What Causes Social Anxiety
Psychological - Causes of Social Anxiety
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is known to be the most severe type of shyness of shyness or social anxiety. A lot of people experience anxiety at some point in their lives, during a performance or a specific social situation. According to studies, only a small number of individuals don’t experience shyness their entire lives. An individual has SAD when anxiety gets in the way of his normal daily life and get severely bothered over the idea of getting involved in social situations, like public performance and social gatherings.
Social anxiety disorder has a lot of causes, psychological factors being the most common. Listed below are the most common psychological causes of social anxiety.
• Personal Experiences
An individual’s personal experiences have a huge impact on the occurrence of social anxiety. Negative events during childhood, like getting constantly bullied and humiliated in public, could cause you to subsequently avoid or fear social situations. This is because the trauma you have experienced is so severe that the mere idea of being in a social gathering can be linked with traumatic past experiences.
Individuals who are exposed to people with social anxiety disorder may also learn to dread similar situations simply through observation. An example for this is a child growing with a parent who has a severe case of social anxiety disorder.
• Interpretations Regarding Social Situations
Individuals with severe social anxiety have a tendency to interpret different social situations in ways that just intensify their anxiety. They get extremely worried and self-conscious over other people’s reactions. As a result, they would experience anxiety symptoms, like sweating, blushing, restlessness, numbness of hands and feet, nausea and trembling to name a few. People with social anxiety disorder constantly evaluate their public performance in negative ways. They are always worried about other people’s reactions, worsening their predicament in the process.
• Memory and Attention
In general, people suffering from social anxiety disorder are highly self-conscious and perceptive. Because of this, they have a higher level of consciousness to people, events and socially intimidating situations. They are known to remember faces quite well, especially critical or negative faces; even neutral expressions can be interpreted negatively.
• Other Anxiety-Related Behaviors and Avoidance
Persons with social anxiety disorder usually isolate themselves to avoid social situations, thus limiting their experiences in the process. As a result, their avoidance prevents them from discovering that social situations aren’t as awful as they perceived things to be. Aside from this, specific anxiety behaviours, like speaking quietly, avoiding any contact and maintaining a distance from others, may give other people a negative impression. This negative impression could bring forth an unconscious negative reaction, which in turn would justify the anxious person’s belief that people around are being too critical on him.
Many researchers strongly believe that there’s a strong link between childhood emotional trauma and social phobia. It is also considered that depriving a child of a parent’s or guardian’s attention during his early development stage can enhance the risk of social anxiety disorder.