Tips for Social Anxiety

Today I would like to give you some tips for social anxiety, especially if you're planning on going to an event........Read more below

Tip #1 Prepare

A lot of times anxiety of any kind can be caused by uncertainty. So, my first tip is to prepare. If you can have some level of control over the situation, not necessarily the situation itself, but how you interact with the situation, It can be really helpful. What you want to do is find out as much as you can about the event ahead of time, things that are personally concerning to you, things like the number of people going or information about the venue. Then what you want to do is make sure you have a good plan for how you're going to get to and from the event, and especially you want a good exit strategy. How can you leave if you go from just slight discomfort to maybe slightly more than slight discomfort, versus pushing you over the edge into more significant anxiety. You want to set yourself up to WIN! That's what we really want with social anxiety. You want to do things that push yourself just a little bit so you can get some wins so that you can see that a social situation can go OK. Of course, we don't want to have to have that level of control all the time, right? The ultimate goal is to not need it, but if you can get those wins, you can be teaching your brain that social situations aren't always bad, and then ideally you won't need as much control in the future.

Tip #2 Determining the worst case scenario

This tip is something that I love and use so much with my clients and I use it a lot for any kind of anxiety, and that is determining the worst case scenario. So we can make up a lot of things in our minds about how a situation might go, the worst things that can happen. So it's really helpful if you're experiencing social anxiety, especially if you're going to go and hang out with people, to think about the worst thing that can happen. It's good to think about that. Let's plan and think about the worst thing that can happen, and then the second part is equally important and that is determining how likely it is that the worst thing is going to happen. This is very important because that's what we want to focus on, how likely it is, and to not give ourselves access worry. It's also really helpful to determine how life will be in the future, If the worst thing happens. Let's say that the worst thing that could happen in a social situation is somebody making fun of you. Then it's good to determine, well, what happens if someone makes fun of you? How will you be in the next month, six months, a year? Five years? Will it be anything to you at that point? It depends on the person, but these are really helpful things to keep in mind when we find ourselves going into a worst case scenario or when we find ourselves not going into social situations.

Tip #3 Consider the alternatives

Sometimes we are experiencing social anxiety because of concerns about what others might be thinking about us. That's a really common reason for having social anxiety and also a tendency to think about things that aren't totally accurate. So, what you need to do if you're finding yourself thinking of things that are negative as far as what people might be thinking about you is to consider the alternatives. So write down as many things as you possibly can as far as alternative things that might be happening. Let's say you think that if you interact in a social situation that somebody is going to make fun of the way that you look. What’s great to do is write down all of the other possible options like nobody cares about the way I look, people are ok with me wearing different clothes than them, things like that, write down as many as you possibly can to fill your mind with all the other possibilities, other than that other negative thought that you initially had.

Tip #4 Have prepared questions in advanced / Be a good listener

Here is another tip for social anxiety, especially if you find yourself struggling at all with conversations with people. Two things. One thing that can really help is to just have questions prepared in advance of going to invent. Have a list of questions that you've memorized that are good ones to ask at events that most people would be able to answer. Make them open-ended questions so that it gives people space to be able to go off a little bit on it, and then you don't have to do all the talking. The second thing is just to be a great listener. A lot of people do like to talk a fair amount. If you are a good listener and you just listen to them talk, they're going to think you're kind of awesome because a lot of people aren't great listeners. Of course ask follow up questions as you're comfortable. But if you do these two things, it can help a lot to ease the discomfort around having conversations.

Tip #5 Make sure your physical needs have been taken care of

This tip Is one that maybe you wouldn't have thought of and that is, make sure that your physical needs are taken care of before going to an event. If you're not feeling very well, maybe you're hungry, then it can cause anxiety to get worse in general, and then you might not get the win that you want to get as far as going to an event and having a good experience. You want to make sure that you're nice and well fed before you go, that you've had water, that you've had sleep, that you've had some calm times as much as you can. Try not to do something super stressful the day of the event so you can be in a really peaceful place. By doing these things before you go hopefully you can get that win and have a good experience,

Tip #5 Have prepared questions in advanced / Be a good listener

Sometimes we find ourselves avoiding social situations for fear of being anxious. We do this so we can escape the discomfort. The problem with avoiding social situations is it makes your anxiety Worse. The more that you avoid these situations, the less you are used to them, and boy did we see this the last couple of years with not hanging out with people as much. Many people who never even had an issue with social anxiety before developed some level of it because we just got used to not being around other people as much. It's like working out a muscle, now that you are around people more you can strengthen yourself as you keep going through the slight discomfort to more than slight discomfort of getting back into social situations. Start slow, go for situations that aren't your most anxiety producing situations. Pick some things that provide a little lower level of anxiety for you and get wins, then work your way up.

**Do you think I could be your “right fit” counselor? Be sure to set up a free 20-minute phone consultation at 281-746-9826 or kristen@upliftingcounsel.com. I provide counseling to clients in Texas and Oregon and would love to talk with you about the possibility of working together