- How do you know if you have social anxiety?
Well, people who have it have a few things in common.
They start to dread every day activities.
They can dread meetings.
They can dread meeting strangers.
They dread get-togethers.
They have a belief that they're going to come across
badly or poorly in any social situation,
so they start to avoid them, to dread them, to fear them,
to almost imagine how awful they're going to be.
And, unfortunately, when you do that,
what you fear tends to become real.
So if you have social anxiety,
you probably worry about meeting people,
work events, social events, family events,
you could even worry about simple things,
like going out to a store,
having to talk to strangers,
even talking on the telephone can be an issue
for people with extreme social anxiety.
How do we know this to be true?
Well, I'm sure you've heard of people
who have become institutionalized.
They get let out of jail and they actually want to go back.
They're in a situation...
Maybe they're at boarding school or in the army
or in a place where everything has a strict boundary
and they sort of know where they are,
but when they leave those confines,
they find it very hard to cope.
Some people even find coming out of hospital
after a long period of time, go,
"I want to go back there.
"I knew where I was.
"I knew exactly what was expected of me in the army,
"at boarding school, in hospital, in the forces,
"even in lockdown.
"And now the expectations have changed,
"I don't know what is expected of me.
"And I don't know how to meet these new expectations.
"I've forgotten what it's like to go out to socialize."
Remember, your primitive brain is hard-wired
to return to what is familiar
and to avoid what is unfamiliar.
And over the last year, being at home, being alone,
being unsocial, antisocial,
the very words, "social distancing," "keep your distance,"
has become so familiar that some of us, a lot of us actually,
have forgotten
what it's like to mingle, to go out, to be with people.
And we have this fear,
"Oh, I'm scared of being too close to people.
"I'm scared of crowds.
"I'm scared of going back out into the world
"and just showing up as myself."
Some people are even scared
of going back to the school gates
and mixing with other mothers
because social anxiety
can take all kinds of very strange effects.
It's insidious and it's often unexpected,
and it can be very, very disabling.
So how do you deal with social anxiety?
Well, you have to do it in baby steps.
Maybe talk to one mother at the school gate,
meet one person, do one thing,
go to the gym and do one class that's outside
and turn up just as the class begins and leave as it ends,
so you don't feel that pressure to mingle, to talk.
People go, "I don't know what to say,
"I've got nothing to talk about."
Talk to one person, then talk to two people.
But the most important thing is to reframe it.
Instead of saying, "I'm terrified of talking to someone,
"I'm really anxious
"that I will come across as stupid or boring
"or not interesting,"
you need to talk about that differently and say,
"I can't wait to connect with one person.
"At the school gates,
"I'm like all the mothers, all the parents,
"and they're like me.
"When I go to the gym,
"when I go back to a store,
"when I go back to an event,
"when I'm back at work events and socializing,
"everyone is like me and I'm like everyone."
Because if you look for what makes you the same,
you will find that it's a rule of your mind
that whatever you focus on,
you move towards and you get more of.
So instead of focusing on what you could do wrong,
what you could say wrong,
how uneasy you might feel,
focus on how normal and easy and natural it is
to be a social person.
Take the focus away from yourself. Remember,
We are all in the same boat.
We're all going back to make something familiar that
for the last year has been made unfamiliar.
You absolutely can completely
and fully overcome social anxiety.
Often, when things happen as a child,
we try to read in class, we say the word wrong,
and people laugh at us.
We form a belief,
"I never ever want to read in public again.
"I don't want to be the center of attention.
"I blush when people look at me."
We form these beliefs.
They're not even real, but we form them
until they become absolutely real.
"I'm boring.
"I've got nothing to say.
"I'm a nobody.
"I'm not interesting.
"Everybody has a life
"that is so much more exciting than mine."
And social media doesn't help.
We look at Instagram and magazines, and
think, "Everyone's having a great life,
"everyone is more exciting than us,"
but that simply is not true.
And if you think that, you've got to change that thought
and that's very easy to do.
You see, events don't affect you,
I promise you, this is true.
Events do not affect you,
but the meaning you attach to an event will affect you.
The way you choose to interpret an event will affect you.
"Boys didn't like me at school,
"that must mean I'm ugly and stupid."
Some of the most beautiful, stunning girls
were kind of gangly and tall at school.
"My parents never listened to me, that must mean I'm stupid."
Well, it might mean that you are smarter than them.
"I moved around so much.
"I was an army brat and I never made friends."
That was then.
If you are in one place now,
you can make friends.
In fact, if you want to have a friend, be a friend.
We love people. We are social animals.
So, remember, you can't change what's happened,
but you can change how you feel about it.
You can change the meaning of any event.
"When I was at school,
"I had to read out the word 'stomach,'
"and I read out 'stummach,'
"because that's what it looked like.
"Everybody laughed, I thought,
"'I'll never bring attention to myself again.'"
That was a little kid of four.
And the other kids laughed because they were nervous too,
about having to read out loud.
Because kids form words phonetically, that's normal.
They say the word "bridge" as "brid-guh."
They all do it.
But you're not a kid, you're a grown up adult.
You can speak to people, engage with people.
You can just be yourself.
If you like yourself, people will like you
and you will like them.
And it becomes a game-changer so quickly.
The quickest way to change the meaning of an event,
the interpretation of an event,
what that event meant to you then
is to use RTT® hypnotherapy,
because RTT® hypnosis is the fastest way
to rewire your mind so that you feel confident
and positive and absolutely self-assured.
So when I was a kid,
my father was my headteacher.
If you're in America, my "principal."
That wasn't fun as a kid.
Imagine going to school and the headteacher is your dad.
He also taught my history classes,
and I felt so different, so gawky,
so horrible because I wasn't like the other kids
and they certainly weren't like me.
And that stayed with me for a long time.
I had this feeling, all my life, of being different.
And, of course, being different
means it's very hard to connect.
We connect by being the same.
Little kids say,
"I like 'Postman Pat,'" "I like 'Postman Pat.'"
"I like pasta," "I like pasta."
"I like strawberry ice cream,"
"That's my favorite too."
"Oh, you're like me, I'm like you." We go on a date,
"My favorite band is...
"My favorite sport...
"My favorite place..."
"Ah, me too.
"We're like each other."
But when you start off feeling different,
it can stay with you your entire life.
I probably spent six years where my father was
both one of my history teachers and my headteacher,
my principal.
Six years out of my whole life,
but I made that my life
Because of that time,
I felt different,
I felt gawky.
I felt weird, actually.
And then, one day, I just had to realize,
"But that's the past.
"It's not now.
"My dad is never, ever going to be my principal ever again.
"And, in fact, I have a great dad."
And so, I changed the meaning of the event.
We are meaning-making machines.
We make a meaning of something.
"You don't love me,
"I'm not lovable.
"You don't want me,
"I'm not good enough.
"You rejected me,
"I'm not worthy."
And that isn't true.
"I messed up,
"so I should never put myself in a situation ever again
"where I might mess up."
No,
that was then,
this is now.
It's like when you were a kid in school,
you have to put your hand up and say,
"Hey, can I go to the bathroom?"
The teacher goes, "No, you've got to wait for recess."
And when you were very little, maybe five or six,
you might wet yourself.
But as an adult, you don't have to go through that.
You go, "Hey, I need to go to the bathroom."
Nobody can say, "No."
You have powers that you simply do not have as a child.
And many of us look at our life through the filter
that we put on when we were four, five, six, seven.
"I'm not like other kids.
"I don't have what other people have.
"I don't like being the focus of attention.
"I'm not smart.
"I'm not interesting.
"I'm not worthy.
"I'm not engaging."
It's not true, and it will never be true.
But if you feel like sometimes you are making the past true,
and if you'd like more support on these issues,
please click the link below
and you're going to find resources
that will really and truly help you.
Check out my next video here.
Play the only part we've ever known and then,
you make that part (mumbles).
I think it's time for a new path.
I was told I could never, ever have children.
My whole RTT training was based on
being told I couldn't have a baby.