Social Anxiety Disorder affects over 15 million Americans.
New research suggests that maybe you should give any SAD-suffering friends a big hug,
though don’t be surprised if they’re stunned to receive one.
Hey folks!
I’m Matt Lieberman filling in for DNews.
Social Anxiety Disorder, at its core, is the extreme fear of judgment and ridicule from
others.
This makes it intensely difficult for sufferers of the disorder to develop friendships.
To make matters worse, they operate under the assumption that the friendships that they
can make are not of a high quality.
However, new research suggests that this perception may not in fact be true.
This feeling is actually still the disorder at work.
It’s a painful cycle of isolation, where the sufferer assumes that they are not worthy
of friendship, finally makes a connection, and then assumes that they are not worthy
of the friendship that they just made!
Thomas Rodebaugh of Washington University in St. Louis pioneered a small study, where
112 participants, half suffering from Social Anxiety Disorder, half not, each brought in
a friend.
Both participant and friend were interviewed about their relationship with the other.
At the end of the day, the remarkable thing was how starkly different sufferers and their
friends viewed their relationship.
Sufferers assumed that the quality of their relationship was poor due to their own failings,
but friends largely disagreed.
They deemed their relationships “different, but not worse”.
So what’s to be done?
The good news is that Social Anxiety Disorder is treatable, and that the majority of treatments
are based around showing the sufferer that he or she doesn’t come off as badly as they
assume that they do.
Evidence like the results of this study, especially when replicated on a larger scale, can do
a lot to assuage the doubts of society’s greatest self-doubters.
With any luck, we can all feel a little less alone in the days to come.
So does social anxiety make someone a more difficult friend, or is that perception in
their mind?
Let us know in the comments below.
I’m Matt Lieberman filling in for DNews.
You can find more of my videos over at Sourcefed.
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Thanks for watching.