The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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People with social anxiety, how have you managed to cope or manage it? I've had it since 12 years old, I'm 25 now. The biggest impact for me has come from consistent sleep and exercise. Went from having hard time calling customer support and going to public places with a lot of people to having a slightly increased heartbeat when talking to people I'm not familiar with. I've also tried meditation, but couldn't stay consistent with it. I know some people swear by CBT, thinking of trying it out next.
Testosterone replacement therapy helped me a lot, but mine was actually pretty low for my age group. It likely won’t do anything if yours is in range (and commits you to giving yourself weekly injections the rest of your life), so isn’t something to just jump right into
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Have you tried intentionally progressing your exposure therapy methods? I keep a list of progressive exercises:
Go out in a public place
Go out in a popular, crowded public place (bar, club, restaurant, sports game)
Make eye contact with a person
Smile at a person
Ring the bell on a bicycle to get through (source)
Ask a person what time it is
Comment on a post in a large online forum
Comment on a post in a small online forum
Call the waiter in a crowded restaurant (source)
Call a close family member
Call a close friend
Call a distant family member
Call a distant friend
Disagree with a person
Leave and re-enter a movie theater during the movie while seated in the middle of a row (source)
Call a business to ask a question or place an order
Ask a question during a work meeting (source)
Cold email someone
Publish a standalone post on a large online forum
Publish a standalone post on a small online forum
Delegate a task to a person
Cold call someone
Admit being wrong in private
Admit being wrong in public
Present at work (source)
Ask for abnormal accommodations at a business (keeping a large water bottle at the table for self-refills, etc)
Ask what tipping customs are when in a foreign country
Send food back because it wasn't correct or is very poor quality
Ask for things (cigarettes, lighter, money, borrow a phone)
Sing in public (karaoke, on the street, etc)
Dance in public
Go to a foreign country without speaking the language well
Compliment a person
Walk backwards slowly in a crowded street for three minutes (source)
Cold approach a person
Ask a person playing music out loud or having a conversation on speaker to put headphones in or turn off speaker
Ask multiple people in a specific and obvious location (e.g., right outside XXX Park, or a T stop) where to find that location (“Excuse me, I am looking for XXX Park”) (source)
Wear a shirt backward and inside out and buttoned incorrectly in a crowded store (source)
Dance or sing in the street or subway wearing attention-grabbing clothing (source)
Recite “Twas the Night Before Christmas” in the subway platform (source)
Approach group of people at bar or restaurant and ask if you can practice a best man’s toast (source)
Tell someone at bookstore that you don’t know how to read and ask them if they can read the back cover to you (source)
Ask a staff member in bookstore for their opinion about whether to buy the Kama Sutra or the Joy of Sex, have a long conversation about this, buy the books and then return them immediately (source)
Enter a food establishment and interrupt people asking if they own a silver Camry because their car is being towed (source)
Go to every table in a crowded restaurant asking for Joe Smith (source)
Go to a fast food restaurant and only order water, then spill the water, clean it up, and stay in the restaurant (source)
Go to a hotel. Have the patient conduct a long conversation with the concierge about romantic vacation packages (asking about in-room massages, arranging horse-drawn carriage ride, etc.), book a package, and then cancel for no reason except changing their mind (source)
Pay for an embarrassing item with change, and then state that you don’t have enough and leave the store (source)
Initiate conversations with/tell jokes to strangers in bookstore while wearing hair in a side ponytail with bandages on face (source)
Attend a multi-level marketing pitch and saying no
Cold approach and flirt with a person
Cold approach and flirt with a person with the intention of getting their contact information
Go to a random person's house and ask if you can cook them dinner in their house
Go to a foreign country without speaking the language at all
Perform stand-up comedy
See, making it intentional would add an extra source of anxiety for me. While I've probably done ~80% of the things you've listed, I've never intentionally went out to perform these tasks. In general, I just try to catch my anxious thoughts and reflect on how they affect my decision making in the moment. E.g. If I don't know how to get to X place, my brain instantly starts looking for solutions that avoids social contact, I catch that thought and instantly force myself to do the opposite and ask a random person for directions. That way my brain doesn't have time to react and get anxious. With things like public speaking, I've noticed that I'm most anxious right before the event rather during it. It's kind of ironic, I think someone spontaneously putting me on the spot to make a speech would be less triggering than being told 3 days in advance to prepare a speech.
I would keep pushing yourself within the bounds of your tolerance.
I used to be like you until I
took an arrow in the kneeeventually became less socially anxious over the course of about 5 years. I spent a lot of time deliberately going out for social interaction though. Now I help host my friend's meetup when I'm there helping others who are shy to fit in with the group.There isn't really a shortcut to getting over social anxiety. The fast chemical route is a crutch (even though I used A LOT of alcohol over the years to tolerate uncomfortable environments). All the training in the world won't help with introversion though. I can't make myself want to stay in high stimulation environments to this day.
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I wish I had an answer to this. I still have not figured this out.
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Alcohol. It's a pretty sweet social lubricant.
I won't say I'm the most anxious person around, but I lean towards the introvert end, and I'm a different, cooler version of me with a beer.
Hardly a sustainable solution outside the odd party on weekends, but exposure therapy as someone advocated should help.
the problem with alcohol is doing/saying things you regret, and also feeling like crap later if you consume too much.
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2 things: The first was realizing that I was approaching the world with the mindset that everybody hated me and thought I was a loser. I decided to pretend instead that everybody was my friend, and surprise surprise, people respond to that and I started to believe it myself. I flipped that switch when I was 17, and it still serves me well.
The second is less inspiring - an SSRI. I started taking if for panic and found it did wonders for my social anxiety also.
Oh trust me, I've had similar realization long time ago too. I think it did help me a bit, but my current problems come from physical social anxiety symptoms. I can come into a social situation with confident mental, but my physical symptoms still present themselves and it turns into a positive feedback loop. Increased heartbeat --> sweating & shaking --> 'oh my god, i hope they don't notice i'm a fucking wreck' --> more sweating & shaking. That's why I think sleep and exercise has made such a big difference for me, my physical symptoms have reduced significantly.
Meds will be my last resort. Really don't want to be hooked on something for the rest of my life
Oh yeah, the physical stuff is the worst. I blush at the drop of the hat, and when I was a teenager I would just start shaking when people talked to me. That's where the meds really helped.
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Exposure therapy, lots of it. Public speaking in my case.
And lots of meditation. Including a guided style of meditation called Ideal Parent Figure. It can help you emotionally reconsolidate the difficult memories of episodes/life situations that contributed to your developing the anxiety.
Yeah I do plenty of that in my daily life, but I think I need to do something more out of the ordinary, maybe take an improv class.
That sounds interesting, thanks. Especially considering I attribute my social anxiety issues to one of the parents being extremely neurotic in my youth...
Check out https://www.attachmentrepair.com
He's a good teacher of IPF (calls it "perfect nurturer" though due to some copyright issue).
Hey, just want to say big thank you for mentioning Ideal Parent Figure. As I was researching it, I stumbled upon EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy) and tried a virtual session last night. It's most likely a placebo effect, but I've had 0 social anxiety symptoms today. It was probably my first time feeling like this in my whole adult life. Will continue with it and see how it goes.
Oh wow, that's wonderful. :)
I did some EMDR too, and it was helpful. I should have mentioned it. But I'm glad you found it anyway!
Btw, what I've found is that some stress can be tied up in more general "concept situations" and not just specific episodic memories. What I mean is, the pattern can be something like "this will be a big challenge in my life" or "this happens around lunch time" rather than the very specific like "holding x presentation at work".
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