, realize that you no longer have to be at the mercy of your parents' narcissistic whims and narcissistic ways of being. You can start to shut that piece off inside you with awareness, and be very present, and in the moment within you, so that you say to yourself, “Am I being reasonable in this fight? Or am I being overly demanding? Or am I in a relationship that is just like my mother and father?” And if so, take stock. I encourage you to begin to write a journal and note-take, as you notice everything around you, and ask, are you yourself narcissistic? Or are you in a relationship with a narcissist, or are you suffering from the results, the ravages in the form of depression, in the form of not knowing yourself, not knowing your voice, not knowing who you are, not knowing what it is you need and want in your relationships? And begin very slowly to whisper those clear needs and wants within you. Soon, those needs and wants will become louder. But they'll become louder in a more balanced way. Because self-acknowledgment is the beginning of healing. Self-compassion, self-love, self-empathy is the real beginning of healing. So that is what I want you to really work on. And I just want to say that I have a lot of compassion for you.

Get Out of Your Comfort Zone: Change Needed!

Today I want to talk about all of you brave souls coping with change, and the stress that is created by the actual event of change. So many people will avoid change in order not to experience any kind of anxiety or stress. The problem with that is that often people in my office will express a deep dissatisfaction with their lives, because they have not changed the various things they need to change in their lives, so they stagnate and stagnate, staying in relationships that are way overdue, staying in jobs that are not satisfying, or staying in situations that are not good for them, or even harmful to them. But they say, “I would rather stay in this very clearly emotionally, sometimes physically, harmful situation, rather than risk change.” And I see it so often as the source of profound unhappiness. And I hear you! I am a human being, and I understand that change creates immense stress. In fact, some of the forefathers of my profession would agree that some of the biggest reasons for stress are change, so people avoid it.
What I find to be a key way for people to cope well with change is to employ a simple spiritual principle of being in the moment. What the mind does is ask, “What if this happens? What if that happens? What if I fail? What if I'm uncomfortable? What if I'm in pain? What if!” What if's are the paralyzer. They keep you from doing what your soul is craving. Clearly, dissatisfaction is the mother of change, the thing that motivates people to change. But people numb out to the dissatisfaction with drugs, or not being present, and they stay in situations that don't work for them. What ends up happening is that they're not happy with their lives, and they're not conscious of why. Be present and in the moment. Stay focused on the now. Put one foot in front of the other. Track your thoughts so that you don't let those thoughts get out of control. Allow yourself to make a small change, hold, assess, continue to make the next change, hold, assess, and you'll find you'll get to the other side very healthily, emotionally together, if you do it in a very clear, calm and present moment-oriented way. And I always recommend affirmations, meditation, deep breathing, so that you do serve your soul and go toward your life purpose, which inevitably is going to need change to accomplish that. Good luck with all the changes happening in your lives, because I'm telling you, right now I do believe the planets are aligned and people are ready for change!

New Article published!

Please check out my new article in Vitality Magazine

http://www.vitalitymagazine.com/sept09_nav1

Enjoy!!
Warmly, Victoria

Are you putting people in a box?

“Are you putting people in a box?” In other words, are you rigidly thinking about the people in your life? I'm not just talking about anyone in your life; I'm talking about family and friends, people you're not easily going to let go of, people you need to be in a relationship with, either because they're step-children, or they're part of your husband's family, or some sort of relationship that is rather close, but where you've had issues in the distant past, and you're unable to move beyond that past. I'm thinking about a client of mine who has a step-daughter, and this client is really triggered about how that step-daughter relates to her dad, who is her husband. The trigger is, this kid is an adult now, but my client met her as a kid, and they were always struggling for respect, how she deals with her dad, taking things for granted, etc. And my client has never been able to overcome it. She rigidly puts this person in a box, therefore the relationship can never heal, resentment can never go away, and the situation will basically be static and never change.
What I want you to do is look at your intimate relationships or your family relationships especially, where you've had issues, and ask whether you're refusing to let the past go. Are you refusing to let how you see that person go? If you are, you're contributing to this relationship never moving beyond the past. When you do that, you're saying, “This person can't grow. This person is never changing,” and you don't know that. In the case of my client, I'm constantly encouraging her to realize that in a young person's life, ten years (when the incidents were more acute) is a long time, and this person has probably evolved. But when my client keeps dealing with the step-daughter as an enemy or combatant energy, there's no real chance for this relationship to heal. The question I have for my client, and for you, is “Are you invested in the conflict staying alive? Maybe you're invested in their never changing in your eyes.” Look at your ego, and look at what it is you're actually doing to contribute to a poor harmony with this person. As the holidays are here, you're going to be meeting up with family, friends and people part of your spouse's family, people you haven't seen in awhile, really ask yourself, “Can I look at the present moment, and how they are with me in the present, versus always fixating on the events of the past?” Be open to allowing the person to have changed! Be open to allowing the past to be done, and the present to being just what it is, just now, in the moment, neutral, dealing with the person in a more neutral way, as opposed to holding a grudge about the past constantly. That's one of the tips for getting through the holidays: not attaching to old stuff, and being willing to let go of it.

Are You Choosing Partners that Mirror your Parents?

I often see people end up in relationships that, initially, they're very attracted to the person, but we find out later on in the relationship, when things start to go awry, that they remind them of their father, or their mother, or some familiar relationship in their childhood family-of-origin relationship patterning. And we call this imitation of the family schema, in my field. Imago is another thing you could google that would explain some of what I'm talking about. I just want to say that it is very common for people to wake up at a certain point in a relationship and find that they are in the middle of a very similar feeling of rejection that they might have felt from their father, and lo and behold, they're surprised that, yet again, they've chosen a man in their life, just as an example, who is rejecting and cold and emotionally distant. And they thought, my goodness! You know I was just working with a client the other day, “I've chosen a different kind of man. He's affable, he's social, he's not at all cold...”
Seemingly. But as we dig further into the relationship, as it's starting to fall apart, we realize that, my goodness, this has been a relationship where, this woman client of mine, is constantly trying to get the attention of her partner, to feel loved, feel seen, feel heard, feel the type of attention that she has now detected that she's been craving since she was at crib age, 2, 3 years old. So I thought that we should definitely put a video together about this because I see this so often: people choosing their partners in a very unconscious way, and they end up choosing partners who are just like their parents. So I'd like us to be extremely conscious of this, because once you start to wake up to this pattern, the likelihood is the future people, partners in your life, will be less about that kind of auto-pilot choosing of the parental schema. And then you will probably end up in a relationship that is quite different, because you've woken up, and you're aware, and with awareness comes choice, and with choice comes empowerment, and with empowerment comes the potential for deep happiness. And happiness in a way that you're able to share with a partner that is not recreating patterns, time in, time out, repetitive patterns from family of origin.
So I invite you to really look at the relationships in your life and analyze them, to see whether or not they are like your family, your parents, how you felt treated by your mother, how you felt treated by your father, and if they are, go about the business of entering into a therapeutic context where you can look at this. Also, write in your diary about it, so you become more and more aware, untangling any confusion that might be there for you. I wish you much success in your relationships.

Defensiveness: Relationship killer!

Today I'd like to talk about something that I see chronically in people and their relationships, and it's called being defensive. It can ruin relationships, reputations, basically peacefulness and joy within. I want you to understand, firstly, what defensiveness is all about. Usually, defensiveness will look like sarcasm, passive aggressiveness, a need to immediately correct someone or respond with an explanation that's very pointed. Often, it is not received very positively I'm here to tell you! Essentially, if you stop and feel what's actually going on, you'll usually find that the need to be defensive, to correct someone, often comes from a fear of abandonment, rejection, being gossiped about or ostracized on some level (the rejection piece). It often occurs as an auto-pilot response. The person isn't measuring their words; they're just blurting them out. It can be very off-putting, especially in work situations, and in love relationships.
When you're being defensive it's actually not necessary. Sometimes the person you're perceiving as attacking or invading is actually not; they're just making a comment that triggers you, and the trigger is usually a feeling that somehow you're inadequate, or you're going to be judged or rejected or abandoned for that inadequacy. So that defensiveness is a superiority feeling covering up an inferiority, insecurity feeling.
So I want you to be very aware that defensiveness ought to be corrected, because it does not serve you most often. And the way to correct it is, number one: stop the auto-pilot reaction. That means calm yourself and breathe, and not respond immediately: count one, two, three (internally, obviously), four, five, before you make a decision to respond, and not just respond automatically. This is something I see often, and it causes rifts and problems, and people perceive the defensive person as rather touchy, having more boundaries than they actually need. This is something that I observe as a problem for people, and that is why I'm doing a video about it. The solution is to breathe, not respond automatically; acknowledge what you're feeling: hurt, afraid of rejection or some sort of negative thing that you're perceiving from that other person. The acknowledgment will reduce the power of the need to be defensive. It will actually empower you, because you're in your truth, and whenever you're in your truth, there's more power in you. Defensiveness is actually quite disempowered, because you're trying to shut someone down. But in the end, you've got a lot of repercussions: guilty feelings, remorse for that aggressive response. So take this video, if you are defensive and are being told that you're being defensive, and try to take the steps of breathing, not responding immediately, and acknowledging your true feelings that are underneath this need to be reactive.

Everything is Working Out Better Than We expect!

I often utter this affirmation when I am in the midst of something that is daunting and creating some anxiety for me. I invite you to use this as a way to calm anxiety and as a way to shift your paradigm. The truth is we do not have control over very much in terms of events and outcomes of events. But what we do have control over is our thoughts, our feelings and our attitudes. The truth is, that even if things are seemingly turning out not as you expected, there is usually some wonderful learning that can occur from the experience and this is surely a positive. But aside from the learning, saying in mind positve affirmations in the midst of turmoil can shift your vibration to one that is attractive of the positive rather than the negative.