Social Anxiety For Dummies (eBook)

Laura Johnson (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
412 Seiten
For Dummies (Verlag)
978-1-394-23694-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Break free from social anxiety, one step at a time

Feeling anxious around people? Not sure where to start? Then this user-friendly, practical resource might be exactly what you're looking for. This workbook helps you tackle your fear of judgment and worry about what others think of you. You'll find simple step-by-step instructions, worksheets and real-world examples to help you gain insight and control over your social anxiety.

Social Anxiety For Dummies is a solution-focused guide to creating a new mindset about social anxiety and your ability to cope with it. This book has easy-to-understand information and effective strategies to help you make positive changes in your life.

• Packed with tips and tools to conquer your social anxiety
• Create positive self-talk, reduce avoidance and face your fears
• Discover how to deal with social situations, dating, public speaking, kids with social anxiety and workplace anxiety
• Explore how positive psychology can help you live a life of meaning, with or without social anxiety

A complete guide with proven ideas, this is a jargon-free and a fun approach to gaining mastery over your social anxiety. Social Anxiety For Dummies puts you on the fast track to building your self-esteem and confidence.

Laura Johnson, LMFT, LPCC, is a Certified Cognitive Behavioral Therapist and an Advanced Certified Schema Therapist. She specializes in evidence-based therapy for Anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in adults, children, and teenagers. Laura was the Founder and Director of the Cognitive Behavior Therapy Center of Silicon Valley/San Jose, where she oversaw the work of her many therapists. Laura is a regional clinic member of the National Social Anxiety Center and loves working with people with social anxiety.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

Understanding Social Anxiety

IN THIS CHAPTER

Discovering what social anxiety is

Grasping the cycle of social anxiety

Motivating yourself to tackle your social anxiety

Welcome to the beginning of your journey of self-discovery! You may be here because everyday social interactions cause you to have feelings of excessive fear, self-consciousness, or embarrassment. You may worry about being judged by others. Your social anxiety may often lead you to feel less than others as well as negatively evaluate yourself. When you are feeling socially anxious, you experience painful emotions, and you likely want to increase your sense of self-worth and feel better about yourself.

This book can help you gain knowledge about social anxiety and provide you with tips and strategies to handle it. In this chapter, you start your journey by discovering what social anxiety is, some of the common fears and beliefs around social anxiety, and how the cycle of social anxiety works. Are you ready? Let’s get started.

What Is Social Anxiety?

Social anxiety is more than just shyness. It’s an intense, persistent, and irrational fear of social situations that’s out of proportion to the actual threat. If you have social anxiety, you may worry that if you show signs of anxiety that others can see, you will be negatively evaluated, humiliated, or embarrassed. You may fear that your actions or symptoms will lead to rejection or offending others. Because of this, you may avoid social situations altogether or participate with dread and fear. You may use any number of subtle safety behaviors, such as staying quiet, minimizing eye contact, or drinking alcohol to get through a social situation, to name just a few.

Social anxiety can cause significant distress and greatly impact how you function in life, affecting your social, work, and family life. You may feel lonely because you avoid opportunities to socialize and don’t have many friends. You may perform below your capabilities at work and lose out on promotions. Or you may hold your kids back because you get nervous talking to other parents at your children’s sporting events or after-school activities.

Following are common components of social anxiety:

• Fearing judgment and humiliation
• Worrying about what others are thinking about you
• Being self-conscious and not showing emotions
• Feeling socially awkward
• Being sensitive to criticism
• Avoiding people and situations

Signs You May Have Social Anxiety

Social anxiety shows up in many ways. You may feel self-conscious, fear being judged, worry about and avoid social situations, criticize yourself, mind read what others think of you, or jump to the worst-case scenario. Following are common ways social anxiety may show up for you:

• Self-talk: You engage in negative self-talk, such as “I’m socially awkward.” “I’m stupid.” “No one likes me.” “I’m unattractive.” “Everyone thinks I am weird.” “If everyone doesn’t like me, there must be something wrong with me.” “If others see signs of my anxiety, they will look down on me.”
• Behavior: You avoid social interactions, have difficulty making friends, be alone too often, have trouble making eye contact, speaking in social situations, or try to hide signs of anxiety from others.
• Feelings: You feel anxious, worried, lonely, shame, guilt, fear, embarrassment, and many other negative emotions at times.
• Physical: You react in a physical way by blushing, having a headache, feeling dizzy, trembling, shaking, feeling lightheaded, sweating, having a stomach ache, feeling nauseated, vomiting, or having body aches.

See Chapter 2 for more about the core features of social anxiety.

The ABCs of Social Anxiety

A simple way to notice and change the pattern of social anxiety is to remember your ABCs. Here’s what the ABCs of social anxiety stand for:

• Activating event: The trigger that throws you into a downward spiral and leads to thinking traps, or negative thinking patterns (for more on thinking traps, see Chapter 7).
• Beliefs: Your thoughts about yourself and others, including your negative self-talk. These beliefs may be conscious or unconscious.
• Consequences: What happens after the triggering event. The consequences include your negative emotions, behaviors like rumination or avoidance, or physical sensations.

You have the most influence in changing B — your beliefs and self-talk. Chapter 8 explores how to identify your core beliefs, and Chapter 10 discusses how to change your self-talk. In Chapter 11, you discover how facing your fears can help you create new beliefs to help you overcome your social anxiety.

Common Social Anxiety Fears

Many fears are associated with social anxiety. The central fear of social anxiety is the fear of judgment, and some people also experience anxiety about having anxiety. Following are some of the most common fears associated with social anxiety:

• Fear of judgment: You worry excessively about what others are thinking of you and whether you are accepted and fit in. You mind read about what people may be thinking about you before, during, and/or after social situations.
• Fear that people will see your anxiety: You worry that others will see that you are anxious and will look down on you. For example, you may feel self-conscious about blushing, having shaky hands, your voice trembling, or stuttering. You think other people will view you as weak or inferior if you look anxious to them.
• Fear of criticism: You feel especially sensitive when others give you feedback. You may dread getting report cards or performance reviews. You worry about being evaluated as less than or worse than what you think you are or would like to be.
• Fear of appearing foolish in front of others: You worry that you will do something that will make you look foolish. You avoid taking risks and revealing your true self because it could result in embarrassment.
• Fear of making mistakes: You are a perfectionist and think you should never make mistakes. You are often in performance mode and think you will be judged if you make mistakes. You often avoid situations where you feel you won’t succeed.
• Fear of uncertainty: You have anxiety around unpredictable situations. You worry that unexpected things could happen in social situations and that you won’t know how to handle them or that your mind will go blank.
• Fear of feeling anxious: You worry that you will have uncomfortable sensations in your mind or body that will be intolerable. You may have anxiety sensitivity and avoid situations that trigger anxious feelings.

Common Social Anxiety Beliefs

People with social anxiety often share common beliefs about themselves and others — and about social anxiety in general. Table 1-1 lists many common beliefs. You can find a longer list in Chapter 8.

TABLE 1-1 Common Social Anxiety Beliefs

About Yourself	About Others	About Social Anxiety

I’m boring. I’m inferior. I’m socially awkward. I’m uninteresting. I don’t fit in or belong. I’m unattractive or ugly.

People are critical and judgmental. Others look down on people with social anxiety. People will notice if I am anxious or have a panic attack and think I’m weak. Others do not like quiet people.

Social anxiety is bad or embarrassing. Feeling social anxiety is intolerable. Feeling anxious is dangerous. I must never have social anxiety.

Staying on the Social Anxiety Treadmill

Social anxiety sticks around because you imagine a high perceived threat and have low confidence in coping with that threat. The avoidance and safety behaviors you use interfere with the learning process. You never get to know whether the danger isn’t real or not as risky as you think and that you can cope with it.

Following is an outline of the cycle of anxiety and how it can keep you stuck on the social anxiety treadmill. You can read more about the social anxiety cycle in Chapter 5.

• Situation: Something makes you feel uncomfortable or vulnerable.
• Core beliefs: Conscious or unconscious negative beliefs simmer up.
• Unbalanced scale: Fear increases as you overestimate the risks of social interactions while having low confidence in your ability to cope.
• Social anxiety mode: You start to have anxious thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. You imagine the worst-case scenario, and you practice safety behaviors, including avoidance.
• Repeat: Your negative core beliefs don’t change, and the cycle starts again with another situation.

Protecting Yourself from Social Anxiety

Avoidance and engaging in safety behaviors are common ways you may try to protect yourself from the fear of judgment...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.1.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Gesundheitsfachberufe
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete
• Schlagworte: do I have social anxiety disorder • Social anxiety disorder basics • social anxiety disorder book • social anxiety disorder for beginners • social anxiety disorder fundamentals • social anxiety disorder treatment • social anxiety disorder worksheets
• ISBN-10: 1-394-23694-8 / 1394236948
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-23694-7 / 9781394236947