How to Overcome Social Anxiety

Before knowing about the ways as how one can overcome social anxiety, it is necessary to know what actually social anxiety is. Social anxiety is the term used to describe a high level of shyness. Of course everyone feels shy or anxious in certain social environments, but for some people it can be a little more extreme. When this is the case it has a very debilitating affect on their lives and stops them doing the things they would like to. For example it may affect their confidence to go to college or work and impact on their confidence to make friends and enjoy their hobbies.

Situations that people often experience social anxiety in include:

  • Public speaking
  • Talking to authority figures
  • Talking to a group of people or an individual
  • Eating in public
  • Any performance based situations

This sometimes becomes embarrassing for the person. Only with the great will power to fight with the disease one can overcome this weakness. Fortunately, there are a number of strategies that we can use to reduce our social anxiety. These include:

  • Learning how to challenge our unhelpful thoughts and see things in a more realistic light.
  • Reducing our tendency of focusing on ourselves during social interactions.
  • Removing the use of avoidance and safety behaviours and gradually confronting our fears.

Challenging Unhelpful Thoughts

The way that we think about things has an impact on our social anxiety. Many of these thoughts occur outside of our control, and can be negative or unhelpful. It is therefore important to remember that they are just thoughts, without any real basis, and are not necessarily facts. Even though we may believe a lot of our unhelpful thoughts when we are socially anxious, it is good to remember that they should be questioned as they are often based on wrong assumptions.

The timely advice of psychiatrist is also required in the same. A psychiatrist can help you to overcome the situation so that, you may face your social challenges well and could stand tall in public.

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