as somebody who used to struggle with crippling social anxiety I get a lot of
requests a lot of requests for my clients as well as my social media
followers people ask me Chris how do I deal with this social anxiety so in this
video I'm gonna give you my three best tips for dealing with social anxiety and
you're not gonna want to miss them so stay tuned what's up everybody this is
Chris from the rewired soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the
solution social anxiety was the bane of my existence and I had it for years and
I want to just start out by saying like this is something that takes time it
takes a lot of time but hopefully with these tips that I give you they are very
small steps that you can start taking there are very practical steps that you
can start using right now and I promise you if you do what I tell you to do over
time it will get better how do I know this I am living proof back in the day I
would not be able to have a youtube channel I would not be able to do all
the public speaking that I do because I was always stuck up here worried about
what people were thinking about me do I have something on my face so do I look
okay and all this other stuff so here it goes here are my three tips to help you
with your social anxiety tip number one realize that nobody cares about you you
are not that important now some of you might be like oh my gosh Chris like what
my mom said I'm so special no you are special
I love you you're amazing but one of the aspects of social anxiety like for me
for example whenever I would go out in public like I was always worried that
any time I heard laughter I thought it was about me right any time people were
upset I thought it was about me here's a good one when you're out on the road and
you hear somebody honking be very mindful because the first thing we often
think is like what did I do wrong we are often trapped in our own heads
thinking that everything that is happening is about us I had to start
realizing that I I'm not that important not everybody is
looking at me and judging me because I'm just one of the seven plus billion
people on this planet and half the people out there are worrying about
themselves even more than I'm worried about what they're thinking of me so
when you're out of public like remind yourself remind yourself like I am not
nearly as important as my brain tells me I am I will also link a video up in the
info card that I made for my fellow YouTube creators and I talked a little
bit about the brain science and why we get stuck in our head so much thinking
that we're so important tip number two is a little bit of exposure therapy I
will frame this by saying one of the best things to do for your anxiety for
your social anxiety is to start getting comfortable with being uncomfortable so
me for example when I was working on my mental health I just started saying yes
to things because my social anxiety may be very introverted but like introverted
as well as isolative and I'm gonna do a video about the difference between those
two but anyways I would isolate and that would fuel my depression so like it's
this vicious cycle so I was always telling people no like hey Chris do you
want to come out with us for coffee do you want to come to this dinner do you
want to come to this party like I couldn't because knowing that I'm gonna
go there and not know what to say am I gonna sound stupid I don't know anybody
there are they gonna judge me and all these other things like I would just
tell people no so what I started doing was a little bit of exposure therapy the
one thing that I did every single week I was with a large group of people and
they would say hey we're going out for coffee afterwards do you want to come I
always said no I started saying yes and I started going out there with him for
coffee and there would be twenty thirty of us right and I would stand there
awkward silent stuck in my own head and it was so uncomfortable but like I just
kept doing it like I did it every single week and the anxiety got less and less
and less and for too long these people knew who I was
and I was able to start having these conversations and my anxiety was going
away because I realized like oh wow Chris you can actually have
conversations with people and it's okay I'll never forget I was listening to a
podcast where this guy was talking about his social anxiety and he works for this
big company and they go to a lot of conferences and when I really go to a
conference and they're doing some kind of speaker panel he tells his boss that
he wants to be on it he forces himself to be out of the forefront because he
needs that exposure therapy on a scientific level what this is doing it's
actually shrinking your amygdala and it's helping you manage your anxiety the
amygdala for those of you who don't know is the part of the brain that actually
triggers the anxiety so when you're exposing it to that your brain is
actually rewiring its neural pathways to understand that this situation is not a
life-or-death situation it is uncomfortable but it's not life or death
so your brain starts to change the way that it reacts to these situations so
start saying yes to things go out there go to company Christmas parties holiday
parties go to your friend's house for dinner all the things that you say know
to start saying yes and yeah it'll be awkward it'll be uncomfortable but I
promise you you'll get through it and finally tip number three practice
mindfulness ah you thought you were gonna get out of this video without me
telling you about mindfulness of meditation this is a great one this
actually kind of goes in to tip number two so mindfulness definition paying
attention on purpose in the present moment without judgment so one of the
things that I do because trust me I still have some of this social anxiety
but what I do is I just watch what's actually happening in my body as well as
in my mind I start to realize that my body reacts to the emotions of other
people when for example when we're out of dinner and two people start arguing
I started notice what that kind of uncomfortable feeling within me
when somebody says something that I disagree with I can kind of feel that
anger rising and going and then I just sit there with that non-judgmental
mindset and I'm just like huh that's really interesting so you can actually
do a meditation practice while you are in these social situations that in
itself is mindfulness it's just paying attention to the anxiety coming and
going and one of the benefits of this when you do this with a purpose you sort
of recognize as you continue to go to these social situations how they are
getting less and less and less like every time that you do it so it's really
incredible like I'll be honest with you the other night I went out to a family
dinner with my girlfriend's family and I was socially anxious before I went there
it was with her aunt her aunt's boyfriend never met this boyfriend
before and my head starts going crazy what am I gonna talk about is he gonna
ask me about my job should I tell him what have you asked me if I'm in
sobriety and all this other stuff all these crazy things but I practice
mindfulness at this dinner and it made it a very interesting situation and I
was able to get a little practice in for myself so what I want you to do here's
what I want you to do in the comment section below if you struggle with
social anxiety I want you to leave your best tip for anybody who struggles with
social anxiety leave a comment down below all right but if you like this
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check out some other videos on this channel thanks for watching everybody
I'll see you next time