What is Social Anxiety?
Social Anxiety is an intense fear about one or more social situations. It can be generalized to all social situations, or it can be activated in specific situations, such as having a conversation, meeting new people, being observed (eating, drinking, walking, etc.) or performing in front of others (giving a speech, speaking in front of a class, etc.). According to socialanxiety.org, it’s the third largest mental healthcare condition in the world today. So, if you’re dealing with social anxiety, it might feel like you’re alone, but statistics show that you’re not, at least 7% of the population is right there with you.
Dr. David Moscovitch (a clinical psychologist at the University of Waterloo) discovered that social anxiety is more than just a fear of being embarrassed. Rather, it’s an urge to cover up a perceived flaw. People with social anxiety believe that something is fatally wrong with them that makes them socially undesirable, so they fear that this perceived flaw will become obvious to everyone and that they’ll be humiliated and rejected. For example, Joe may believe he’s really boring and that if people found out how boring he is, they wouldn’t like him. One day, Joe was talking to Martin and there was a long pause in the conversation which Joe perceived as an awkward silence. Joe believed the awkward silence confirmed that he was boring and that the awkward silence was therefore his fault. His brain became flooded with thoughts about how Martin must be noticing and judging Joe as a boring person who he doesn’t want to be friends with. Now, Joe’s mind is filled with even more anxiety so he can’t think about something to say to Martin. It’s so overwhelming he can’t bare the idea of being placed in this situation again where he might be judged as boring, so he proceeds to avoid social interactions as much as possible. In reality, Martin didn’t think Joe was boring, and he wasn’t judging him, he was lost in his own train of thought and didn’t think much of the “awkward” silence at all.
This is why Dr. Moscovitch stresses that this Joe’s fatal flaw on exists in Joe’s mind. He perceives himself to be boring and so finds information in the conversation to confirm that his perception is true. People with social anxiety are hyper-sensitive to social blunders to the point where they often believe they’re the only ones who make them. The truth is that social blunders are part of what makes us human. Everyone is boring sometimes, we all trip over our words and we all have awkward moments. As Dr. Ellen Hendrickson states in her book How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety, “nothing is wrong with you, it’s just the blemishes of being a person.”
It’s normal for everyone to feel socially self-conscious from time to time, but as Dr. Hendrickson says, “social anxiety is like self-consciousness on steroids,” it’s big, heavy and very hard to get around, so people who have social anxiety are often very distressed and unable to fully function in their lives. When self-consciousness reaches this level of strength, people typically need help regulating it.
Social anxiety works in a cycle of fear and avoidance. People begin to avoid the social interactions that make them feel anxious because the anxiety they feel is so painful and unbearable. They understandably want to protect themselves from the trauma of feeling rejected or inadequate. Unfortunately, avoiding social situations only makes things worse because when we’re not interacting with our source of fear, it builds in strength in our heads and becomes much scarier. On top of that, when we avoid certain social situations we’re also unable to practice the important social skills necessary to get through those situations. When we feel we don’t have the necessary skills for something, we continue to avoid it. And the cycle of fear and avoidance continues.
Desirable Traits that come with Social Anxiety
Many people with social anxiety believe there’s something wrong with them and want to change their personality all together. They often believe that the opposite of social anxiety is confidence. In her book, Dr. Ellen Hendrickson points out that people with social anxiety tend to have a lot of desirable traits. They’re so anxious because they desperately want to connect and belong, and so are sensitive to the needs of others to such an extreme that it becomes a fault. In fact, psychopathy; not confidence, is the opposite of social anxiety.
People with social anxiety tend to be very conscientious, compassionate and caring, open to new experiences and agreeable. They have all the traits that would make a person socially desirable, they merely are inhibited by fear and an excess of shame. It’s therefore best to work through social anxiety by removing the fear and developing confidence on top of the amazing characteristics that are already there! It’s a process of learning to be yourself without fear. Dr. Hendrickson points out that yourself is the self you are without fear. Think about the person you are when you’re most comfortable, maybe when you’re with a pet or with a person you trust or doing an activity you enjoy, that’s who you are and that person is lovable and worthy of connection.
How to Move Past Fear and Shame and Live the Life you Want
My next blog post will detail eight strategies for working through social anxiety. In the mean time, I recommend picking up Dr. Ellen Hendrickson’s book How To Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety. It is also a great idea to talk to a counsellor and see how you can work together to come up with a plan to work towards quieting that inner critic.