
Friendship and connection is on my mind, as my best friend from the UK came out to visit me for a week. One of the major things I miss about the UK, are my friends. Thank goodness for facetime! From my experience so far, making friends as an adult is not easy, especially in a new country.
What is even harder, is living with social anxiety. I was lucky enough to hear Professor David Clark Speak in 2018 about social anxiety, and he had a compelling, heartbreaking awareness of this condition and of the quality of life of those who live with it. A few things that I still remember about social anxiety to this day, according to him are:
- Social anxiety is very persistent. The onset of social anxiety usually occurs by the age of 13 and only a third of people recover on their own, according to a study that followed up 12 years later. This is a much lower natural recovery rate than any other anxiety disorder or depression.
- Drug and alcohol use tend to be a common go-to way of coping in the short term, which leads to all sorts of issues later on, including a dependence.
- Social anxiety results in under achievement. The more self-conscious you are in a social setting, the less conscious you are on other things like academic work, hobbies and interests. No one can split their attention like this and achieve maximum results.
- Due to its potential lifelong persistence, this leads to a very lonely existence and at the end of life, the fewest people attending their funerals!
The three main features that we see in the maintenance of social anxiety in the here-and-now is:
1. An internal focus of attention, making sure you don’t say or do anything embarrassing.
2. High self-criticism. Assuming that others MUST feel the same way about you, as you do about yourself.
3. Behaviours that help you feel safer, such as avoidance. We call these “safety behaviours” (Experimental Psychology Dept, University of Oxford, 2021).
Isn’t it understandable how these features lead to such catastrophic consequences? Even if it were true that there might have been an occasion where you said the wrong thing, or felt embarrassed in a social moment, you do not deserve to be doomed to a life of self-flagellation and isolation!
You deserve to experience some safe and solid connection with other humans and I am going to tell you how you can get there and work through your social anxiety, with the top-down approach, and the bottom-up approach.
Read about the different approaches here.
Please note, although this is based on research evidence, and my own experience working with clients, this is a simplified piece of information intended to give you a general sense of what might be helpful (Leigh & Clark, 2018).
Two major top-down approaches
1. SHIFT YOUR FOCUS OF ATTENTION. Practice knowing what the difference is, between having your focus of attention on yourself during an interaction and when you’re able to really focus on the other person and the conversation itself. Have you ever been in a state of flow? When you are doing an activity that you’re enjoying and time is flying by, chances are, you don’t have that much focus on yourself. That’s what we want to practice here in social interactions. By shifting your focus of attention away from micromanaging and scrutinizing yourself, you’re killing two birds with one stone. You’re simultaneously addressing the first and the third feature listed above, because you’re also DROPPING A SAFETY BEHAVIOUR. This can be a terrifying idea to try out, and you might have all sorts of predictions about how this might go. Start with someone who you feel relatively safe with to practice with, see how that goes and then go from there.
2. STOP BEING SO HARD ON YOURSELF. So, you’re anxious? Do you judge how you might appear because of that? What do you think of other anxious people that you come across? Are you as hard on them as you are with yourself? Why do you assume others will treat you or think of you differently? If you have social anxiety, your memories will also be bias towards reminding you of any image or memory which reminds you of embarrassment, guilt or shame. You are not in conscious control of whatever your brain tries to throw up on you when it’s night time and you’re trying to get to sleep. But having awareness that this is your brain’s tendency will give you more power to know how to engage with those memories when they do arise.
Instead of buying into them, dissecting the memory and recalling all the stuff you perceive to be embarrassing or shame inducing, see if you can simply notice the memory and even say to yourself, “this reminds me of that same feeling again”. Know that its more of a projection of your mind, rather than based in reality.
But if you are convinced that certain memories warrant the punishment they give you, try telling them to a close or trusted person to see their perspective. They might be able to give you an alternative perspective that you might not have considered.
Also, shame cannot survive in an environment of compassion. To be open and vulnerable in this way is another scary thing to do to overcome social anxiety, but this is a massive step in updating previously held beliefs that might be holding you back in finding your confidence.
To strengthen your compassion muscle, I highly recommend you practice this loving-kindness meditation every day for 10 minutes for 1 week. Read the whys and the how-to here.
Can you spot any themes associated with each of these tips in overcoming social anxiety?
To me, it’s the critical self-focused attention. Social anxiety makes us believe that we should uphold a certain standard in relationship with other people. Therefore, we need to watch ourselves like a hawk to make sure we are cool, and we don’t do or say anything stupid. But the more we do this, the more awkward we become (Leigh & Clark, 2018)!
Harsh self-focused attention, or self-consciousness is the thing tripping us up. It’s the enemy. The goal is to be aware of it and not feed into it. Practice switching your focus of attention to your external environment, and your five senses.
Bottom-up approach
This brings me nicely to the bottom-up approach and will help you so much in being able to experience genuine connection with another person.
Consider your state of being. When you are self-conscious, you are probably in a fear-state. Letting go of self-consciousness is so much easier when you are in a state of love. I don’t mean romantic love, I mean genuine, simple, love. Imagine being in a state of love with the next person you intend to interact with. It will be so much easier to focus on the person, what they are saying, the conversation you are having. You don’t need to be super intelligent, funny or an excellent conversationalist to experience a good connection with someone, you’ve just got to give a shit about one another.
You may find this feeling easily accessible with just a decision. An intention. Deciding to embody love before interacting with this person.
If you don’t though, you may find this “Love Induction” helpful – although this uses top-down and bottom-up techniques (Sweeton, 2019).
So there we have it. I hope this helps even just one person with social anxiety practice gaining and experiencing a solid connection with someone.
Or if you know someone with social anxiety, I hope this helps your understanding of what might be going on for them.
Please give them some love by sharing this article with them, or just show them that you care about them – even though they are not as perfect as they’d like to be!
References
Experimental Psychology Dept, University of Oxford. (2021, Oct 27). Overcoming social anxiety. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/wm19XQqVT7o?si=9RVbI6yw7fbQP0CH
Leigh, E., & Clark, D. M. (2018). Understanding social anxiety disorder in adolescents and improving treatment outcomes: Applying the cognitive model of Clark and Wells (1995). Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 21(3), 388–414. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-018-0258-5
Sweeton, J. (2019). Trauma treatment toolbox. Eau Claire: PESI Publishing and Media.
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