“I Can Handle It” – A Tool For Handling Social Anxiety On The Spot

One of my YouTube subscribers introduced me to a really cool site and forum called “No More Mr. Nice Guy” by Dr. Robert Glover, a clinical psychologist who also works with CBT.

Since then I’ve taken some of his courses, started to chat with him. He saw I had created a course on helping people overcome social anxiety, and was impressed with it. He invited me to create a course for men wanting to be more social, and now we are friends as well.

Even though Robert’s book is around helping men get over something called “nice guy syndrome”, which I don’t have per say, there are some things I could really relate to around sexual shame.

His site and ebook both have great information that’s applicable for both men and women.

I once read a post from a wife on there of a “recovering nice guy” who said a lot of it related to her as well.

Dr. Glover brings up social anxiety several times, and certainly lots of nice guys have it.

One thing I’ve spoken about in my videos (mentioned briefly at least, I should probably do an entire post on it) is thought-stoppage or thought intervention.

This is whenever you catch automatic negative thoughts going through your head, and you intervene with a statement. The statement I’ve used from CBT is “Stop”.

These negative thoughts are not healthy or helpful, so I’ve decided to move in a better direction and learn to think differently.”

But when I came across the statement “I can handle it” I found it to be so concise. In fact, I used it this morning when I had some anxiety over ending a business partnership, as it was time to move on from my end, and probably for both of us.

Immediately, it helped stop the ANTs, got me focused on the call I was about to make, and everything went very smoothly.

And if I didn’t go smoothly, well, I can handle it.

So the next time you are feeling anxious about a particular situation, whether social, or something you have to do,  start to watch those ANTs come about.

Then simply intervene by saying, either out loud, under your breath, or in your mind:

“STOP. I CAN HANDLE IT.”

You may feel like you can’t, but you 100% can handle it.  So give it a shot, let me know how it works out for you.