"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - Hermann Wilhelm Göring
These videos have been broken up into over 30 video segments, all of which can be watched on YouTube or from SAI.
The first videos start with the person telling about their experiences when they had social anxiety and what life was like. As they progress, they begin to tell you what they did to overcome social anxiety and how they did it, and what progress against social anxiety means.
Many times, introverts felt that something is wrong with them. This happens especially when they are in the middle of crowd, among the extroverts. Many people are saying that introverts are bad, while extroverts are good. The introverts have an advantage and they supposed to make use their uniqueness instead of resenting them.
By being aware of your symptoms, your friends can be educated about what a panic attack is. Tell them not to rush you to the hospital unless you describe symptoms that are different from your typical panic attack. Tell them that being reassuring during the experience generally is enough.
Here are some other pointers you might want to give:
Don’t assume what I need, ask me.
Let me pace my recovery, but encourage me to get help.
Find something good in my achievements. When I overcome an obstacle (such as driving on the highway), make a big deal of it.
Don’t let me avoid life. Help me take the baby steps to live life to its fullest.
Don’t give up your own life to protect me. We only will grow to resent each other.
Don’t panic when I panic. I need you to be confident that I will get through this.
Don’t tell me to “Calm down” or “Get a grip on yourself.” If I could do that, don’t you think I would?
Panic disorder is a difficult problem for everyone involved. But, with care, patience and some help from your friends, you can overcome it.
Avoidant personality disorder (APD) is considered to be an active-detached personality pattern, meaning that avoidants purposefully avoid people due to fears of humiliation & rejection. It ís thought to be a pathological syndromal extension of the “normal inhibited” personality, which ís characterized by a watchful behavioral appearance, shy interpersonal conduct, a preoccupied cognitive style, uneasy affective expression & a lonely self-perception. According to this view, the avoidant pattern seems to range in varying degrees along a symptomological continuum from mild to extreme. In mild cases, a person may be said to be normally shy, whereas extreme cases indicate personality disorder.
Individuals with AvPD are “lonely loners.” They would like to be involved in relationships but cannot tolerate the feelings they get around other people. They feel unacceptable, incapable of being loved, and unable to change. Because they retreat from others in anticipation of rejection, they lead socially impoverished lives. They have immature and unrealistic expectations of relationships; they believe that they can have no imperfections if they are to be accepted and loved. Interpersonally, they are ill at ease, awkward and tense. They experience unremitting self-consciousness, self-contempt and anger toward others (Oldham, 1990, pp. 188-193).
Individuals with AvPD will develop intimacy with people who are experienced as safe. Nevertheless, they will often engage in triangular marital or quasi-marital relationships which provide intimacy while maintaining interpersonal distance. These individuals like to foster secret liaisons as a “fall-back” position in case the key relationship does not work out. As sexual partners and parents, people with AvPD appear self-involved and uncaring as they preserve distance from others through defensive restraint and withdrawal. Even so, these individuals long for affection and fantasize about idealized relationships.
Firm pressure is the most fundamental technique. Use thumbs, fingers, palms, the side of the hand, or knuckles to apply steady, stationary pressure.
To relax an area or relieve pain, apply pressure gradually and hold without any movement for several minutes at a time. You can use prolonged finger pressure directly on the point; gradual, steady, penetrating pressure for approximately three minutes is ideal. Each point will feel somewhat different when you press it; some points feel tense, while others are often sore or ache when pressed.
How much pressure to apply to any point depends on how fit you are. A general guideline to follow is that the pressure should be firm enough so that it hurts a little. The more developed the muscles are, the more pressure you should apply. If you feel extreme sensitivity or pain, gradually decrease the pressure until you find a balance between pain and pleasure. Do not continue to press a point that is excruciatingly painful. Usually, however, if you firmly hold the point long enough (up to 2 minutes using the middle finger with your index and ring fingers on either side as support), the pain will diminish.
Note that sometimes when you hold a point, you’ll feel pain in another part of your body. This phenomenon is called referred pain and indicates that those areas are related.
It’s important to drink plenty of warm water after the massage, to help clear away toxic substances in our body.
By massaging these points, you can tranquilize your mind and relieve mental distress.
The term “trichotillomania” comes from the Greek words “thrix,” meaning “hair” and “tillein” meaning “to pull” and “mania,” the Greek word for “madness” or “frenzy”. As the name suggests trichotillomania is a psychiatric condition in which an individual has an uncontrollable urge to pull out his or her own body hair. For people suffering from trichotillomania, hair pulling is more than a habit. It is rather a compulsive behavior, which the person finds very hard to stop. The cause of tricholomania is supposed to be the imbalance of chemicals in the human brain.People with trichotillomania pull their hair out of the root from places like the scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes, or even the pubic area. Some people even pull handfuls of hair, which can leave bald patches on the scalp or eyebrows. Other people pull out their hair one strand at a time. Some inspect the strands after pulling them out or play with the hair after it’s been pulled. About half of people with this condition also have the habit of putting the plucked hair in mouth.
Exposure Therapy is a cognitive behavioral therapy technique for reducing fear and anxiety responses, especially phobia. It is similar to Systematic desensitization, though it works more quickly and produces more robust results. It is also very closely related to Exposure and response prevention, a method widely used for the treatment of Obsessive-compulsive disorder. It based on the principles of habituation and cognitive dissonance.
To master something in life it is necessary first to think about it, and then actually practice doing it. Remember when you first started to learn how to drive. The more you practiced the better you became. This is the basis of exposure therapy. You actually need to go into the situation and think about it in a different way, implement the other skills and knowledge you have to mange your anxiety, and then reflect on how it went.
A girl, age 17, is invited to a dinner party at the home of her brother’s future in-laws, but the prospect fills her with such intense dread that she doesn’t think she can bear it. Although she knows it’s irrational, she can’t stand socializing with people she doesn’t know. She’s afraid they’ll think she’s stupid or incompetent. She tells her parents and brother that she can’t attend the party, but they become angry with her. They want to know why she often tries to wriggle out of attending social gatherings. Her parents insist that she have a consultation with a psychologist, and the therapist diagnoses social phobia.
During times like ours, when pending war, a smallpox scare, suicide bombers, and snipers are the dramas that define our daily narratives, people who do not usually experience feelings of anxiety are being gripped by the sudden sensations of an accelerated heartbeat, a rise in blood pressure, a tightness in the chest, or excessive sweating. These feelings can sometimes have a deep psychological impact, where people are afraid to leave their homes for fear of “something bad happening,” or they have trouble sleeping or performing their jobs. At other times, anxiety coexists with mental health illnesses like depression, eating disorders, and substance abuse.
“Anxiety is mostly caused by two emotions: anger and sadness,” says Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., author of Conscious Breathing: Breathwork for Health, Stress Release, and Personal Mastery (Bantam, 1995). “People get anxious about not being able to control their anger or about not knowing how to deal with situations that make them sad. And that is what fear is—the inability to solve the problem that is making you angry or sad.”
Panic disorder has both biological and psychological causes. Because the disorder runs in families, researchers are examining several genes that might contribute to its development.
Some experiments suggest that panic disorder is the result of a hypersensitivity to brain changes that transmit warning messages. In these experiments, panic attacks were induced in susceptible people with high doses of a stimulant like caffeine, which activates the sympathetic nervous system (a part of the autonomic nervous system). The sympathetic nervous system transmits signals to all parts of the body to prepare it for physical action, initiating the “fight-or-flight” response. It speeds heart rate, narrows blood vessels, and raises blood pressure.
Improving your body language can make a big difference in your people skills, attractiveness and general mood.
There is no specific advice on how to use your body language. What you do might be interpreted in several ways, depending on the setting and who you are talking to. You’ll probably want to use your body language differently when talking to your boss compared to when you talk to a girl/guy you’re interested in. These are some common interpretations of body language and often more effective ways to communicate with your body.
First, to change your body language you must be aware of your body language. Notice how you sit, how you stand, how you use you hands and legs, what you do while talking to someone.
You might want to practice in front of a mirror. Yeah, it might seem silly but no one is watching you. This will give you good feedback on how you look to other people and give you an opportunity to practice a bit before going out into the world.
Another tip is to close your eyes and visualize how you would stand and sit to feel confident, open and relaxed or whatever you want to communicate. See yourself move like that version of yourself. Then try it out.
You might also want observe friends, role models, movie stars or other people you think has good body language. Observe what they do and you don’t. Take bits and pieces you like from different people. Try using what you can learn from them.
Some of these tips might seem like you are faking something. But fake it til you make it is a useful way to learn something new. And remember, feelings work backwards too. If you smile a bit more you will feel happier. If you sit up straight you will feel more energetic and in control. If you slow down your movements you’ll feel calmer. Your feelings will actually reinforce your new behaviors and feelings of weirdness will dissipate.
In the beginning easy it’s to exaggerate your body language. You might sit with your legs almost ridiculously far apart or sit up straight in a tense pose all the time. That’s ok. And people aren’t looking as much as you think, they are worrying about their own problems. Just play around a bit, practice and monitor yourself to find a comfortable balance.
1. Don’t cross your arms or legs – You have probably already heard you shouldn’t cross your arms as it might make you seem defensive or guarded. This goes for your legs too. Keep your arms and legs open.
2. Have eye contact, but don’t stare – If there are several people you are talking to, give them all some eye contact to create a better connection and see if they are listening. Keeping too much eye-contact might creep people out. Giving no eye-contact might make you seem insecure. If you are not used to keeping eye-contact it might feel a little hard or scary in the beginning but keep working on it and you’ll get used to it.
3. Don’t be afraid to take up some space – Taking up space by for example sitting or standing with your legs apart a bit signals self-confidence and that you are comfortable in your own skin.
4. Relax your shoulders – When you feel tense it’s easily winds up as tension in your shoulders. They might move up and forward a bit. Try to relax. Try to loosen up by shaking the shoulders a bit and move them back slightly.
5. Nod when they are talking – nod once in a while to signal that you are listening. But don’t overdo it and peck like Woody Woodpecker.
6. Don’t slouch, sit up straight – but in a relaxed way, not in a too tense manner.
7. Lean, but not too much – If you want to show that you are interested in what someone is saying, lean toward the person talking. If you want to show that you’re confident in yourself and relaxed lean back a bit. But don’t lean in too much or you might seem needy and desperate for some approval. Or lean back too much or you might seem arrogant and distant.
8. Smile and laugh – lighten up, don’t take yourself too seriously. Relax a bit, smile and laugh when someone says something funny. People will be a lot more inclined to listen to you if you seem to be a positive person. But don’t be the first to laugh at your own jokes, it makes you seem nervous and needy. Smile when you are introduced to someone but don’t keep a smile plastered on your face, you’ll seem insincere.
9. Don’t touch your face – it might make you seem nervous and can be distracting for the listeners or the people in the conversation.
10. Keep you head up. Don’t keep your eyes on the ground, it might make you seem insecure and a bit lost. Keep your head up straight and your eyes towards the horizon.
11. Slow down a bit – this goes for many things. Walking slower not only makes you seem more calm and confident, it will also make you feel less stressed. If someone addresses you, don’t snap you’re neck in their direction, turn it a bit more slowly instead.
12. Don’t fidget – try to avoid, phase out or transform fidgety movement and nervous ticks such as shaking your leg or tapping your fingers against the table rapidly. You’ll seem nervous and fidgeting can be a distracting when you try to get something across. Declutter your movements if you are all over the place. Try to relax, slow down and focus your movements.
13. Use your hands more confidently – instead of fidgeting with your hands and scratching your face use them to communicate what you are trying to say. Use your hands to describe something or to add weight to a point you are trying to make. But don’t use them to much or it might become distracting. And don’t let your hands flail around, use them with some control.
14. Lower your drink – don’t hold your drink in front of your chest. In fact, don’t hold anything in front of your heart as it will make you seem guarded and distant. Lower it and hold it beside your leg instead.
15. Realise where you spine ends – many people (including me until recently) might sit or stand with a straight back in a good posture. However, they might think that the spine ends where the neck begins and therefore crane the neck forward in a Montgomery Burns-pose. Your spine ends in the back of your head. Keep you whole spine straight and aligned for better posture.
16. Don’t stand too close –one of the things we learned from Seinfeld is that everybody gets weirded out by a close-talker. Let people have their personal space, don’t invade it.
17. Mirror - Often when you get along with a person, when the two of you get a good connection, you will start to mirror each other unconsciously. That means that you mirror the other person’s body language a bit. To make the connection better you can try a bit of proactive mirroring. If he leans forward, you might lean forward. If she holds her hands on her thighs, you might do the same. But don’t react instantly and don’t mirror every change in body language. Then weirdness will ensue.
18. Keep a good attitude – last but not least, keep a positive, open and relaxed attitude. How you feel will come through in your body language and can make a major difference. For information on how make yourself feel better read 10 ways to change how you feel and for relaxation try A very simple way to feel relaxed for 24 hours.
You can change your body language but as all new habits it takes a while. Especially things like keeping you head up might take time to correct if you have spent thousands of days looking at your feet. And if you try and change to many things at once it might become confusing and feel overwhelming.
Take a couple of these body language bits to work on every day for three to four weeks. By then they should have developed into new habits and something you’ll do without even thinking about it. If not, keep on until it sticks. Then take another couple of things you’d like to change and work on them.
Eye contact: The most important communication tool
Is your eye contact aggressive, is it soft, is it inviting, do you love with your eyes? Eye contact is a very tricky art to master but vital to effective communication. How can you make it better?
Eye contact provides social information to the person you are listening to and talking to. Too much eye contact and you could be seen as aggressive, too little eye contact and you can be seen as having no interest in the person speaking. It is an often overlooked skill to have and an under utilised skill when communicating with people. You can see masters of eye contact in great sales persons, politicians, and good public speakers.
I realised the importance of eye contact when I was counseling people face to face. I noticed when I broke eye contact the person would stop speaking. When I maintained eye contact the person would continue talking knowing that I was interested in what they had to say.
Physiological signs of eye contact
Street traders know the importance of the eyes when using their selling skills to keep their potential buyers interested. When you are aroused or interested in an object your pupils will dilate and this is a big cue for salesmen all over the world.
Also when you are interested in someone sexually your pupils will dilate and you hold the person’s gaze a little longer than normal. When I was single I always knew when a girl was interested in me through her eyes, now that I am married if I get the same signs I discourage eye contact.
Every day conversation and eye contact
We will use eye contact every day of our lives so it makes sense to learn the best ways to use your eyes to your advantage.
Certain situations demand different uses of the eyes. For example if your are arguing it is seen as strong if you can hold your gaze. If you are deferring to someone it is better to lower your eyes, if you are loving someone it is good to stare into the pool of the eyes.
6 Ways to improve your eye contact skills
Talking to a group - When talking to a group of people it is great to have direct contact with your listeners. However you contact maintain eye contact with just one person as this will stop the other members of the group from listening. To get past this, focus on a different member of the group with every new sentence. This way you are talking to all of the group and keeping them all interested.
Talking to an individual - It is great to maintain eye contact when talking to a person however it can become a bit creepy and uncomfortable if you stare intensely at them. To combat this, break eye contact every 5 seconds or so. When breaking the eye contact don’t look down as this might indicate the ending of your part of the conversation. Instead, look up or to the side as if your are remembering something. Try it just now: don’t move your head, and think about the first time you started school. You will notice your eyes might move up or to the side as you try to remember this. So when your listener sees this they will think you are trying to remember something and keep on listening to you.
Listening to someone – When you are listening to someone it can be off putting for the talker if you stare at them too hard. The technique I use when I am counseling someone is to use what I call ‘The triangle’. This is when I look at one eye for about 5 seconds, look at the other eye for 5 seconds and then look at the mouth for 5 seconds and keep on rotating in this way. This technique coupled with other listening skills such as nodding, occasional agreement words such as ‘yes’, ‘Uh –huh’ ‘mm’ etc is a great way to keep the talker talking and to show them you are interested in what they are saying.
Arguing – Arguing with someone is a skill in itself and if you want to compete in an argument holding the gaze shows strength. If you look away when arguing with someone you have all but lost the argument. Obviously this depends on who you are arguing with but in general it is better to hold the gaze whilst you are making your point and also when you are listening to the other person. We have all come across the person who is great at arguing and making you feel small, you will notice that everyone who is like this try to stare you out. Stare back, it will surprise them, piss them off and put them off what they are trying to say. Staying silent and staring at someone who is trying to rile you is also an affective way to win an argument without saying a word.
Attracting someone – When you are trying to attract someone and show them you are interested you can talk and listen with your eyes. When a person you like is speaking use the whole face as your focal point. Look at their eyes, listen to what they are saying, smile in the appropriate places, raise your eyebrows in the appropriate places. If you feel you are staring at them move to their other features such as their lips, their cheeks, their nose and then back to their eyes. Smiling when listening to someone is a great way to show you are interested in them, obviously don’t smile when they have just told you their pet died last night. You have to listen with your ears as well as listening with your eyes (yes I did mean listening with your eyes, you listen to someone’s body language with your eyes).
Loving someone – My wife and I often share a prolonged gaze into each others eyes and it is a very special thing to just stare without talking. My wife’s pupils will dilate and she can my pupils dilating. It creates a strong bond between us. To make your pupils dilate even more you can try this: as you are staring at your partner imagine yourself going inside their body and your two souls making love. You are trying to touch their very soul. This will release adrenalin and make your pupils dilate even more.
Strong, Highly Skewed, Irrationally Incorrect Beliefs Thomas A. Richards, Ph.D.
When someone’s beliefs about themselves (usually a component of their personality) is very irrational and extremely skewed, we say they have a dysmorphia. These “dysmorphias” are typical symptoms of social anxiety that people believe more irrationally and strongly than others.
This word is used in different ways, but in the context of social anxiety disorder, a “dysmorphia” is a strongly held belief about oneself that is not rational and completely unfounded, although the person believes them to be true.
For example, when I was in my 20s, I truly believed I was an ugly person, repugnant to look at, and completely undesirable. This is something I strongly believed. I did not know at the time that it was irrational. I thought it was the truth.
Other words I used to describe myself at the time were sickening, revolting, nauseating, and awful. One of the reasons I could not make friends, I thought, was because I was so very ugly.
When someone’s beliefs about themselves (usually a component of their personality) is very irrational and extremely skewed, we say they have a dysmorphia. These “dysmorphias” are typical symptoms of social anxiety that people believe more irrationally and strongly than others.
This word is used in different ways, but in the context of social anxiety disorder, a “dysmorphia” is a strongly held belief about oneself that is not rational and completely unfounded, although the person believes them to be true.
For example, when I was in my 20s, I truly believed I was an ugly person, repugnant to look at, and completely undesirable. This is something I strongly believed. I did not know at the time that it was irrational. I thought it was the truth.
Other words I used to describe myself at the time were sickening, revolting, nauseating, and awful. One of the reasons I could not make friends, I thought, was because I was so very ugly.
Now, this was not an accurate or rational belief on my part. But, I strongly believed it nevertheless. Many people told me I was wrong, but I completely pushed aside, or discounted, their appraisal. I was positive that my physical appearance was horrendous and that I was beyond disgusting. No one else’s opinion was considered.
Looking back on this period of my life, I can clearly see that my thinking was not correct, I was not being rational, and what I believed about myself was, in fact, quite funny.
However, at the time, the strong belief that I was horribly undesirable fed and fueled my social anxiety and made everything in my life worse for me.
Note: This condition is not “body dysmorphic disorder” because it is better explained in context of my social anxiety. If I had not had all the other symptoms of social anxiety, then body dysmorphic disorder might be an accurate diagnosis.
Other dysmorphias we have encountered in people with social anxiety disorder:
Intelligence/lack of intelligence:
One of the brightest young men who ever went through therapy at SAI was thoroughly and completely convinced he was stupid. Nothing I could say or do (and nothing anyone else could tell him) changed this strong belief he had about himself.
This person took several independent, individual intelligence tests and scored an average of 125-130, which is in the “superior” range of intellect.
Yet, he always found a way to “discount” or negate any independent assessment of his intelligence. As a result, he saw almost everyone else in the world as being more “intelligent” or “brighter” than he was. This, in turn, fed and fueled his social anxiety and its related symptoms (e.g., lack of self-esteem, feelings of inferiority).
Eye Contact:
In this severe form of an eye contact problem, people believe they are causing others to be uncomfortable and anxious because they cannot establish direct eye contact. Sometimes, the person is convinced they have an “evil eye” or a “bad look” about them that makes it too difficult for other people to look at them or talk to them.
“I know I am sending out weird and psychopathic signals of some kind”, even though “I don’t know exactly what I’m doing”, a person said. This goes well beyond typical “eye contact problems” that many people with social anxiety have.
There is a solution to even these more stubborn and irrational social anxiety dysmorphias. The solution always lies in helping people to see themselves and the world around them more rationally.
This is an easier-said-than-done process, and it is a difficult process, but it needs to be done through what we call “Turning The Tables on ANTs”. Another way to state this is that people with social anxiety, who also have dysmorphias, must be taught (and be willing) to go “neutral” with their thinking, thinking habits, beliefs, and belief systems. They must be willing to at least consider the fact that maybe, just possibly, they may be slightly wrong.
The use of all those conditional words in the previous sentence was intentional. Why?
Someone with social anxiety who is also dealing with dysmorphias must be taught to be a “truth seeker” or a “rationality finder”. They must take a step back, be willing to say it is possible they could be slightly wrong, and then encouraged to rationally test things out.
This is a process, it does take time and patience, and nothing occurs over a short time frame. However, the more a person at least considers that they may have inaccurate beliefs about themselves, the more the brain will have a chance to become more rational.
Social Anxiety, Chemical Imbalances in the Brain and Brain Neural Pathways and Associations:
What Does It All Mean?
Most people seem to misunderstand the meaning of “chemical imbalances” in the brain. This phrase has become the buzzword to use today to explain mental health problems, including social anxiety.
We receive several letters a day concerning this subject, and the comprehensive audio therapy series “Overcoming Social Anxiety: Step by Step” explains more thoroughly than an article can what is happening in the brain as people with social anxiety learn to progress and conquer social anxiety.
Understanding completely how this works is important to progress and recovery, so this is discussed thoroughly on the audio series relative to recovery from social anxiety disorder.
What follows is a simplified version of these mechanisms, because brain processes and mechanisms are not fully understood and the explanations that we do have would fill several large textbooks.
We can say that no one is “born” with social anxiety. You may remember circumstances and events from very early in life, but there is no “gene” that codes for social anxiety, and there is not an immutable set of genes that cause social anxiety to occur.
At best, we can say that some people have a predisposition toward anxiety in general. From what we know, this is not a predisposition to social anxiety per se, it is a predisposition to be anxious in general.
Why you develop social anxiety has more to do with environment than it has to do with genetics. However, there may be combinations occurring.
People do not generally understand that even if something is genetically influenced, this does not mean it is genetically caused. Social anxiety can not occur unless events, situations, and circumstances in the persons’ environment “push” or “lead” the person to develop it.
Because we develop social anxiety over time (although some people feel it hits them all at once), the brain is learning all the time — this is cognitive structuring — how to be socially anxious. The brain is learning how and what to be afraid of.
The brain is literally creating new neural pathways and associations that feed and fuel our fears and anxieties in social situations.
This is quite normal because everything we learn becomes part of our neural associations or pathways.
When you learn things about your family, it becomes a part of your brain’s neural pathways and associations. Remembering your mother brings back many memories because they are all tied together or bundled together by these neural pathways or associations in the brain.
Anything you learn, regardless of what it is, becomes a part of the vast neuronal associations in the brain, which contain over one billion nerve cells.
When you learn that Alexander the Great tried to conquer the world, as did Napoleon, your brain ties these people together into a neural association in your brain concerning history, historical events, and leaders who lived in the past.
When you learn to tie your shoes, ride a bicycle, drive a car, use a computer keyboard, or learn a musical instrument, your brain gradually develops the neural pathways to make your “practicing” become automatic.
The more you practice, and the more quality time you put into your practice, the more that your brain pathways change. Fairly soon, you know how to tie your shoes and you don’t think about it anymore. This practice you did has made tying your shoes become automatic.
Learning a musical instrument works the same way. At first, it is difficult and hard, but the more you practice, the better you get. As you take one step at a time, and practice thirty minutes a day on your instrument, you continue to improve and get better.
What is happening? Your brain is arranging a new neural pathway or association for learning to play that instrument. As your brain develops this new pathway (it grows the more you practice and learn), you get better and better at playing your instrument.
It is exactly the same way with cognitive (learning) therapy for social anxiety.
As you learn, and then practice, the cognitive methods, strategies, and concepts, a new neural pathway begins to form. The more you practice, the more this new neural pathway or association grows.
Progress is slow at first, just like it is when you learn any new skill, but if you continue to practice, you continue to get better. If you practice enough, the habit becomes more and more automatic over time.
What you learn changes the neural associations in your brain. What is in those neural pathways or associations becomes permanent.
Now, how do brain chemicals, neurochemistry, and “imbalances” of brain chemistry fit here?
Your neural pathways and associations influence and decide which neurochemicals, and at what “strength” pass through the synapse (i.e., synaptic gap). Your neurochemistry is determined by your neural pathways and associations, not the other way around.
Medication or pills can change your brain chemistry temporarily. But, medications has no power to change neural pathways or associations. There is no cure for social anxiety in medication. There is a temporary, chemical change in your brain brought about by the medication. But it lasts only as long as the medication is synthesized to last, from four hours to longer periods. But it is never permanent. You always need to take another pill.
The only permanent solution is to change your neural pathways and associations. This can only be done by learning new strategies, rational concepts, and new methods to extinguish social anxiety. Then, these new strategies and methods must be practiced and practiced. This is why we always talk about repetition.
Without repetition, neural pathways and associations cannot change. To have a permanent solution for social anxiety, our neural pathways and associations MUST change.
When our neural pathways and associations change, our brain chemistry also changes. This is a permanent change, because you have practiced the new methods and concepts (i.e., the cognitive therapy) into your brain repetitiously, thus creating new neural associations. The more dense these neural associations are, the more you have recovered from social anxiety.
Everything in life works like this. Whatever you really learn causes new neural pathways in the brain, and, over time, with repetition, you gradually become better and better at something.
Cognitive therapy is nothing more than learning the appropriate strategies, methods, and concepts so that our brains can change. Our new neural pathways continue to grow and our new feelings, beliefs, and thoughts changed automatically, too.
The human brain is not limited in terms of learning. You can learn all you want, and keep learning until the day you die.
Cognitive therapy, if used correctly, creates permanent changes in your brain neurology, and these changes then affect your brain chemistry.
Everyone, barring brain diseases, can learn to overcome social anxiety. The cognitive therapy necessary is nothing more than a learning process… that must be repeated, repeated, and repeated …. so that our neural pathways and associations can gradually change.
This is a simplified version of what occurs in the brain, but it is an accurate portrayal of what happens as we learn to overcome social anxiety.
Some people have done a little cognitive therapy — without the practice and the repetition — and then said, “cognitive therapy didn’t work for me”.
That, of course, is not true. They did not know, or were not told, that cognitive therapy for social anxiety works in the same way that learning anything new works (e.g., learning to play a musical instrument).
It does work, but it takes persistence, practice, and repetition. The brain’s neural pathways must change so that your beliefs, thoughts, and perceptions become more rational. This can only occur if you change your neural pathways by practicing repetitiously the new methods and concepts learned in cognitive therapy.
Cognitive therapy is nothing more than “learning” the appropriate methods, strategies, and concepts to help your brain develop new neural pathways that are more rational than the old anxiety-ridden pathways.
This is more fully explained in the audio therapy series, “Overcoming Social Anxiety: Step By Step” and the cognitive therapy provided throughout this series directly relates to overcoming social anxiety altogether.
This, as you can see, takes practice, persistence, and repetition. But, it works. It has to work because, as you continue, your mind really does change. You are developing new neural pathways and associations as you learn (and continue to learn and reinforce) appropriate cognitive strategies.
People can and do overcome social anxiety.
The solution is in the practice, repetition, and constant reinforcement. Progress can be made relatively quickly, faster than most people expect, but there is no substitute for practice and repetition. This does take time and patience, but every three weeks or so, if you practice each day, you will find you have made some major progress.
Continuing on until social anxiety is a thing of the past is the right choice to make.
-Thomas A. Richards, Ph.D.
Director, Social Anxiety Institute
