Hey everybody! Today's video is about Social Anxiety Disorder.
What is it? And how do we overcome it? So stay tuned.
So like I said in today's video I'm gonna talk to you about Social Anxiety
Many of you reached out to me and said this is something you struggle with
and you want to know how to overcome it.
Now for some of you who don't know what Social Anxiety Disorder is
or what used to be called 'social phobia',
it is when we have such an intense fear of social situations
because we fear that we'll be scrutinized in one way or another.
We could think that people are going to be mean to us because we act anxious
or do things that might be embarrassing, and we fear that people are
going to laugh at us, they're going to point at us and laugh at us,
they're going to make us feel bad about it, they're going to
say mean things, we have such a fear of that happening
that often times we don't go out with people, we don't leave
our homes, we don't want to be in any social situations, because
who wants to be scrutinized? Right?
So that's what Social Anxiety is, and I know many of you have told me
that you struggle with it, so once we know we have it, and in order
to know we have it we have to see a professional, we have to be
properly diagnosed because sometimes what we think we're
struggling with and what a professional will know can be two
different things. So, we go see someone and they're like you're
really struggling with Social Anxiety, now what?
The best therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder is CBT therapy.
Now I have a video on CBT that I did a while ago so if you would
like to watch that and check that out you can click here.
CBT works the best because the main goal of Cognitive Behavioural
Therapy or CBT therapy is to correct our faulty thinking.
And you're thinking what the heck does that mean?
But our extreme fear of being scrutinized in public
is kind of a 'faulty thinking'. Its something that we've created in
our brain and we're afraid is going to happen but we actually may
not have any evidence to support this belief, if that makes sense.
So CBT works to correct those faulty thinking patterns, and thats
why it's the most helpful.
Okay so we're in CBT therapy, well then what do we do?
And what do they do when we're in CBT therapy?
Now something that really, really works for any type of
phobia, like I said this used to be called social phobia,
for any phobia we do whats called progressive de-sensitization.
Now progressive de-sensitization means kind of how it sounds,
we're going to put ourselves, progressively,
into situations that may be anxiety provoking,
and we're going to reduce our anxiety, that de-sensitization,
right, we're going to stop feeling the way that we used to feel.
Now this takes a lot of time, and a lot of work, but it can be so rewarding.
So, really how it works, is lets say I'm just starting progressive de-sensitization
with my CBT therapist, and I go in and I say
'I have such bad social anxiety, I just can't deal with it'
and she says 'Well we're going to do this thing together
so close your eyes and imagine to me that you're walking
to a party with maybe 4 of your closest friends,
now how anxious do you feel?'
And I'll say 'Well, maybe a 5, 6' and as I think about it I start
to breath a lot, my heart starts to beat really rapidly and I'm
getting to like a 7. So she goes 'Okay, open your eyes,
you're back with me, it's okay.' Now, what we'll do from there
is try to calm ourselves down and we try to imagine again.
And then we'll actually put ourselves in real situations in
real life, and calm down from there.
So what we're really doing, is putting ourselves in anxiety provoking situations,
and then giving ourselves time to calm down. Then doing it again,
and calming down. So at some point in the near future,
we'll go into those situations that used to be extremely anxiety
provoking and put us to like a 10 and maybe have a panic attack
and we'll be fine, because we can manage it,
because we've been practicing calming ourselves down.
And that, honestly is the key to working through ANY phobia
whether its social phobia or any other thing that you're really
afraid of and you worry about and it makes you really anxious,
it helps immensely. So thats the number 1 treatment regiment
for people who struggle with this,
and a part of that, the next component I want to talk about,
and the last part of this, is relaxation techniques.
I know I've talked about those a lot in the past,
anything involving an anxiety disorder,
or any kind of extreme anxiety or fear that we have,
learning how to progressively relax ourselves can be so helpful.
So every time we go into those situations socially,
or whether we're just imagining it,
we're going to bring our anxiety levels down by relaxing ourselves.
And I have some videos on relaxation techniques where there's
breathing techniques, there's one I've talked about before but
I haven't done a video on it where you like flex muscles
and relax them and flex them and relax then all through your body
to do a slow progressive relaxation.
So that can help us when we're practicing de-sensitizing ourselves
and it can help us bring our anxiety level back down.
So I would encourage all of you out there,
if you have gone through this or if you're struggling,
please please please find help, know that you can overcome it.
There are people out there who can help, there are wonderful techniques,
that can really help us overcome this.
And if any of you have gone through this before, and you
found tips and tricks and things that help,
can you let us know below, because we're a community
working together right?
I'm helping you as much as I can, and you're helping one another,
as we work together towards a Healthy Mind, and a Healthy Body.
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