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Even though your genetic predisposition for having social anxiety symptoms cannot be changed with modern technology, there are several approaches you can take to eliminate your social anxiety symptoms by changing what you expect to happen when you face social situations that have provoked your anxiety in the past.
Let me explain a little bit about the problem of social anxiety so that you can understand why your expectations play such an important role. The root cause of social anxiety is a genetic temperament that causes you to be highly aware of the thoughts and judgments of other people. Just having social anxiety is normal, as everyone experiences anxiety about how they are perceived once in awhile. However, Social Anxiety Disorder is only diagnosed once the symptoms begin to interfere with your life because of avoidance or intense distress about the symptoms. Ironically, once you develop this intense distress, your expectations begin to work against you in such a way that your symptoms never resolve spontaneously.
As a clinical psychologist, I had to read a lot of research while I was in graduate school. Since then I\’ve probably read 10 times the amount of research, but my favorite research studies are still the ones I read during graduate school about the psychology of taking action. What research findings describe is a tendency for people to take action on the things that they expect. The thing that we expect to happen tends to be the thing that we mentally visualize in our mind\’s eye. So for example, if I picture myself being assertive as I walk up to return a defective item at a retail store, I am far more likely to find that my instincts and automatic reactions follow through with being assertive. However, if I imagine myself feeling anxious and avoiding eye contact as I walk up to the teller, that becomes far more likely to be my reality. What we see in our mind\’s eye creates a template that guides the action we take in the moments following those visualizations. That\’s why the process of \”watching out\” for a recurrence of social anxiety symptoms ends up creating the symptoms that you fear. It\’s a very problematic cycle that tends to escalate social anxiety symptoms into a very severe problem.
As a clinical psychologist, some of the most fascinating research that I have ever sifted through was bundled into a book called, The Psychology of Action. The book describes the powerful tendency for our minds to act on what we see in our visual thoughts about the future. Research studies that were carefully designed to determine what causes people to take the actions that they take revealed how powerful our expectations are. And those expectations are most highly linked to the mental visualizations that occur in the holograms of our brain. Are you beginning to understand why the process of \”watching out\” for a recurrence of symptoms ends up creating the symptoms that you dread? Don\’t get down on yourself about this. Realize that this is simply a part of what it means to be a person with a socially anxious temperament. You have a built in tendency to monitor how you come across to others. In some situations, this is a great advantage, but when it comes to feeling calm and enjoying social settings, this personality trait sometimes builds up too much momentum in our lives and our tendency to self-monitor becomes a huge problem.
Here\’s what I propose as a solution that will only be useful to people who have enough introspection (the ability to look into your own mind to observe your thoughts). You need to take control of what you expect will happen next. One of the ways to do this is to build your faith in your ability to use mental intentions and self-suggestion. If you had seen some of the things I have seen done with hypnosis and self hypnosis, you would already have a pretty strong faith in your ability to use auto-suggestion (meaning suggestions you give to yourself with the intention of adopting them as truth on a conscious and unconscious level). I entered into the field of psychology as a skeptic regarding hypnotic phenomenon. After spending some time under the tutelage of one of the country\’s best hypnosis researchers and experts, I am now among those who look in awe at the mind\’s incredible ability to respond to suggestion and expectations.
Your body responds to what you imagine in the hologram of your mind. If your body can produce saliva in your mouth based on a short imagination experiment with no powerful emotion to increase your focus on it, imagine what can happen at the micro level of neurotransmitters in your brain when you are expecting to feel anxious as you approach a social gathering. I hope you are beginning to appreciate why expectations create such a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy.
Now put this information to work for you. Don\’t start with the most difficult and problematic symptoms. Instead, begin with building your confidence by practicing a general feeling of confidence by imagining how it feels in the mind and body when you are confident. Practice walking around with that confidence based on nothing but the power of your intention and imagination. Once you begin to have some success with that for a few days, pick a fairly easy anxiety symptom to challenge. Try to get a lot of practice in a short period of time with the same kind of social situation so that you can learn what works best for getting yourself into a relaxed and confident state of mind before you enter the situation. Then rely on pure intensity of the focus of your mind to bring your mind to a state of expecting to feel cool, calm, and relaxed. Treat any emerging anxiety reaction as nothing but a momentary phenomenon that can be ignored since you expect to feel calm, happy, and relaxed for the rest of the day.
This is the fastest way to overcome social anxiety simply because you can use it today and see a huge change by tomorrow. That doesn\’t mean that you can use it and then drop it and live without symptoms for the rest of your life. The degree to which you succeed in eliminating all symptoms is dependent on the sustained mental focus you put on developing a new way of thinking. You will eventually become what you think yourself to be. Start today. Become the person you have imagined.
The release of extra saliva helps with the proper digestion of certain foods such as citrus fruit. In this situation, all you did was imagine, and your body responded. Your body tends to react to the things that are experienced in the hologram of your mind as if they were actually happening now. If your body response is strong enough to create saliva in your mouth, imagine what happens on the micro level of neurotransmitters in the brain when you imagine fearful events or feelings of well being and self confidence. Now you are beginning to understand why expectations create such powerful self-fulfilling prophecies.
Live for Success, Stand for Something & Believe JR Edmonson
Live for Success, Stand for Something & Believe JR Edmonson
Bio:
Dr. Snyder is a clinical psychologist who specializes in social anxiety issues. He provides excellent social anxiety help at his website: www.socialanxietysecrets.com
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