Mental or Behavioral Acts That Reduce Anxiety in Social Situations

What mental or behavioral acts that reduce anxiety in social situations do you use? When people with social anxiety disorder are unable to avoid situations that provoke anxiety, they typically perform safety behaviors: mental or behavioral acts that reduce anxiety in social situations by reducing the chance of negative social outcomes. As a result, safety behaviors include avoiding eye contact, rehearsing sentences before speaking, talking only briefly, and not talking about oneself (Alden & Bieling, 1998). Other examples of safety behaviors include the following (Marker, 2013):

firstly, assuming roles in social situations that minimize interaction with others (e.g., taking pictures, setting up equipment, or helping prepare food)
asking people many questions to keep the focus off of oneself
selecting a position to avoid scrutiny or contact with others (sitting in the back of the room)
wearing bland, neutral clothes to avoid drawing attention to oneself
lastly, avoiding substances or activities that might cause anxiety symptoms (such as caffeine, warm clothing, and physical exercise)

Although these behaviors are intended to prevent the person with social anxiety disorder from doing something awkward that might draw criticism, these actions usually exacerbate the problem. Therefore, they do not allow the individual to disconfirm his negative beliefs, often eliciting rejection and other negative reactions from others (Alden & Bieling, 1998).

Minimize Interaction With Others

Some of us with social anxiety hide from others because we are afraid of what other people might say or think about us. Me, I hide in my room from morning till night. As a result, I only leave to go to the bathroom (which is close by) and to get something to eat or drink. I hardly talk to anybody in the house. Although, I yearn for human conversation, but I’m to afraid to talk. The only person I really talk to is my dad’s friend who is staying with us. Consequently, she’ll come up to the room and talk to me for a little bit. I feel comfortable around her. She helps me and I help her out when I can.

Although, I know I’m making it harder on myself by isolating, but right now, that seems like the only solution to the anxiety. I don’t like the life I’m living, but I feel helpless to change it because of the anxiety and other mental problems I have.

Continually Asking Questions

What mental or behavioral acts that reduce anxiety in social situations do you use? If you keep talking long enough, the other person in the conversation doesn’t have time to ask you questions about yourself. So, you ask question after question so you don’t have to tell them about your nonexistent life. Besides, who wants to hear about how you sit in your room all day long not interacting with anyone. How boring!! No one even calls me on the phone anymore because I quit answering it. Hence, I maybe get a few spam calls and that’s it. But I did this to myself. Can you tell I’m depressed by my tone of words?

We all go through highs and lows with anxiety. At the present time, I’m just going through a low right now. I know it will pass if I actually got off of my ass and try doing something to improve my mood. Instead, I just sit here wallowing in self pity.

Sitting In the Back of the Room

I used to sit in the back of the room at school just so nobody would notice me (especially the teacher). Of course, it didn’t matter where I sat, the bullies would always sit near me and pick on me as much as they could. Sometimes, I wouldn’t even go to class because of the anxiety or depression. Therefore, I would hide in the restroom. Always hiding…that’s how I dealt with things back then until the present. Only now I’m not hiding from classmates, I’m hiding from myself.

Emphatically, some days (most days) I just don’t want to deal with the emotional pain. It feels like there is an empty hole in my heart that I can’t repair. And that hole has gotten bigger over the years. Hence, one of these days, I won’t be able to stop it from taking over. I’m not talking about suicide (far from it), but just completely loosing it. This may just be my depression talking and tomorrow could be an “up” day. Who knows. I do bounce around a lot.

Avoid Drawing Attention to Oneself

What mental or behavioral acts that reduce anxiety in social situations do you use? This kind of co-insides with the last two. At this point, you just try to be as small as you can so nobody will notice you. You don’t want to have to explain why you may be upset or just depressed. Therefore, you try to blend in with the crowd so to speak. The dullest person in the group. I’ve spent most of my life hiding from people and most importantly, my emotions. Why deal with them when you can cram them down into a hole in your soul and forget about them (or try to). The only thing is, all those feelings eventually become an overload and come back up because that space is full. Subsequently, you can only put so much into an object before you can’t fit anymore and it comes bubbling up.

Avoid Substances or Activities

I have avoided a lot of things over the years. That is to say, dealing with my emotions would be one of them. But I also avoided doing activities with friends. I tried to avoid sleep overs or really going anywhere with my so-called friends. I hated going anywhere that I had to show skin such as swimming. Then again, I never considered myself a “normal” size when I was growing up and it became worse as I got older (eating more because of side effects from meds).

What’s more, I hated changing clothes for P.E. I always felt so self conscientious about my weight and the fact that I developed earlier than the other girls in my class. With the result that I got ridiculed for that all the time.

The only activity that I exceled in was softball. At any rate, I considered myself very good at it. I hit plenty of homeruns and I was good out in the field. Besides, that was the only time that I felt like I belonged there or was “normal.” Teammates and their parents treated me like a star. I do miss those days.

Using Alcohol

What mental or behavioral acts that reduce anxiety in social situations do you use? As a matter of fact, people with social anxiety disorder may resort to self-medication, such as drinking alcohol, as a means to avert the anxiety symptoms they experience in social situations (Battista & Kocovski, 2010). Basically, the use of alcohol when faced with such situations may become negatively reinforcing: encouraging individuals with social anxiety disorder to turn to the substance whenever they experience anxiety symptoms. The tendency to use alcohol as a coping mechanism for social anxiety, however, can come with a hefty price tag: a number of large-scale studies have reported a high rate of comorbidity between social anxiety disorder and alcohol use disorder (Morris, Stewart, & Ham, 2005).

Conditioning Experiences

In general, as with specific phobias, it is highly probable that the fears inherent to social anxiety disorder can develop through conditioning experiences. For example, a child who is subjected to early unpleasant social experiences (e.g., bullying at school) may develop negative social images of herself that become activated later in anxiety-provoking situations (Hackmann, Clark, & McManus, 2000). Indeed, one study reported that 92% of a sample of adults with social anxiety disorder reported a history of severe teasing in childhood, compared to only 35% of a sample of adults with panic disorder (McCabe, Antony, Summerfeldt, Liss, & Swinson, 2003).

Conclusion

My intention today wasn’t to depress you (even though I am). However, it was to show you some of the avoidance features that people with anxiety or depression go through so we don’t have to deal with those horrible feelings of no self-confidence. Therefore, don’t treat us like we’re invalids. We bury our feelings so nobody else can see them and so we don’t have to deal with them.

My advice to others out there trying to avoid situations or other experiences, you’re missing out on so much. At any rate, if you make a mistake and somebody ridicules you for it then that’s on them, not you. They’re just trying to make themselves look bigger when they’re really worse off than you. Give it back to them, see how they like it. Right now, I’m kind of crossing over into the subject of being bullied, which is a very sore subject with me. What mental or behavioral acts that reduce anxiety in social situations do you use??

All I’m trying to say is you don’t want to miss out on any experience because of anxiety. Stop worrying about what other people think. F**k them! Only concentrate on how you think of you. Until next time…