One of the frustrating things I have found about my social anxiety is that it seems to reset every time I take a break from being socially active. There have been periods of my life where I spent every other week traveling and talking to people, but put me at home for a month or two, my anxiety is as bad as it ever was.
The simple common sense solution is to maintain regular relationships, make it a habit of calling people, but that’s where my depression makes things rough.
It’s annoying, I am not saying my life is particularly difficult, especially compared to others, I have family, friends and a good career, but this stuff in my head does get annoying sometimes
I totally relate to this and it's one of the reasons I try to force myself to go out every day (e.g the office). I don't want to let the anxiety tyrant to grow. Also, being in my mid thirties, I've realised that I've been drinking alcohol since my early twenties (nothing crazy, just a few pints of beer every now and then) not because I like the feeling of being drunk, but because I hate the feeling of being anxious and alcohol, at least for me, acts as a solid anti-anxiety drug. Anxiety sucks because it affects critical aspects of my life (social life, sex, perceptions about life itself etc)
It's a complex and annoying problem, because if I go to the GP, I might end up taking pills and I really don't want that. The alternative is to go to a phycologist but, as with restaurants, it's better to get a recommended one and I haven't got any where I live.
I partially mentioned this in my other answer ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38302927 )--personally I found a big help in the "Feeling good" podcast and then "Feeling great" book (an older book "Feeling good" by the same author would also work). It's basically a variant of CBT, served in a digestible way.
So if you don't want to start with pills, and you don't have a good recommendation for a psychologist, maybe you could try with a book, a podcast or something like that? (And I don't necessarily mean "Feeling good", that's just the one I can recommend myself.)
I did really well until Covid hit and now I feel like all my progress has been reset. It is just so much harder when you know it is something you have to maintain all your live or you will lose it instead of something you can just solve once and for all.
Plus, I have the paradoxical form for social anxiety where I am mostly nervous around close friends and the like while I don't really care about presenting to total strangers. So I can easily be read as cold and arrogant because the anxiety is less obvious. Plus maintaining relationships isn't exactly my strength.
I wonder if it's the mind having lifelong expectations of social interactions going bad (why did it learn that?), and dismissing the plenty of events where "See, it didn't blow up in your face!".
I also wonder if the programming could be changed by some sort of conscious learning...
One thing I picked up somewhere, is that some people remember social situations with a far more negative spin than others and/or simply remember more of the negative interactions, and a way to counter that is to make notes while it's fresh in your mind. At least for a while.
It was really eye-opening for me to do this for a while, as even just writing down social interactions both led to discovering while writing it down that I'd probably misread situations as less positive than they were and forced me to pay closer attention to things I didn't use to during interactions.
But the biggest help was really just driving home how rare negative interactions were, and how little they mattered, relative to the rest, and also how much less they matter when you actually notice more of the good ones.
That's what CBT tries to do. Treatment for social anxiety typically uses a CBT process of both exposure therapy and cognitive restructuring: where you learn to replace negative thoughts, especially dysfunctional ones like "this person will hate me", with neutral "this person might hate me, but so what" or positive ones.
I'm over simplifying, CBT has a bunch of other techniques as well.
I can completely relate to your experience, as I experience pretty much the same thing.. To counteract that I try to expose myself to social interactions on purpose, on a regular basis.
The good news is that I noticed a "positive twist"--when I'm back to being anxious after a longer break from meeting people, my legs no longer shake! Which is a very measurable quantity, because I remember that a few years ago I had difficulties standing up at times..
In other words, I would say my experience is a sine wave, but trending up. Does this sound familiar to you, or do you observe a different function (so to speak) yourself?
Yeah, I thought I had "cured" myself of social anxiety using similar exposure techniques and then covid hit and, well, suddenly things were (are) difficult again.
you're likely not exposing yourself to the root cause of your social anxiety and are only doing practical exposure therapy to symptoms rather than the root causes. here it really depends what the crux is for you personally.
just as an example that may not even apply to you: if you are fundamentally afraid in new and unfamiliar social circumstances because you're fearing whatever type of reasonable or unreasonable/irrational outcome, then just exposing yourself to a series of specific social interaction types will likely not fix that root fear and only allow you to adapt to those specific circumstances.
what you would need to do instead is actively construct a list of situations that are as different as possible from each other, each having uncertainty for you in different ways, and then find ways to expose yourself to many of them as well as as many combinations of their good and bad outcomes in your head as possible, in an incremental way (because diving in naked / cold turkey strategy can not only be ineffective but even further traumatizing in exposure therapy).
I very much relate, I also feel like I have friends and family that care about me, but the anxiousness keeps coming back from time to time. It's hard to beat it completely.
Sometimes you see people taking this type of advice and throwing themselves into various uncomfortable situations, only to conclude that man, these situations sure are uncomfortable, I guess this must mean that I really am irredeemably socially awkward.
Realistically, uncomfortable situations are still going to be uncomfortable. You may expand your comfort zone through exposure, but when you're way outside of it, that never feels great.
I'd also suggest a therapist is a great way to work through anxiety issues. It's very difficult to debug your brain on your own. It's very hard to tell what's just part of the baseline human experience, and what's a problem that you could benefit from working on.
Social anxiety is a strange thing, or maybe it's several different things.
I have zero problem speaking before many people, being either serious or ridiculous; demonstrating the use of a condom on a cucumber would be fun and cause me no anxiety at all.
But I would rather rip off my arm than initiate talk with a random stranger at a party.
In fact my anxiety seems to be inversely proportional to the number of people I talk to.
This probably has a name? but if it does I don't know what it is.
This may be the difference between feelings that could be attributed to 'social anxiety' and those that are a product of being and introvert. Presenting to a large group of people, for me at least, takes way less 'social energy' than talking one-on-one with a stranger - so I resist doing the latter in order to conserve my limited social energy reserves. I can do it, I just prefer not to. So for me its more a feeling of reluctance because of how much energy I know it will take. In effect, this is just me being lazy.
Compare this with 'anxiety' which would be closer to feeling actual fear at interacting with strangers. This is a very different situation than social energy conservation.
One has a natural wall and gives you a lot of control over the situation, the other is intensely vulnerable with a high lyapunov exponent -- i.e., 'it could go anywhere'.
And 'anywhere' includes a lot of very scary places.
> One has a natural wall and gives you a lot of control over the situation,
My favourite new year was working behind the bar and chatting to all the partygoers (some regulars some not). I was supposed to be socialising once food was served, but instead I just poured drinks and chatted shit and it was _great_. I had a purpose and a place and it made it so easy.
I'd have lasted less than 15 minutes in the general area before going home
Similar. I've held plenty of speeches and presentations in front of anything from dozens to hundreds of people and never as much as a hint of stagefright, and have no problem making a total fool of myself on a dance floor as long as I can treat people there as a crowd, but addressing someone individually is stressful.
To their example of "sex ed", I've done that in front of my high school class. It didn't bother me at all. But I'd hesitate before initiating a conversation with any of my classmates individually even after having been in the same class as them for several years.
But also, for me at least, it's mostly approaching a stranger that causes me anxiety.
> This probably has a name? but if it does I don't know what it is.
In "pick up" circles it at least used to be described as approach anxiety. I read quite a bit of that kind of material while trying to get a handle on my own social anxiety, and while most of that material ranges from just shit to shit and misogynist, there are some useful tips to take from it.
The repeat exposure starting with something really small that the linked site suggests is one of them, and does work to an extent, but while 30 days might work for some, it might be way too little for others - people shouldn't be discouraged if it's too fast.
E.g. I spent many months dealing with mine. For weeks I'd go out and force myself to do really inane things like just asking people the time, or directions, which used to be sufficient to set off my anxiety - I'd go to great lengths to make do without having to ask someone for help.
Later I'd start trying to greet cashiers and bus drivers etc.. That was actually very interesting but ultimately I ended up choosing to dial it back.
The reason being that it worked too well. Turns out a whole lot of people in service jobs are really starved for attention, and give it to them and on one hand it likely be a very positive experience: After living the same place for (at that point) ~15 years or so, none of the bus drivers paid me any attention. A couple of weeks after I started that experiment it turned out one of them went to my gym and started talking to me regularly. I'd suddenly notice people rush to open a till for me where I was buying my lunch just because I'd started asking how they were and they suddenly remembered me. People would pour out their life stories.
But the thing is, I'm deeply introverted. It was nice to connect with some more people. I enjoy social contact to an extent. But it was also exhausting. And I realised that as much as I was happy as I felt my anxiety for starting a conversation dissipate, and enjoyed many of the conversations, I didn't want to engage in as many conversations as I got into, so I dialled it way back. (Notably, the anxiety dissipating did nothing to make it less tiring)
But it's nice to find it easier to when I do want to, and it has made me more conscious about making an effort to pay attention to people and be friendlier when I have the energy.
A few years ago I started my own battle with social anxiety, which I'd had for my whole life.
At that time I couldn't really name the problem and I didn't know how to approach it, so I started searching for podcasts--self-help, psychology, you name it.
I found a podcast named "Feeling Good", co-hosted by dr. David Burns, author of a book with the same title. And without much exaggeration, it changed my emotional life (or at the very least: it started/kicked off the process of change).
Just in case it might help someone, I quickly search for "shame attacking exercises" (technical name for making yourself look stupid in front of people :)) on dr. Burn's page and found this:
IMPORTANT: Theres a whole theory behind exposure (which shame attacking is) and if you do it incorrectly, it can make things worse (for instance, if someone starts laughing at you, your anxiety might worsen). So if you're in a rough place, or unsure if it's for you, better do it under therapist's supervision!
This isn’t to say that social anxiety is something you can just get over, but I attend Toastmasters. It has helped me significantly with keeping the social anxiety in check - regularly meeting a large group of people and speaking in front of them (and getting advice/ help along the way)
For my wife, social interaction is like air, she needs it to be healthy. For me, it's like water; I can enjoy it but I get tired after being in water for too long. It's like anything, the more you do it the better shape you are in. The less you do it, the less shape you are in.
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The simple common sense solution is to maintain regular relationships, make it a habit of calling people, but that’s where my depression makes things rough.
It’s annoying, I am not saying my life is particularly difficult, especially compared to others, I have family, friends and a good career, but this stuff in my head does get annoying sometimes
It's a complex and annoying problem, because if I go to the GP, I might end up taking pills and I really don't want that. The alternative is to go to a phycologist but, as with restaurants, it's better to get a recommended one and I haven't got any where I live.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
So if you don't want to start with pills, and you don't have a good recommendation for a psychologist, maybe you could try with a book, a podcast or something like that? (And I don't necessarily mean "Feeling good", that's just the one I can recommend myself.)
Might be better than nothing in any case.
I did really well until Covid hit and now I feel like all my progress has been reset. It is just so much harder when you know it is something you have to maintain all your live or you will lose it instead of something you can just solve once and for all.
Plus, I have the paradoxical form for social anxiety where I am mostly nervous around close friends and the like while I don't really care about presenting to total strangers. So I can easily be read as cold and arrogant because the anxiety is less obvious. Plus maintaining relationships isn't exactly my strength.
It doesn’t always work but it definitely helps avoid that reset that you are referring to.
I also wonder if the programming could be changed by some sort of conscious learning...
It was really eye-opening for me to do this for a while, as even just writing down social interactions both led to discovering while writing it down that I'd probably misread situations as less positive than they were and forced me to pay closer attention to things I didn't use to during interactions.
But the biggest help was really just driving home how rare negative interactions were, and how little they mattered, relative to the rest, and also how much less they matter when you actually notice more of the good ones.
I'm over simplifying, CBT has a bunch of other techniques as well.
The good news is that I noticed a "positive twist"--when I'm back to being anxious after a longer break from meeting people, my legs no longer shake! Which is a very measurable quantity, because I remember that a few years ago I had difficulties standing up at times..
In other words, I would say my experience is a sine wave, but trending up. Does this sound familiar to you, or do you observe a different function (so to speak) yourself?
just as an example that may not even apply to you: if you are fundamentally afraid in new and unfamiliar social circumstances because you're fearing whatever type of reasonable or unreasonable/irrational outcome, then just exposing yourself to a series of specific social interaction types will likely not fix that root fear and only allow you to adapt to those specific circumstances.
what you would need to do instead is actively construct a list of situations that are as different as possible from each other, each having uncertainty for you in different ways, and then find ways to expose yourself to many of them as well as as many combinations of their good and bad outcomes in your head as possible, in an incremental way (because diving in naked / cold turkey strategy can not only be ineffective but even further traumatizing in exposure therapy).
I’ve started to view it as a muscle that can atrophy or get stronger.
Sometimes you see people taking this type of advice and throwing themselves into various uncomfortable situations, only to conclude that man, these situations sure are uncomfortable, I guess this must mean that I really am irredeemably socially awkward.
Realistically, uncomfortable situations are still going to be uncomfortable. You may expand your comfort zone through exposure, but when you're way outside of it, that never feels great.
I'd also suggest a therapist is a great way to work through anxiety issues. It's very difficult to debug your brain on your own. It's very hard to tell what's just part of the baseline human experience, and what's a problem that you could benefit from working on.
I have zero problem speaking before many people, being either serious or ridiculous; demonstrating the use of a condom on a cucumber would be fun and cause me no anxiety at all.
But I would rather rip off my arm than initiate talk with a random stranger at a party.
In fact my anxiety seems to be inversely proportional to the number of people I talk to.
This probably has a name? but if it does I don't know what it is.
Compare this with 'anxiety' which would be closer to feeling actual fear at interacting with strangers. This is a very different situation than social energy conservation.
And 'anywhere' includes a lot of very scary places.
My favourite new year was working behind the bar and chatting to all the partygoers (some regulars some not). I was supposed to be socialising once food was served, but instead I just poured drinks and chatted shit and it was _great_. I had a purpose and a place and it made it so easy.
I'd have lasted less than 15 minutes in the general area before going home
To their example of "sex ed", I've done that in front of my high school class. It didn't bother me at all. But I'd hesitate before initiating a conversation with any of my classmates individually even after having been in the same class as them for several years.
But also, for me at least, it's mostly approaching a stranger that causes me anxiety.
> This probably has a name? but if it does I don't know what it is.
In "pick up" circles it at least used to be described as approach anxiety. I read quite a bit of that kind of material while trying to get a handle on my own social anxiety, and while most of that material ranges from just shit to shit and misogynist, there are some useful tips to take from it.
The repeat exposure starting with something really small that the linked site suggests is one of them, and does work to an extent, but while 30 days might work for some, it might be way too little for others - people shouldn't be discouraged if it's too fast.
E.g. I spent many months dealing with mine. For weeks I'd go out and force myself to do really inane things like just asking people the time, or directions, which used to be sufficient to set off my anxiety - I'd go to great lengths to make do without having to ask someone for help.
Later I'd start trying to greet cashiers and bus drivers etc.. That was actually very interesting but ultimately I ended up choosing to dial it back.
The reason being that it worked too well. Turns out a whole lot of people in service jobs are really starved for attention, and give it to them and on one hand it likely be a very positive experience: After living the same place for (at that point) ~15 years or so, none of the bus drivers paid me any attention. A couple of weeks after I started that experiment it turned out one of them went to my gym and started talking to me regularly. I'd suddenly notice people rush to open a till for me where I was buying my lunch just because I'd started asking how they were and they suddenly remembered me. People would pour out their life stories.
But the thing is, I'm deeply introverted. It was nice to connect with some more people. I enjoy social contact to an extent. But it was also exhausting. And I realised that as much as I was happy as I felt my anxiety for starting a conversation dissipate, and enjoyed many of the conversations, I didn't want to engage in as many conversations as I got into, so I dialled it way back. (Notably, the anxiety dissipating did nothing to make it less tiring)
But it's nice to find it easier to when I do want to, and it has made me more conscious about making an effort to pay attention to people and be friendlier when I have the energy.
https://www.socialanxietychallenge.com/logo.png
At that time I couldn't really name the problem and I didn't know how to approach it, so I started searching for podcasts--self-help, psychology, you name it.
I found a podcast named "Feeling Good", co-hosted by dr. David Burns, author of a book with the same title. And without much exaggeration, it changed my emotional life (or at the very least: it started/kicked off the process of change).
Just in case it might help someone, I quickly search for "shame attacking exercises" (technical name for making yourself look stupid in front of people :)) on dr. Burn's page and found this:
https://feelinggood.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/3a407-sha...
IMPORTANT: Theres a whole theory behind exposure (which shame attacking is) and if you do it incorrectly, it can make things worse (for instance, if someone starts laughing at you, your anxiety might worsen). So if you're in a rough place, or unsure if it's for you, better do it under therapist's supervision!
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