Hi.
Do you have social anxiety or are you just shy?
And if you're just shy, is it a problem?
I'm going to walk you through this.
Stay tuned.
For those of you who are new to my channel, my name is Barbara Heffernan and I am a psychotherapist,
a life coach, and a mindfulness meditation instructor and a Buddhist.
And I bring all of that together in this channel to help people recover from anxiety, trauma,
pain, and live a more joyful life.
So if you support what I'm doing here, I would really appreciate it if you would subscribe
to my channel and give this video a thumbs up if you like it.
So social anxiety can be a debilitating, painful condition to have.
It can really, really impact your life, limit your relationships, your job, your functioning,
and it really can make you miserable.
And the good news is there are treatment options you can recover from it.
So I'm releasing this video this week about whether or not you have it.
And then next week I'm going to release a video on CBT for social anxiety.
So again, just subscribe to the channel and hit the bell.
You'll be notified when that video comes out.
But for today we're just going to go through the diagnosis because social anxiety disorder
is an official diagnosis.
So there are very specific things you would need to have to qualify for the diagnosis.
And that is written in something called the diagnostic and statistical manual five DSM
five and that is the book that people in my position as a psychotherapist or psychiatrists
or psychologists will utilize to diagnose somebody, which then helps us offer the appropriate
treatment.
So for the diagnosis of social anxiety disorder, there are seven criteria.
And the first criteria is a persistent fear of one or more social or performance situations
in which the person is exposed to unfamiliar people or to possible scrutiny by others.
The individual fears that he or she will act in a way or show anxiety symptoms that will
be embarrassing and humiliating.
So if you fear being humiliated or embarrassed or are constantly anxious about what other
people are thinking about you and how they are judging you and that anxiety is so extreme
that it limits your behaviors and your interactions and just continually gets in the way, then
you would meet criteria A and for some people criteria A tries to define a particular social
or performance situation in which you feel exposed or anxious.
And for some people social anxiety can be very tied to a particular situation, say a
classroom or giving a speech.
But for other people the social anxiety can be completely pervasive, can impact all social
situations, all social gatherings, even to the point where it makes it difficult to go
and buy a cup of coffee.
So before I continue, let me ask you, because for all of us, there are certain situations
that make us anxious.
Give me a comment below as to which situations make you the most anxious.
And sometimes a little bit of anxiety can be very helpful.
Like anxiety, giving a speech or going on video or going to take a test.
A certain amount of anxiety helps us really narrow in and focus and help us form better,
but too much anxiety shuts us down, causes us to avoid sometimes can be almost mind numbing.
We can't really think.
So let me know in the comments if there is a particular situation that makes you particularly
anxious.
So criteria B is that exposure to the feared situation almost invariably provokes anxiety.
So again, if your social anxiety is tied to a very particular situation such as a classroom
or work environment or party, then it is almost always anxious.
You're almost always feeling anxious when you are in that particular situation.
And again, for people who have social anxiety where it's pervasive, it would just be a very
pervasive feeling of anxiety almost all the time.
And this anxiety can take the form of a situationally bound or predisposed panic attack.
So sometimes social anxiety can lead into panic attacks.
The third criteria, criteria C is that the person recognizes that this fear is unreasonable
or excessive, that you understand that your anxiety is way beyond the norm for the particular
situation and you wish you didn't have it.
And then criteria D is that the feared situation is avoided or else it's endured with intense
anxiety and distress.
So you might find if you have social anxiety, you might find that you avoid the situations
that make you anxious more and more and more until your world becomes very narrow and limited.
And there's a pain in that because you're not interacting with other people, you're
not moving forward with your life.
So the avoidance is a key here.
And then the other piece of criteria D is that if you're not avoiding, you are enduring.
You're enduring it with anxiety, distress, not happiness, not joy.
It's not easy.
So criteria E is that the social anxiety interferes significantly with your functioning, which
could be occupational, academic or social, or all three and that there is marked distress
about having the phobia.
So again, there's a common theme here that the phobia and the anxiety creates a lot of
distress, a lot of avoided behaviors, and a lack of functioning in one key area of your
life or more.
Criteria F is that the social anxiety is persistent, usually lasting six or more months.
Most of the people that I have met with social anxiety have had it for a long, long period
of time.
And then criteria G , which is very common in the DSM five is that the condition is not
due to the physiological effects of a another medication or some kind of substance, some
kind of drug abuse and not tied to a general medical condition.
So that kind of gives you the entire criteria for whether or not you have social anxiety.
So again, if you do qualify for social anxiety, just know that you don't have to live this
way.
There is hope.
So let's move on and talk about shyness since that is part of the question that we are addressing
today.
So let's look at the definition here.
Shy means easily frightened or timid disposed to avoid a person or thing hesitant in committing
oneself, circumspect sensitively diffident or retiring, secluded or hidden.
And then the last definition, having less than the full or specified amount or number,
just shy of six feet tall.
So really the top five are the ones that we would be thinking of when we think of shy.
And in general, I'd say that generally when we use the term shy, we mean the fourth definition
here, sensitively diffident or retiring, someone who holds back, someone who maybe doesn't
interact as much, who might be cautious about meeting new people or cautious about talking
to people too much.
So that's generally how we talk about shy.
And then I love this definition I'm going to show you, which is from the urban dictionary.
So the urban dictionary defined shy as what the majority of people call you if you are
smart enough not to go out every night of the week, filling yourself up with alcohol,
listening to other people's mind-numbing conversations about popular culture, and then vomiting all
up back on your bathroom floor.
So that's sort of a humorous way to look at how our society, might judge people who actually
are introverted, not shy.
So people who are introverted generally won't like large parties, but they don't like them.
They don't avoid them because they're really, really anxious and they would like to go to
them.
They avoid them because they don't like it.
Most introverted people will prefer to have a deeper one-to-one conversation.
People who are introverted tend to recharge by spending time alone.
That's where they renew their energy.
People who are extroverted tend to renew their energy when they're out and about.
And with a lot of people, so thinking about whether you have extroversion or introversion,
it's easy to think about where do I get energized, where do I light up and feel better?
And then that kind of gives you a clue to whether you are extroverted or introverted.
And some of us like me are split where kind of in the middle of the range and therefore
we can appear to be extroverted, but we need a lot of introverted time.
So there's a spectrum here.
It's not black and white.
So let's say you're shy.
The thing to ask yourself if you are shy is whether or not it's a problem.
So again, if you are shy because you are an introvert and you're just quiet and you don't
really like to talk a lot when you're out in large groups and you're okay with that,
then that is fine.
There's no reason to worry about it.
If your being shy, feels like a natural part of yourself and it doesn't negatively impact
your functioning, then it's great.
So a few questions to ask yourself.
If you're shy, one, is it impacting your career or your happiness?
Two, do you feel like you can't trust others?
Is that what's underneath your shyness?
And three, do you have a negative concept of yourself?
So if your answer to these questions is, no, it doesn't negatively impact my career or
I'm okay having a career that requires more introverted skills, if it doesn't impact your
happiness in your relationships in a way that you think is problematic, then it's great.
If you do feel like you can trust people but you just are slow and cautious and it takes
you time to get to know someone, that's fine.
And if you don't really have a negative concept about yourself, if your shyness really just
stems from your preference, no problem.
So it really comes down to, are you an introvert?
Are you a good listener?
And are you okay being shy?
So if you do feel that your shyness impacts your happiness and that your shyness might
STEM from a negative concept about yourself or the world, I do have a free PDF called
transform your negative core beliefs which you can download below and it helps you identify
what your negative core belief might be, where it came from and how to reverse it, how to
help your mind rewire so that you have a more realistic, because a more positive view of
yourself would be more realistic whether you believe it or not.
But the PDF will help you, give you a couple of steps.
series, the aah! series, which are three guided visualizations, basically exercises that I
do with almost every client in my office.
And so this gives them to you for free and it's ways to physiologically relax, which
is key to lowering your anxiety, whether you have full blown social anxiety disorder or
not.
And as I said, next week I'm releasing a video on CBT for social anxiety.
CBT is one of the best researched methods of recovering from social anxiety, and I will
see you then.
So make sure you subscribe to my channel.
Hit the bell to be notified when I release a new video.
They are usually on every Tuesday and I will talk to you later.
Thank you.
Bye.