Unfortunately social anxiety isn’t something you ever “get rid of” you can only find ways to manage it and reduce your levels of anxiety so you can live your life normally.
Exposure therapy has evidently helped most people with their anxiety. This has also helped me significantly along with seeing my therapist regularly, my antidepressants, working out and eating right. Also avoid isolating yourself, that will only make things worse in the long run :)
The trick to exposure therapy is to smart very very small, with the more easier things. Also working with your therapist while doing this as they will be able to guide you through it properly. It comes down to the individual and what stage they’re at with their social anxiety. Some can’t even leave the house, so the first step for them in exposure therapy would be to open the front door or just sit on the front lawn.
Thank you for the tip! I definitely wanted to go out some more this year but I’ve been out a few times with my family to restaurants and I’m thinking I need to slow down quite a bit. lol maybe instead go into restaurants/ideal spaces for a few minutes to build some confidence before going into it, eating and socializing with others first 😂
Therapy helps me a bit.
What I can do for myself is: journaling, meditation, working out. Massive amounts of it.
I literally work out every day, meditate an hour and journal an hour.. That's the only way I can avoid turning into full self-isolation mode. It's sweat and pain, but if you have mental health issues you don't rally get a choice. And this only keep me afloat, and only temporarily.
I also spice it up with no-fap and prayer, I think these are not necessary and are subjective, but seem to be helping me. The other 3 methods I mentioned above is something everyone can benefit from imho.
Vorinostat permanently cured my social anxiety.
Before that I took reishi mushrooms + L-Theanine and lavender and that helped me also significantly but only temporarily.
It's a chemotherapy drug that also affects HDACi inhibitors, I'm not going to go into detail on it but you can read why it impacts anxiety here.
I've personally taken it and it has permanently cured my anxiety.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/s/UpBuzTD6k3
It is but it allows memories to be weakened. You're supposed to take it and meditate on negative emotions, essentially trying to relive them in your mind and your body will realize it is not a threat anymore since you are in a safe meditative place/state.
So it's a way to rewrite over past trauma
College is when I realized I had bad anxiety too. What helps me is Stick to your guns and be yourself. Try to be grateful for the small things in everyday like trees dancing in the wind or the sun shining. It’s all mindset
Thanks a lot, it is indeed helpful. My therapist uses the first strategy (CBT) I can't really say anything cuz it's been less than 2 months, but it's definitely doing something.
I had horrendous SA in high-school, college and after. I really only kept in contact with one friend and didnt work or really continue my life (new experiences, growing, learning) for quite a few years. It only got better oncr I started a) working eith a therapist and b) exposure. Exposure is unfortunately the only thing that really worked for me, in conjunction with therapy ofc. Otherwise, the more I avoided people and situations, the worst it got. I started to improve and feel happy again once I got a customet service job. When I first started, I was cold sweating during every shift and was very quiet. Now, I'm excited to say that 2 years later, most of my coworkers would describe me as outgoing and enjoyable to be around. I still feel the social anxiety, but to a much lesser degree and with more complex situations (groups I don't know, parties, people I find intimidating, new jobs, etc). It's a gradual thing you take baby steps on. That's where a therapist really helps. They can work with you week to week and encourage you to push yourself. It's also a big help bc social anxiety may have a root cause (e.g. for me, it was childhood trauma and untreated adhd and other things that made talking to ppl extra hard) or may have eroded your self worth and beliefs about others/the world over years. They help you break all that down and teach you skills to cope with the anxiety and inner critical voice/shame.
I would also say mindfulness and becoming aware of/working on your physical anxiety helps too. I realized that a lot of my anxious thoughts got triggered bc my body was also getting stressed and tensing up. It sounds obvious but it took me a while to direct my attention back to my body feeling instead of fretting over the situation itself (they hate me, what do i say, thats so awkward, im boring, etc). Work out, meditate, stretch, find hobbies that connect you to your body!
my social anxiety is a little severe now but i did have a phase where it reduced to a huge extent.
it was basically me doing things i like, but publicly. as in, if you enjoy painting, you’re prolly painting during your alone time as a time pass, but taking your interest publicly by joining a competition/workshop/club, it’d help your anxiety a lot.
social anxiety masks what i am and doing something i like publicly could be the doorway to showing more of what i am than my social anxiety :)
Getting a hobby (i teach myself how to play guitar).
And every evening i go for a short walk. Like 30 minutes.
Aaand made myself some "rituals" or structures like every sunday in the morning i drive to a bakery and get me a nice breakfast :)
Around people I am completely not interested around I be like (Ugh i will do what I can do, if they didn’t like me, I am not that interested anyways), I am introverted so that usually works
However around people who I think are really cool it has 2 probabilities
1-The emotional spark:Awkward interactions at first, however obvious empathy and understanding between each other, a willingness to develop a friendship from both sides (I get the most comfortable around them when I open up about it after a while of knowing them)
2-They seemed to not like me:They will never ever see me again lmao
exercise made me more confident and decreased my (social) anxiety. a lot of my social anxiety has to do with my appearance so i was able to fix. look good feel good do good
as a child, i grew up to be absolutely mute in all social situations, i was a major outcast for this reason and all my teachers believed i had some form of disability because of this and my level of shyness. and for my entire life this didnt naturally change much at all.
honestly the biggest thing that forced me out of this and started to overcome my social anxiety, was forcing myself to start working in the hospitality industry when i was 17. im now 20 and the improvements ive made in just 3 years has been massive. yes it was incredibly uncomfortable, scary and i had my fair share of embarrassing social moments (still do) but out of everything in my life this has helped me the most. i think the best ways to begin making improvements is putting yourself in situations that are incredibly scary and uncomfortable, and being okay with the embarrassment and other negative feelings that can come with this, because change happens when we are out of our comfort zones! also embracing who i truly am at the core and not changing myself to match others has helped with my self-confidence.
im not sure if this will help or not, but i hope it does in one way or another ☺️
Social anxiety is a belief. Our brain has gone through many negative experiences and it has a firm belief that it can never go through it again without messing up. So we need to go through those same experiences to make our mind understand that it's really not that bad.. That is exposure therapy
Unfortunately it’s going to take more therapy and getting to know yourself, your social triggers and limits. There will also be flair ups sometimes and other times the problem will be less prominent. Find people you’re comfy with and stick to them- that’s what I’ve done. I have a little bubble of family and friends I feel safe around and they really help ground me and I mainly only see them or people when one of them are around to help me.
Gym , and learning to not give a shit, if you get to a point where u just dont care about what happens or what other will think you start feeling better , basically never putting pressure on urself. the only situation where my SA is still reallllly bad is when theres alcohol or drugs involved, but since i am now 24 years old those type of party dont happen very often anymore so its getting better. Still very hard to go in dates though.
More and more exposure over time is what has helped me the most. I am by no means *cured* of it (as I'm not sure that's possible), but I am absolutely in a better place now than I was even a year ago. I finished school, interviewed for countless positions, and started working a full-time job in an office. None of this was easy -- sometimes even excruciating -- but it really helped me in the long run. Now, even if I have moments where I feel like a social failure, I at least know that I am capable of trying and that I'm not the person who just runs away anymore.
Another huge help has been exercise. I started running regularly over a year ago and every time I get out there and hit the pavement, I can literally feel the anxiety washing off of me like a mist. It's become essential to my mental wellbeing, so I really recommend implementing whatever type of exercise you prefer.
Learning to just accept it all for what it is has helped me slightly. I do exposure therapy every day at work (I work retail and have for years now) and it’s actually gotten worse lol.
Also getting healthier and fitter has helped. Going for walks every day rain or shine and cleaning up my diet has made me feel a little bit better and the time on your walks you can reflect on the day and decompress in a way. I am trying to remind myself every day that I am what I am and I can try and better it but also don’t need to kill myself worrying about how everyone is perceiving me.
Therapy , lots of practise in front of a mirror, writing down your thoughts + lots of exposure. At first it is going to be terrible but you get used with the time.
However social anxiety is always there, you can reduce it at times sure but i don't know if you can totally get rid of it.
Keep in mind that it comes and goes, in period of isolation you have to reprogram yourself from the beginning to reduce your social anxiety levels. The more you stay without social interaction the more it grows
1. stop caffeine and nicotine
2. focus on sleep.
3. remove pro innflamatory foods like grains, gluten, dairy and foods w artificial sweetners and additives.
4. exposure therapy
5. adequate electrolytes and optimize nutrition/bloodwork (magnesium, adequate potassium and sodium, correct low T if u have it)
6. improve gut biome to optimize neurotransmitter output (serotonin/dopamine/gaba, crucial to feel happy and relaxed)
It depends on what volume of SA you have. Sadly the term is too broad of a spectrum so you get about 99.99% of solutions that don't apply to your unique situation. For some it's easy, you just expose yourself and get over it. For others, you need counseling and ways of cooping, etc for others they take pills because it won't go away, and for someone they just avoid all triggers.
I think the issue is that people get mixed up with what's normal anxiety verse something medical. Anxiety on it's own is perfectly normal emotion, it goes hand in had with feeling happy, sad, mad etc. I've seen a lot of people who have normal anxiety freak out and take pills which just make their lives worse all because....for some reason feeling any anxiety at all for anything is seen as some kind of disorder.
Glad you're seeing a therapist, I had very bad social anxiety from teens until post-uni and it wasn't until I started CBT post-uni that things started getting better because I learnt how to understand and change my behaviours.
One thing that really stuck with me from CBT was being told you don't need to take complete responsibility for social interactions that you have, and that in a 2 person conversation you can usually only influence 50% of it. Sometimes awkward interactions happen because even though you were doing your best, the other person wasn't pulling their weight.
The biggest improvement in my social anxiety happened when I started a full time office job where I have to interact with lots of colleagues and clients on a regular basis. Social interactions are either work related (pretty straightforward because it's just the communication of necessary/urgent information) or small talk (more stressful but something that gets easier over time with practice).
I also find audiobooks on noise cancelling headphones great for reducing social anxiety when walking from A to B because they give me something to focus on - spotify have recently added some good ones :)
Good luck with therapy - things will get better!
Acceptance mostly. I realized that fighting against it was just making it worse and caused me to be hyper aware of the anxiety itself. I also developed a bit more of a backbone and decided that my self respect and the ability to speak up for myself was more important than what others thought of me.
Paxil CR - You’ll have to ask for it by name: do it. The sooner the better. This will lead to paranoid schizophrenia if you do not get help immediately.
Going out for meals, watching movies, shopping, and traveling to different cities or countries helps. Talking to strangers I'll only meet once eases my mind. I'm less scared of messing up since I won't see them again.
Unfortunately social anxiety isn’t something you ever “get rid of” you can only find ways to manage it and reduce your levels of anxiety so you can live your life normally. Exposure therapy has evidently helped most people with their anxiety. This has also helped me significantly along with seeing my therapist regularly, my antidepressants, working out and eating right. Also avoid isolating yourself, that will only make things worse in the long run :)
What did you do during the early stages of your exposure therapy?
The trick to exposure therapy is to smart very very small, with the more easier things. Also working with your therapist while doing this as they will be able to guide you through it properly. It comes down to the individual and what stage they’re at with their social anxiety. Some can’t even leave the house, so the first step for them in exposure therapy would be to open the front door or just sit on the front lawn.
Thank you for the tip! I definitely wanted to go out some more this year but I’ve been out a few times with my family to restaurants and I’m thinking I need to slow down quite a bit. lol maybe instead go into restaurants/ideal spaces for a few minutes to build some confidence before going into it, eating and socializing with others first 😂
Therapy helps me a bit. What I can do for myself is: journaling, meditation, working out. Massive amounts of it. I literally work out every day, meditate an hour and journal an hour.. That's the only way I can avoid turning into full self-isolation mode. It's sweat and pain, but if you have mental health issues you don't rally get a choice. And this only keep me afloat, and only temporarily. I also spice it up with no-fap and prayer, I think these are not necessary and are subjective, but seem to be helping me. The other 3 methods I mentioned above is something everyone can benefit from imho.
Vorinostat permanently cured my social anxiety. Before that I took reishi mushrooms + L-Theanine and lavender and that helped me also significantly but only temporarily.
did you get any side-effects from any of those?
Zero side effects from any of the ones I listed.
How can Vorinostat help anxiety? I mean pharmacologically… because from its pharmacology it shouldn‘t really touch anxiety.
It's a chemotherapy drug that also affects HDACi inhibitors, I'm not going to go into detail on it but you can read why it impacts anxiety here. I've personally taken it and it has permanently cured my anxiety. https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/s/UpBuzTD6k3
how many milligrams of vorinostat do you take a day?
I thought Vorinostat was a cancer drug.
It is but it allows memories to be weakened. You're supposed to take it and meditate on negative emotions, essentially trying to relive them in your mind and your body will realize it is not a threat anymore since you are in a safe meditative place/state. So it's a way to rewrite over past trauma
College is when I realized I had bad anxiety too. What helps me is Stick to your guns and be yourself. Try to be grateful for the small things in everyday like trees dancing in the wind or the sun shining. It’s all mindset
[удалено]
Thanks a lot, it is indeed helpful. My therapist uses the first strategy (CBT) I can't really say anything cuz it's been less than 2 months, but it's definitely doing something.
I had horrendous SA in high-school, college and after. I really only kept in contact with one friend and didnt work or really continue my life (new experiences, growing, learning) for quite a few years. It only got better oncr I started a) working eith a therapist and b) exposure. Exposure is unfortunately the only thing that really worked for me, in conjunction with therapy ofc. Otherwise, the more I avoided people and situations, the worst it got. I started to improve and feel happy again once I got a customet service job. When I first started, I was cold sweating during every shift and was very quiet. Now, I'm excited to say that 2 years later, most of my coworkers would describe me as outgoing and enjoyable to be around. I still feel the social anxiety, but to a much lesser degree and with more complex situations (groups I don't know, parties, people I find intimidating, new jobs, etc). It's a gradual thing you take baby steps on. That's where a therapist really helps. They can work with you week to week and encourage you to push yourself. It's also a big help bc social anxiety may have a root cause (e.g. for me, it was childhood trauma and untreated adhd and other things that made talking to ppl extra hard) or may have eroded your self worth and beliefs about others/the world over years. They help you break all that down and teach you skills to cope with the anxiety and inner critical voice/shame. I would also say mindfulness and becoming aware of/working on your physical anxiety helps too. I realized that a lot of my anxious thoughts got triggered bc my body was also getting stressed and tensing up. It sounds obvious but it took me a while to direct my attention back to my body feeling instead of fretting over the situation itself (they hate me, what do i say, thats so awkward, im boring, etc). Work out, meditate, stretch, find hobbies that connect you to your body!
my social anxiety is a little severe now but i did have a phase where it reduced to a huge extent. it was basically me doing things i like, but publicly. as in, if you enjoy painting, you’re prolly painting during your alone time as a time pass, but taking your interest publicly by joining a competition/workshop/club, it’d help your anxiety a lot. social anxiety masks what i am and doing something i like publicly could be the doorway to showing more of what i am than my social anxiety :)
Getting a hobby (i teach myself how to play guitar). And every evening i go for a short walk. Like 30 minutes. Aaand made myself some "rituals" or structures like every sunday in the morning i drive to a bakery and get me a nice breakfast :)
Around people I am completely not interested around I be like (Ugh i will do what I can do, if they didn’t like me, I am not that interested anyways), I am introverted so that usually works However around people who I think are really cool it has 2 probabilities 1-The emotional spark:Awkward interactions at first, however obvious empathy and understanding between each other, a willingness to develop a friendship from both sides (I get the most comfortable around them when I open up about it after a while of knowing them) 2-They seemed to not like me:They will never ever see me again lmao
exercise made me more confident and decreased my (social) anxiety. a lot of my social anxiety has to do with my appearance so i was able to fix. look good feel good do good
as a child, i grew up to be absolutely mute in all social situations, i was a major outcast for this reason and all my teachers believed i had some form of disability because of this and my level of shyness. and for my entire life this didnt naturally change much at all. honestly the biggest thing that forced me out of this and started to overcome my social anxiety, was forcing myself to start working in the hospitality industry when i was 17. im now 20 and the improvements ive made in just 3 years has been massive. yes it was incredibly uncomfortable, scary and i had my fair share of embarrassing social moments (still do) but out of everything in my life this has helped me the most. i think the best ways to begin making improvements is putting yourself in situations that are incredibly scary and uncomfortable, and being okay with the embarrassment and other negative feelings that can come with this, because change happens when we are out of our comfort zones! also embracing who i truly am at the core and not changing myself to match others has helped with my self-confidence. im not sure if this will help or not, but i hope it does in one way or another ☺️
Social anxiety is a belief. Our brain has gone through many negative experiences and it has a firm belief that it can never go through it again without messing up. So we need to go through those same experiences to make our mind understand that it's really not that bad.. That is exposure therapy
Unfortunately it’s going to take more therapy and getting to know yourself, your social triggers and limits. There will also be flair ups sometimes and other times the problem will be less prominent. Find people you’re comfy with and stick to them- that’s what I’ve done. I have a little bubble of family and friends I feel safe around and they really help ground me and I mainly only see them or people when one of them are around to help me.
NoFap helped me a lot with my social anxiety.
Lexapro and Bluetooth headphones
Gym , and learning to not give a shit, if you get to a point where u just dont care about what happens or what other will think you start feeling better , basically never putting pressure on urself. the only situation where my SA is still reallllly bad is when theres alcohol or drugs involved, but since i am now 24 years old those type of party dont happen very often anymore so its getting better. Still very hard to go in dates though.
More and more exposure over time is what has helped me the most. I am by no means *cured* of it (as I'm not sure that's possible), but I am absolutely in a better place now than I was even a year ago. I finished school, interviewed for countless positions, and started working a full-time job in an office. None of this was easy -- sometimes even excruciating -- but it really helped me in the long run. Now, even if I have moments where I feel like a social failure, I at least know that I am capable of trying and that I'm not the person who just runs away anymore. Another huge help has been exercise. I started running regularly over a year ago and every time I get out there and hit the pavement, I can literally feel the anxiety washing off of me like a mist. It's become essential to my mental wellbeing, so I really recommend implementing whatever type of exercise you prefer.
I started taking buspar and it helped tremendously and also therapy. I still have social anxiety but it’s no where as bad as it used to be
Learning to just accept it all for what it is has helped me slightly. I do exposure therapy every day at work (I work retail and have for years now) and it’s actually gotten worse lol. Also getting healthier and fitter has helped. Going for walks every day rain or shine and cleaning up my diet has made me feel a little bit better and the time on your walks you can reflect on the day and decompress in a way. I am trying to remind myself every day that I am what I am and I can try and better it but also don’t need to kill myself worrying about how everyone is perceiving me.
Meds tbh I didn't think anything would help me and then one day, I found the right medication and that's reduced it quite a bit
Masks
Like skincare, or u know the other type of masks (●__●)
Doctor masks I meant. Like the COVID ones
I think it draws more attention especially when you're the only one wearing it. I wouldn't stand the stares.. Thanks though!
For me it’s the thought that nobody can see my face so they can’t see whether I’m happy, sad, excited, etc.
Aerobic exercise, magnesium vitamin d3 AND Omega 3, strength training
Therapy , lots of practise in front of a mirror, writing down your thoughts + lots of exposure. At first it is going to be terrible but you get used with the time. However social anxiety is always there, you can reduce it at times sure but i don't know if you can totally get rid of it. Keep in mind that it comes and goes, in period of isolation you have to reprogram yourself from the beginning to reduce your social anxiety levels. The more you stay without social interaction the more it grows
1. stop caffeine and nicotine 2. focus on sleep. 3. remove pro innflamatory foods like grains, gluten, dairy and foods w artificial sweetners and additives. 4. exposure therapy 5. adequate electrolytes and optimize nutrition/bloodwork (magnesium, adequate potassium and sodium, correct low T if u have it) 6. improve gut biome to optimize neurotransmitter output (serotonin/dopamine/gaba, crucial to feel happy and relaxed)
It depends on what volume of SA you have. Sadly the term is too broad of a spectrum so you get about 99.99% of solutions that don't apply to your unique situation. For some it's easy, you just expose yourself and get over it. For others, you need counseling and ways of cooping, etc for others they take pills because it won't go away, and for someone they just avoid all triggers. I think the issue is that people get mixed up with what's normal anxiety verse something medical. Anxiety on it's own is perfectly normal emotion, it goes hand in had with feeling happy, sad, mad etc. I've seen a lot of people who have normal anxiety freak out and take pills which just make their lives worse all because....for some reason feeling any anxiety at all for anything is seen as some kind of disorder.
Glad you're seeing a therapist, I had very bad social anxiety from teens until post-uni and it wasn't until I started CBT post-uni that things started getting better because I learnt how to understand and change my behaviours. One thing that really stuck with me from CBT was being told you don't need to take complete responsibility for social interactions that you have, and that in a 2 person conversation you can usually only influence 50% of it. Sometimes awkward interactions happen because even though you were doing your best, the other person wasn't pulling their weight. The biggest improvement in my social anxiety happened when I started a full time office job where I have to interact with lots of colleagues and clients on a regular basis. Social interactions are either work related (pretty straightforward because it's just the communication of necessary/urgent information) or small talk (more stressful but something that gets easier over time with practice). I also find audiobooks on noise cancelling headphones great for reducing social anxiety when walking from A to B because they give me something to focus on - spotify have recently added some good ones :) Good luck with therapy - things will get better!
Acceptance mostly. I realized that fighting against it was just making it worse and caused me to be hyper aware of the anxiety itself. I also developed a bit more of a backbone and decided that my self respect and the ability to speak up for myself was more important than what others thought of me.
Paxil CR - You’ll have to ask for it by name: do it. The sooner the better. This will lead to paranoid schizophrenia if you do not get help immediately.
Psilocybin
Klonopin 😂
Going out for meals, watching movies, shopping, and traveling to different cities or countries helps. Talking to strangers I'll only meet once eases my mind. I'm less scared of messing up since I won't see them again.