I’d think it’s safe to say that many of us who have social anxiety don’t have a problem with being overly social.
Wouldn’t you agree?
In order to help create my home-study course, to help people overcome their social phobia, simply called “Dissolve Your Social Anxiety“, I’ve been reading a great book called “Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness” by Gillian Butler“, to understand the full range social anxiety.
It’s a fantastic book, and very well-written in plain and simple English.
I love this book because it puts me in touch not only with parts of social anxiety that I didn’t experience, but also things I forgot I experienced at all, because I’ve blocked them out.
Ever blocked something out like that?
So Gillian talks about the symptom of being too social, which can include symptoms like talking too much, asking too many questions, being too aggressive in introducing yourself to absolutely everyone.
And the funny thing is my mind was like “What? How could that be? How could someone be too social?”
And then I remember “Hey, actually I HAVE done that!”
In the past, I most definitely went through times where I tried to behaviorally correct things on my own by trying to be social with everyone in the room – even though it was completely forced and I was so uncomfortable doing it.
I must have blocked it out, because it was kind of traumatic and I could never do it with consistency, so I gave up.
My main remembrances of trying to be too social is when I got involved in something called the “pickup & seduction community“.
As embarrassing as it is to say this, I was pretty heavily involved for a couple years.
Most of it (although not all) was about trying to find ways to manipulate and seduce women into having sex with you, mainly.
Now, I never did weird stuff like put on strange make up, weird hats and all that, but I certainly did say some stupid stuff to try to meet women back then.
Which is all kind of silly because women already want to meet, date and be in relationships with guys already.
I’m sure a few people on this list know what I’m talking about. Anyways, in my experience, pickup/seduction community is full of insecure, under-confident and emotionally wounded guys just trying to find their way.
I have certainly been one of them. And many of them do this thing of being overly social with both men and women.
I remember after I stopped doing pickup, some random guy would come up to me, with a big forced smile on his face, talking really fast and giving me a compliment on my hair, shirt etc.
Very nervous and anxious. Boy, do I remember forcing myself and doing that kind of stuff?
So just WHY IN THE HELL am I writing about this “being too social” thing for you guys?
Just as a simple reminder for you, that’s all. :)
It’s not about being REALLY, REALLY social when trying to overcome social anxiety and increase our self & social confidence.
It’s about learning that it’s safe to be in most all social situations, that you are safe, and that you can learn to be relaxed in yourself, and that people are on your side.
It’s about learning to be relaxed in social situations so you can BE SOCIAL NATURALLY.
Remember even “normal people” that don’t have social anxiety as a condition, experience some form of shyness and social anxiety at various points in their lives.
So it doesn’t mean you’ll never experience social anxiety again, it just means you’ll get to a point where you are comfortable enough in yourself that social anxiety doesn’t control your life anymore.
