What Social Anxiety Disorder? Social anxiety Symptoms, Causes and how to deal with it.
Social anxiety disorder is a social phobia or a social situation. Social anxiety generally is being feared or shyness from the reactions of society. Fear of being judged, fear of negative response from people, fear of rejection, shy to start something new or to meet new people. Individuals with social anxiety feel self-conscious and they are often concerned about embarrassment and humiliation.
It is not abnormal to feel anxious sometimes. For example someone can be anxious when meeting first time or going to school first time but it is a disorder if you are having this situation too often in your daily life and it is disrupting your daily routine and start affecting your relationship and tasks.
Social anxiety is not as simple as shyness it is a disorder that affect your daily life and you start avoiding those situations that are causing social anxiety. It involves some intense fear situations, like some new situation or sudden situations that you face unexpectedly and when you start thinking about the response.
Social situations are the situations that you face in your life in which mostly other people are also involved. Some situations are in which individual thinks that they are being observed and watched. For example speaking in public or presenting in public, professional or educational presentation, giving your opinion in front of others, entering in a room where people are already seated or attending an event or get together.
Some social situation are like personal in which individual feel uncomfortable or shy to connect with other people for example, meeting new people, participating in a conversation, working with co-workers, ordering food or returning something even these individual feel uncomfortable to ask for their part.
Social anxiety disorder is very common in current times and many of us have faced these situations in our life. It is commonly found in people of teenage years. Social anxiety cause serious abruptions in the life of people who face this. These individuals who have social anxiety disorder start avoiding and hiding from these situations that they feel uncomfortable because of fear.
They start avoiding people and it makes them introverts. They don’t express their feelings and opinions, individual may not go for a job opportunity even though he is eligible for it.
Individuals with having social anxiety disorder experience feared over the multiple situations like over self-conscious, fear of how they will talk or present to others or perform any task in front of other people.
People with this situations create a wall around themselves, they think about all the scenarios that could happen, what could go wrong or how to deal with it as said earlier these people are over conscious.
People are introverts and they are over thinkers as well they think about the situations by himself that people might have understood him wrong.
For example an individual that have social anxiety disorder he is presenting something in front of his teachers or work mates and he accidently used some wrong word or pronounced wrong mistakenly.
That person will start thinking about that mistake that others might understand him not well or wrong after that. He look for the response and expression of other people and it effects his overall presentation he can get out focus from his main point and start stuttering to present next.
Individuals with social anxiety disorder feel nervous in the presence of people who have authority and feel uncomfortable of physical appearance.
They feel isolated and humiliated after such situations and they isolate themselves from others. They behave differently in such situations in which they feel uncomfortable. For example they will not go for such actions that according to them, will make them feel embarrassed. They avoid making eye contact with other people and take themselves away from such situations.
In such situations a person who is over thinking about any situation, that is making him uncomfortable it will make him feel more uncomfortable. For example if a person is walking and there are many people around. He may start thinking about it that is he walking right or wrong? How does he look like? And eventually it can make him lose balance and create more problem for himself.
A person may have sweat on his hands and face in such uncomfortable situations, he might start stuttering while talking or even in some cases someone can have anxiety attacks that will make his condition seriously bad and he feel lack of breath and in stuffed environment.
People who have social anxiety disorder they act differently than the other people who are doing it normally. It can be difficult for them to understand the way how to do it normally, the way other people are doing. They don’t socialize with others and it affects their lifestyle and their relationships and their response.
These people will feel comfortable while they are alone, they will use social media and internet apps too much as it is very common in current time. They might be sleeping for long hours, just thinking by himself leading to overthinking and negative thoughts.
And people who such situations in their life will end up using drugs, alcohol and smoking which leads them to further more problems. On an estimate every patient out of five is using such drugs to combat with these situations.
There are a lot of things that cause social anxiety disorder in a person which include sociology, neurology and psychology. Social anxiety is a disorder that starts in the life of an individual at some point where he face some issues and it keep developing over the time as he is trying to deal with this disorder.
Causes of Social Anxiety Disorder
Negative social experiences can be cause to social anxiety disorder. An incident happened in the life of an individual that left the impact and leads him to this disorder. Social anxiety disorder can be because of being ignored in your circle or society, it can be because of bullying at your school or even at your work space.
Lack of confidence and negligence from their elders can also be a cause of social anxiety disorder. There are also cultural aspects that are related to social anxiety disorders. A study shows that parenting also effects on it depending on the different cultures. Specifically American parents but in general all the parents.
Parenting effects the child in social anxiety disorder if they are forcing others opinion on them and making them feel shameful in front of other people and also comparing them with others. But in china or eastern Asia shy children are considered well for leading by the parents, and parents want their children to be shy, not very blunt and open to say anything or express their feelings.
A research has shown that there are some psychological factors that also affect the social anxiety disorder. Beliefs of an individual also affect the people, they start thinking about it and start making scenarios in their mind and get to a result. For example if I do this, this could happen in response.
If you have this disorder or someone else that you know is facing the situation of social anxiety disorder you can help them to treat it. There are multiple METHODS TO TREAT it and you can go for it with which you feel comfortable.
What We can Do to Deal with this Disorder
First of all you can challenge yourself to overcome this situation. You may think that there is nothing that you can do to help yourself but you must now that you yourself is most powerful to deal with any sort of disorder in your life. Challenge your negative thoughts that leads you towards this disorder.
There are a lot of negative thoughts that can come to anyone’s mind and it can distract you from focusing on the original goal. Thoughts like, if I do this people might make fun of me. Or when you going outside or attending an event you may start thinking, if I go in public people may not like my looks. These kind of thought comes often into the mind of an individual.
If you start challenging these thoughts and you make your mind that you will deal with them by focusing on its positive aspects and go for them with open mind and confidence. Think about it positively and accept the situation even if it is bad or good.
Next step is to focus on positive side, When you are in a gathering and you feel nervous and uncomfortable when there are people. Mostly around you it is because of you thinking just about yourself and could not focus around you. You might be thinking that everyone is looking at you and they are judging you and sometimes you start responding abnormally in the response of that thinking.
In this situation it is best that you focus on other people and try to connect with them. Have a different topic and talk with them to make yourself comfortable in that situation. If someone else is talking try to listen him and focus on it that what he is saying and you can also share your opinions about that and try to think minimum on your own thoughts. Focus on the moment that exist at that time don’t focus on what could happen or what happened previously.
You can try to be more socially active with other people by challenging yourself and your fears. Interact with people make positive relations, learn something new and start sharing your feelings and opinions about general things with them. Start participating in an activity or do something productive and eventually you will start having link minded people around and you will be comfortable with them.
There are some other treatment methods also used that includes therapies and medications that help you to deal with you social anxiety disorder. It is based on the observation and study of an individual that is facing this situation. Studying that how a situation affects him, how he reacts, how he feels in a specific situation and his behavior. Then professional therapist suggest you best methods to treat this disorder. It can be through relaxation and breathing exercises, challenging negative and unproductive thoughts and focusing more on positive thoughts. And keeping a check on individual that how much these methods are helping him or what can be done to make him better.
There are also some medications are used to treat social anxiety disorder. It is used when someone do not want to take the therapy treatment and he is at more serious stage of this disorder. It can also be used with therapy treatment for better treatment. There are three types of medications used.
Beta blockers that are used in relieving performance anxiety like physical effects of social anxiety sweat, shivering and other.
Then there are antidepressants when social anxiety disorder is severe and they need immediate medication to deal with it. But it must be taken only when doctor prescribe it for you.
And benzodiazepines are used as fast acting anti-anxiety nd they could affect an individual in short time and no other medication is working on him.
Final words from my observations and experience are, if you have social anxiety disorder you must not feel abnormal about yourself. A lot of people have this situation in their life and there are always methods and ways to deal with any kind of problem. So if you go with positive and calm mind you get over all those problems. Diagnose it if you have social anxiety disorder and then look for best solution according to your situation and you will surely get over it.