I’ve watched a video about someone who’s shy.
Man do I relate to it.
And many others too based on the comments.
I’ve been “shy” for many years.
But that person in the video is not shy, he has social anxiety.
Shyness is a normal response that people will feel in various situations.
And he said something which is very key that is exactly like me.
His friends say he’s outgoing but he feels shy inside.
He’s actually socially reticent or has social anxiety.
He also said something about his worries about what people will say or do in response to his actions.
This doesn’t mean he’s crazy, it’s his thoughts that prevent him from being outgoing.
And I’m sure he has done a lot to overcome it behaviorally just like I have.
To find out what to say and do but inside I really felt uncomfortable around people that I might be judged, I might say the wrong things.
This is all social anxiety, my friends.
And this is good news.
Why?
Because is can be overcome.
You don’t have to battle with it all your life.
Me as an example here, always had trouble interacting with people.
And when I was 25, I would always wonder what’s wrong with me.
Why I would always shut down, freeze up and even being mean to people by pushing them away.
It was really a defense mechanism to not be criticized, judged, etc.
And it developed into real social anxiety.
About six years ago I started to work on how to be more social, make more eye contact, strike conversations more at work.
I’ve been working and working on this and dating women as well.
I’ve dated plenty of women and I have a lot of external success with it.
But internally, it’s always been a struggle.
One night I came home and I just typed in Google:
Overcoming Social Anxiety
Anxiousness wasn’t going inside me even though behaviorally I can get by it sometimes but other times I’d start to walk inside a public place like a bar and start to freeze out that I had to go home.
Then when I learned I had social anxiety and started doing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, to change my thinking to thoughts I wasn’t aware of that were constantly running into my mind when I was in social situations and even when I was not in social situations.
But before I went out for the night which is called anticipatory anxiety, anxiety of having social anxiety or anxiety of being shy, using the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 2 and a half months has made me more progress than 6 years of trying to become social or trying to not be shy.
So this is one I highly recommend to social anxiety sufferers to do so they would get rid of social anxiety once and for all.
– David
