Avoidance Social Anxiety Disorder - How to Overcome It
When people are experiencing some form of social anxiety, they often wonder how they can get through another horrible day being afraid of social situations. No doubt that it is not easy, but there are ways to live with this mental illness:
Accept it. I believe that a person thinks too much about their unfortunate situation. However, if a person accepts what cards they are dealt with instead of analyzing every little action they take - things would be much better for them. Easier said than done. I used to do that a lot, so I know that it is quite natural to over think things and worry about what will happen next. This takes us to our next point.
Don't think about it. I know - another "easier said than done" method. However, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) may play into this a bit. It is well known that people that have anxiety usually have obsessive thoughts. These thoughts usually can’t be controlled. However, I do have a little trick that works well (at least it did for me). Let's say that you are obsessing over a social situation that ended up bad and you are worried about what other people are thinking about you. What you do is tell yourself that you will not think about this right now, but later around...let's say about 9:00 pm - then you will worry about it for a full thirty minutes. So then you shut the worry monster down, promising that you will worry about it later - then when 9:00 pm comes around - ask yourself if you want to worry about it. Most of the time when I did it - I basically forgot about it and told myself to forget it when the time came to worry about a certain situation.
Allow it to happen. This is especially helpful when you are having a panic attack. When you are in a social situation and you are about to have a panic attack or you are at least very nervous, just let it happen. I gave a speech back in high school in front of the whole student body (years and years ago) and I was scared to death before I delivered it. What I did was pray about it first, then the morning of the speech - I basically told myself that whatever happened, happened. It wasn't like I didn't cared because I did, but I pretty much let God take over. There is a saying in the religious community that I am in - "Let go, Let God". So basically, I gave it to Him and gave a great speech - but I also just let my self-defenses down and if I was going down - there was nothing I could do about it.
To finish up - we fight our social anxiety every minute of every day. We have to learn to let go and accept things. I'm not saying to forget about the techniques mentioned within this website. You have to do practice these every day, but in the mean time - if we just allow things to happen and not put up any barriers against these fears, we'll find that dealing with social anxiety will be a lot easier.