Requesting Help for My Crippling Social Anxiety

[Raze]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUj6gN0o4wU
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6lwwZX7nfw

 

 

[something_else]

I've never been diagnosed but I'm almost certain I have social anxiety, I experience a lot of the same things you do.

One thing I've noticed is that I'm awful at socialising when I'm sober, but when I have a few drinks I can easily be the most sociable person in the room, and I actually enjoy socialising a lot when I'm tipsy. It's a very big transformation

I'm not recommending alcohol as a solution, however it did show me that it's actually possible to enjoy talking to people and that has been very valuable

The main difference mentally is that I'm not really afraid to express myself in that state, things enter my mind and I say them. Compared to when I'm sober and it feels like I have 10 filters something has to pass through before I allow myself to express it.

[itsnutsandbolts]

@Pure Imagination I hate to be that person but have you tried therapy? You asked for practical solutions, the best I can think of is a highly specialised psychological therapist who has lots of experience working with clients with social anxiety. Interview as many as you need until you find one you think is a best fit for you. If it's important to you, find someone who will incorporate spiritual aspects/practices into your treatment plan. Then give it at least a few months, but don't expect a quick fix. You mentioned childhood issues, and that often requires long term therapy that can take years. Even if you don't go into childhood stuff, tackling social anxiety can be a difficult painful lengthy process.

Alcohol, substances and medication can be useful crutches (although whether they are actually helpful is up for debate). But when it comes to anxiety, a lot of the time the only way to really manage it long term is to go straight through it by tackling your core beliefs, exposing yourself to feeling fear (and not dying) and practicing those annoying inane techniques/strategies to help you manage. And the best way to do all of the above is with someone who knows what they are doing when it comes to social anxiety.

[JonasVE12]

You need to rewire your nervous system consciously. It's through processing your feelings in the face of tension that this gets accomplished. Tension is basically the experiences that you resist and therefore avoid. The only real solution to getting rid of this issue is to become fully vulnerable to all your feelings within tension. It's opening your heart to other people repeatedly and dealing with the vulnerability that comes up. It's fully stopping avoiding what you feel. It's feeling it fully and then letting it go. It's also letting others see it, feel it, and not hide it from anyone. You need to get to a point of full acceptance of who you are, love who you are and then from that feeling of being at home with yourself that you do goal setting and make a strong decision to step into tension daily. Then you get triggered. And now all the fear and shame come up right in front of other people. Now you cultivate presence within the tension of being in front of other people and you relax into it fully. Your body's automatic response is closing down and shutting off. Now, in order to avoid the tension of being seen, you have these ticks. But that's only because you are avoiding vulnerability and becoming reactive to the vulnerability. Try to open your heart within the tension and instead of becoming reactive to all the shame and fear that comes up when you do in fact open your heart, you become proactive with it. You generate courage to feel what ever you feel, and then you generate acceptance and love for whatever you feel. A little bit more each time. A little more each day. Every single day for at least a year. 

The only thing that will fix this is 1) A strong decision that allows you to become your own container. It's through clear goal-setting that you commit on stepping into tension daily. You give yourself daily/weekly/monthly goals that will guide you to get triggered. You need to start at the level of tension you are okay with. Maybe it is asking the time, or saying hello to people you pass on the street, or maybe just smiling or having eye contact. See whatever you are comfortable with and start doing that daily. Let yourself be seen. Feel interactively with your imagination what you avoid/resist, and then work on stepping into those things.

2) When you do step into those experiences, see if you can become vulnerable, welcoming and allowing of your internal body sensations. This whole issue shifts when you come to the point of becoming non-reactive to those sensations. So see if you can learn to love vulnerability instead of being scared of it. That's where all the growth is. 

3) Everything else is avoidance. Make this practice 95% of your treatment plan and you'll grow through this. Do meditate, do eat healthy, do visit a therapist, but don't use it to keep avoiding facing the tension and vulnerability. Every path that heals you from this involves tension and vulnerability. What matters is that you choose the direct path. Indirect paths like meditation and psychedelics are only complementary. We often direct our attention to the paths that are indirect because it lets us avoid vulnerability. It's distraction. It's another protection mechanism that has the goal to avoid feeling the repressed feelings of shame and fear. Shame is very uncomfortable emotion to feel so we do everything to not feel it. When we try to get rid of social anxiety and shame, we try to not feel our shame and fear the most we can. We think there is another way to fix it. But it's only when we can feel it fully and not making it wrong, even loving it fully, that you process it. And that happens right in front of other people. In the face of tension. 

You can process some of your feelings in meditation, in psychedelic experiences, but the bulk is processed through vulnerability and tension. We need to get triggered first. And then change our relationship within the experience of being triggered. Are you really being triggered when sitting alone in your room? Or in front of the therapist? 

Think about it this way. If you now imagine doing some social exercises, like chatting up groups of men/women and joke with them, how much tension and vulnerability do you now feel thinking about going outside now and doing that? It's in this direction that you have to look. It's those feelings of resistance that you need to change your relationship to. And how you do that is by starting at the level you are comfortable with. Such as asking the time and then doing that thousands of times so you release fear/shame from that level of tension. And then you increase it after it has become easy. 

Trust me. Commit on a month of stepping into tension - Asking directions to 20 people/groups each day. See if you can love yourself a little bit more each time. See if you can become more relaxed and present each time you ask directions. Come back and update at the end of the month and see how much more relaxed you feel with that level of tension. Also note that you may feel worse before you feel better. All your shame/fear/anger/sadness/guilt/apathy will come up. But that's a sign that you are growing of course. You must just become proactive with it and it will process. 

[Razard86]

21 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

The problem with hidden trauma is precisely that it is hidden. it may be that you do not have it, or that you have brought it to the surface, but the normal thing is to have it and deceive yourself. or normal for me. if there is agitation in you, some degree of unhappiness, compulsion, fear, anger, desire to prove something, need for evaluation, etc....it is because there is distortion between what is and what should be. is this trauma? I would say that all trauma is that, although perhaps it has to be qualified. If your mind is equalized, if what is and what should be follow the same track, you are enlightened. are you? I do not. I don't mean if you realized god, i mean if you could stay without any distortion. Me definitely not. so there is hidden trauma.

 

 

I agree completely. I'm glad I have the privilege to communicate with someone who really understands what they are talking about. You are correct if there is any agitation, some degree of unhappiness, compulsion, fear, anger, desire to prove something, need for evaluation, it is because of some sort of trauma. No lie there!! Great point!! I totally forgot about that so thanks for the reminder!!!

I can honestly say I don't usually have any degree of unhappiness. But I do get agitation when people complain and feel sorry for themselves and beat themselves down. I also fear the divine as I have experienced Ego death and it was....unpleasant lol. I can handle it...but don't like the way it feels lol.

So yeah I definitely have some more work to do thanks for the reminder!!

Also at one point I was able to see visions...without psychedelics and that scared the crap out of me which made it hard to sleep which made it worse lol.

Edited June 13, 2022 by Razard86

[Breakingthewall]

@Razard86 thanks!  I also enjoy your posts. what I see is that the problem with trauma is that it generates anxiety in the long term since it opens a gap between what it is and an imaginary should be. this gap is pure anxiety. in my experience it is impossible to equalize the two tracks from the ego. the ego looks for strategies to get rid of anxiety but what it does is hide it. there is still a dull anxious vibration in the background, since the ego in the background is what it should be. the only thing that has worked for me is the realization of infinity. It doesn't mean that there is no longer anxiety, but every time I realize infinity, the should be disappears and the tracks get closer.

[RMQualtrough]

I will add as I was thinking about it today... I do remember the first time I felt inexplicably self-conscious and awkward. It was at this fair thing outside a hospital... There was no reason for the feeling. I just got out of the car and felt odd.

I acted odd and awkward, but because it was a new sensation (I was unusually confident prior to this) I couldn't really place what I was feeling, and so I acted awkward without the judging myself that comes after the fact. Once the ego grasps a "mental defect" as part of itself, you begin to engage more in self judgement, which lowers your self esteem and amplifies the disorder to feeling bad beyond the actual "awkward" event too.

As I grew up through my teens (this was age 14 and beyond), the symptoms would bounce around a lot. One day I would randomly feel super super awkward around my best friend. Then the next day randomly be super comfortable around them again. Sometimes I would be comfortable in general again albeit never back to normal. Eventually it settled into a kind of middle ground which at the beginning years of adulthood was quite severe. But lessened when I quit formal employment and became self employed instead.

You can reduce the suffering of the condition if you do not add judgement onto the feelings and behaviors. Much of the suffering comes from the subconscious self-admonishment: "omg you acted so weird, I bet everyone thinks you're a fucking weirdo". Adopting it as an identity "being a weird awkward loser is what I am." This element is added by your mind, and it does not need to be... If you can cut out that portion, just as you wouldn't judge a skittish cat, then you will find greater happiness in life.

But I largely recommend medication. Specifically ask for Zoloft. I studied psych textbooks and the studies on various antidepressants found Zoloft and Paxil to be the most effective for this condition. Paxil is more effective but has more sides. For me I have been up to 200mg Zoloft... MAOIs are also possible but more dangerous, and in my psych textbooks I recall the difference in positive response rate did not seem worth the additional risk.

Edited June 14, 2022 by RMQualtrough