Can Blogging Help You With Social Anxiety?

A question to you…

OK, maybe two. :)

How many of you are active bloggers in some way, where you express your opinion or write about a topic you are interested in?

How active are you on social media or writing up reviews on something like

Yelp, or another site where you have something you are passionate about?

People with social phobia can often have problems just expressing themselves on something like Facebook, let alone blog about something.

The prospect of criticism is often frightening, depending on the level of social anxiety and negative thoughts that we have.

But here’s a nifty article that came my way about how socially anxious teens in Israel have been helped using blogging.

“Blogging Can Help Calm Anxious Teens”

It’s a very cool article, and goes right along with the concept of my site, all about “social expression”.

I recommend you read the full article, but here’s the gist:

Six (6) groups of teens with social anxiety or social problems – two (2) of these groups blogged ABOUT their social problems, the other two (2) wrote about other topics of choice.

Four (4) groups blogged publicly – posting messages twice a week, for 10 weeks.

Two (2) groups did not blog at all with one (1) group privately journaling and the other (1) group did nothing.

Here’s where it gets even more interesting…

Of the two (2) groups that blogged about their social anxiety – only one was allowed to open up their posts for comments.

At the end of the ten week study, guess who showed the most improvement? 

You’ll never guess….

And the winners are…

The teens who blogged ABOUT their social anxiety problems that ALLOWED comments.

The only thing the study lacked, apparently, was a better gender control – more of the subjects were female than male.

Now, this is just one study.

And I’m not saying you should go out and start a blog about your social anxiety – and then tell all your co-workers to read it – if you are uncomfortable about it.  It’s possible it COULD be detrimental without the right support.

But it is a very interesting piece of evidence in sharing yourself, and even about your social anxiety with people who you consider to be “safe”.

So, yes, I am encouraging you to start a blog about something you are passionate about, where you need to express your opinion, and be open to both attention and criticism.

Posting at least once weekly, if not twice weekly, and begin to learn to express yourself more often.

Again, it doesn’t have to be about social anxiety at all.

The beauty is you can do this from the privacy of your own home, so why not try it as an experiment?

Don’t wait or procrastinate on overcoming your social anxiety.

Call it the social anxiety blogging challenge or “SABC” – I’d love to see some people do it, and support them in whatever way I can to blog about one of their passions or their social anxiety.

I really do think it’s a great social anxiety support.

Let me know your thoughts below!