It can be seen that social anxiety disorder is an extremely common problem. Then, next you may ask: Do I belong to social anxiety disorder? Are my symptoms severe or mild? What am I afraid of when I am afraid to communicate with others? What makes me suffer from social anxiety? Is there any good way to alleviate this anxiety and fear?
Christopher Andre, a famous French psychologist, psychiatrist and best-selling author, has written Proper Self-esteem, Our Born worldly desires, Ubiquitous Personality and The Secret of a Happy Life. Another writer, Patrick Legeron, is a doctor in a mental hospital in France. He also teaches at the University of Paris V and the Paris School of Political Science. They set up a clinic to provide psychological counseling services for enterprises. With the help of a number of specific cases, they analyzed the characteristics, causes and rescue methods of social anxiety in detail, and helped people bid farewell to anxiety and welcome a beautiful social life with open arms by correcting wrong cognitive and behavioral patterns!
They made a comprehensive and systematic exposition and analysis of social anxiety disorder. First of all, we need to know what social anxiety patients are afraid of. Then, we gradually understood the reasons behind their fears, and finally we learned how to get rid of them together. Whether you have social anxiety or not, it is a great gain to learn a set of methods to correct wrong thinking and behavior patterns in daily life and get rid of some social anxiety.
First, let's take a look. What are you afraid of when you feel social anxiety?
Social anxiety disorder is a nervous system disease that feels strong fear or anxiety about social or public places. Patients have obvious and persistent fear of being carefully observed in front of strangers or others, fearing that their behavior or nervous performance will cause humiliation or embarrassment. Some patients find it difficult to attend parties, make phone calls, go shopping or ask authorities. How can social anxiety affect a person's life?
For example, Michelle, who graduated from a well-known university, has excellent grades from primary school to university, but as long as she needs to attend an interview or an oral exam, problems will arise. His family thinks that he is just stage fright, and as long as he is more social or older, he will get rid of this cowardice. After graduating from college, Michelle successfully applied for a top enterprise because of her excellent academic performance. The nature of his position determines that he must often speak publicly at meetings, and he has to face fierce criticism and severe questions from other participants. Michelle is very nervous before giving a speech every night. Since then, with the increasing degree of fear, he has fallen into endless anxiety and suffered from severe insomnia. Nothing worked. So despite the bright future, he chose to leave his job and began to avoid talking or speaking on any occasion. Even at the party of friends or family, he began to be silent. It can be seen that social anxiety disorder will not only cause great harm to a person's body and mind, but even make patients unable to work and live normally in severe cases.
There are four situations that easily lead to social anxiety. The first is public speaking occasions, such as public speaking, job interviews and so on. The second kind is the occasion of face-to-face communication with people, such as chatting with friends, preliminary communication with strangers and so on; The third category is occasions where you need to express your thoughts or make demands, such as borrowing books from others or arranging some affairs for your partner. The fourth occasion is a compelling occasion. People who are afraid of this occasion will always try their best to go to the party, go to the movies or go to class on time so as not to become the focus of attention.
Through the study of these four anxiety situations, the anxiety level of patients with social anxiety disorder is classified and listed in a pyramid structure. There are four kinds of anxiety from bottom to top, namely, fear of failure, fear of exposure, fear of expression and fear of being observed. The degree of anxiety also rises step by step in this order. In other words, if you are at the bottom of "fear of failure", your anxiety level is the lowest, and your anxiety level is relatively light. Every time you add a layer to the pyramid, your anxiety level and degree will rise by one level, and your anxiety range will also expand. For example, if you are in the third level of "fear of expression", then your fear must also include the second level of "fear of exposure" and the first level of "fear of failure". If you are at the top of "fear of being observed", it means that you are afraid of failure, exposure, expression and observation. That is the highest state of anxiety and the most serious.
After talking about such complicated anxiety occasions and anxiety levels and understanding the symptoms, let's dig out what people with social anxiety are afraid of in the subconscious.
First, they are actually afraid of negative comments from others. Although in life, everyone will pay attention to other people's opinions, the problem of social anxiety patients is that they keep asking themselves: "What will others think of me?" For example, speaking in public, the first thing that social anxiety patients should consider is definitely not "what am I going to say", but "what will others think of me?" I'm worried that others will have a bad impression or opinion of themselves and even have the idea of running away from this occasion. Therefore, once they enter social situations, they will be extremely sensitive to other people's every move. A slight frown or serious expression of others will be considered by him to have a bad impression on himself, so he feels uneasy. In fact, the situation is not what he thought, just because he sensed some details and labeled them as negative comments, and he instinctively began to be afraid. For example, anyone who looks down at his mobile phone while talking will also understand it as "he thinks I'm bored!" "In such a negative evaluation.
In addition, they are also afraid of hostile reactions from others. In some social occasions, people with social anxiety will think that they will be attacked by the other person's words, behaviors or attitudes. For example, if a patient speaks in public, he will predict that someone will refute with hostility or ask some provocative questions; If others borrow money from him, he won't lend it, for he is afraid that others will treat him as an enemy; If he wants his neighbor to turn down the TV so as not to affect his rest, he will be afraid that his neighbor will fly into a rage and so on.
Finally, and most difficult to overcome, they will be afraid of their anxiety symptoms. As we all know, patients with social anxiety disorder will have many adverse reactions when they are nervous and anxious, such as rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, tight muscles, stomach cramps, blushing and so on. Moreover, once these symptoms appear, it is difficult to stop, making patients more uneasy and nervous. Therefore, after entering social occasions, they will pay special attention to their physical symptoms and fear these uncomfortable symptoms. Once you feel uncomfortable, you want to adjust yourself. As a result, the more they try to adjust their symptoms, the more serious they will be. Tennessee Williams, an American playwright, once said in his memoirs that when he found a beautiful girl looking at him in class, he realized that he was blushing. When he looked at the girl for the second time, his face became redder and redder. Then, he had this worry: what if I blush every time I look at others? Unexpectedly, the nightmare came true. For many years after that, he would blush at the sight of others. The author calls this phenomenon "fear", that is, fear of seeing these symptoms of anxiety disorder happen again.
From the above description, we know that social anxiety disorder will not only cause physical and mental harm to patients, but also seriously affect normal work and life; There are four social occasions that can cause social anxiety. People will show four different levels of anxiety in social situations. If we dig deep into patients' subconscious, we will find that what they are really afraid of is the negative comments of others, the hostile reactions of others and the emergence of their own anxiety symptoms.
So, knowing what people with social anxiety are afraid of, let's see why they are afraid. What is the cause of social anxiety disorder? Is it natural? Or is it formed the day after tomorrow? It can be summed up as: "Nature and nurture go hand in hand, and it is almost impossible to separate." Below, we will analyze them one by one.
Let's look at the innate, that is, genes and family environment provide the basis for anxiety.
French psychoanalyst Alain Brackney wrote in his work Hello, Anxiety! "Human anxiety has existed since birth, even earlier, in the mother's womb. No matter from the perspective of psychoanalyst or geneticist, anxiety is in front of everyone. "How do we understand this passage? This goes back to the origin of mankind. In ancient times, our ancestors did not have particularly advanced weapons and tools. In order to survive, they need to have this anxiety ability, in order to escape before the danger comes, or to prepare for the battle in advance. Because of anxiety, human beings can thrive in the vast universe of time. As a human trait, anxiety is fixed in our genetic system. In addition to the common genes of human beings, the genetic genes of parents are also very important. The study found that if one parent suffers from social anxiety disorder, the probability of the child's illness will increase by more than three times.
On the other hand, it is the family environment in which children grow up, such as parents' own behavior and parents' educational methods. , may lead to the formation of anxious personality. A family that doesn't want to invite friends to the house, and a pair of strict and perfectionist parents may cause children's social anxiety. For example, some parents, because they are timid or not good at communicating with others, have kept their children in a small family activity space for a long time, so that their children rarely communicate with the outside world, or even if they take their children out to play, they rarely communicate with others. After a long time, their desire and ability to communicate with the outside world will gradually weaken until they disappear, resulting in social anxiety.
Besides congenital factors, acquired factors are also very important. For example, traumatic events and overall social values are the boosters of anxiety.
Although some people have the basis of anxiety, they don't or don't feel social anxiety in the initial growth stage. Later, in the process of growing up, they either experienced some traumatic events or were influenced by the overall values of society, and the basis of this anxiety was stimulated to produce social anxiety.
The great musician Beethoven once experienced this traumatic event. He was completely deaf at the age of 48, so he was badly hit. From then on, he isolated himself from the world and became a serious social anxiety patient. Analyzing his personality, we will find that Beethoven himself is an introvert and a typical perfectionist, which is the basis of his anxiety. Deafness stimulated this trait and made him a patient with social anxiety. In our daily life, the most common social anxiety disorder caused by traumatic events is that we experienced bullying in school when we were growing up. It was reported in the news that there was a boy in the first grade of an art vocational school in Beijing. In two months, he was repeatedly beaten and even sexually assaulted by many senior students in the school. It was not until his mother discovered his injuries that he reported the case to the public security system. The boy became depressed from a sunny child and asked his mother to transfer him. But in the new school, he was still very lonely and became a social anxiety.
In addition to traumatic events, social and cultural factors should not be underestimated. A cross-cultural study on timidity points out that there are more timid people in some societies than in others. What does this mean? It shows that social and cultural factors also have a great influence on anxiety, so the anxiety problem will be more prominent in some groups. As far as the prevalence and incidence of anxiety are concerned, Japanese and Germans are the highest, while Israelis and American Jews are the lowest. What kind of social culture has caused this difference? Let's find out a little bit about the historical materials. Influenced by Confucianism, the Japanese advocate that individuals obey the family and the collective. In this collectivist atmosphere, the concept of face is deeply rooted and children become useful. Parents feel that there is light on their faces, otherwise they will feel humiliated. Because of this, people attach great importance to the evaluation and opinions of others. This kind of values will inevitably lead to a strong sense of anxiety among this group. On the contrary, Americans who advocate individuality and independence are less likely to fall into similar distress and less anxious about social interaction.
In addition to internal and external causes, there are also their own reasons, that is, unreasonable views on things, which further aggravate social anxiety.
We already know the basis of anxiety and the booster of anxiety. Let's talk about an important factor that will aggravate social anxiety, that is, unreasonable views on things. Each of us has to face a lot of information every day. The brain is responsible for filtering out the information we care about and recording it. At the same time, the brain will give these filtered information a meaning, that is, it will automatically generate some ideas. These automatic thoughts are called cognition by psychologists. For the same event, the same scene, everyone will have different cognition, and different cognition will naturally produce different emotions. Cognitive bias combined with the original tendency of social fear will make people produce a series of negative inner monologues in social situations and make negative perception and analysis of things. Every time they face a social occasion, this perception and analysis will be strengthened again, so their anxiety will be further aggravated.
There are also some unreasonable cognition, which are generally manifested as follows: First, because of lack of self-confidence, we overestimate the risk of the event and underestimate our own ability. For example, if you are about to speak at the conference, people will first think that the audience will be critical or indifferent, and may ask themselves some difficult questions, thinking that they are not good at expressing themselves and lack experience. Secondly, I like to generalize and have extreme ideas, and blame myself for everything in an exaggerated way. For example, "the teacher's face is very poor today, it must be because my exam results have dragged down the whole class", such as "I accidentally stepped on his foot just now, and he will definitely hate me from now on" and so on; Finally, it is the will to please others. When a person wants to make a good impression in the eyes of others, but he is worried that he can't be perfect, anxiety will also occur.
Of course, generally speaking, the thinking system of every anxious patient is only inclined to an unreasonable cognition, rather than a state in which multiple wrong cognitions coexist. This unreasonable cognition alone is enough to aggravate their anxiety in related social occasions, which shows how powerful unreasonable cognition is.
To sum up, we know that social anxiety, as a disease, is the result of the interaction of many factors. Specifically, genes and family environment provide the basis of anxiety, traumatic events and overall social values are the boosters of anxiety, and unreasonable cognition intensifies this anxiety.
Therefore, social anxiety disorder is really a very common phenomenon, but it is often ignored by patients and their families, especially in the case of mild symptoms, which is more likely to be misunderstood as introverted and shy. Even seriously ill patients will hide their symptoms because of shame. As everyone knows, this neglect of symptoms will lead patients to avoid social-related occasions more and more, and their condition will become more and more serious. According to statistics, 50% of patients with social phobia will eventually develop into depression. Therefore, we must attach great importance to it ideologically and don't let the symptoms develop. On the one hand, if possible, seeking professional support, that is, psychological counseling and treatment, will make you progress and change faster. On the other hand, that is, the key point we will talk about below is to learn self-regulation and improve anxiety.
First and foremost, we should learn to change our perspective and change negative thoughts.
From the previous explanation, we already know that irrational cognition of things intensifies social anxiety. In other words, people's emotional and behavioral reactions are not caused by the event itself, but are directly related to people's thoughts and views on things. For example, two colleagues met the general manager of the company in the corridor of the unit at the same time, and the general manager left without saying hello to them. For such a thing, one of them thought, "He may be thinking about other things and didn't notice us." The other person has a different idea: "Did he deliberately ignore me because he had a conflict with him last time? The next step may be to deliberately find fault with me." Two different thoughts will lead to two different emotional and behavioral reactions. The former may feel indifferent and continue to do what should be done; The latter may be too worried to settle down and do their job well.
Therefore, patients with social anxiety urgently need to change their cognition and perspective, and they also need constant practice. First of all, you should have self-awareness and realize that there is something wrong with your cognition. Then, when negative thoughts come into your mind, try to think positively and give yourself more perspectives. It is best to list a number of different ideas, and then choose the one that can bring you positive emotions. For example, after discussing with you, someone kept thinking: "I did badly today and didn't have any new ideas." People will think I'm bored. " This is an extreme idea. You should learn to think like this: "I have to admit that sometimes there is silence in communication;" Everyone can talk about ordinary things; And everyone will encounter these situations. "Slowly, your cognitive perspective has changed, negative views will be reduced, and anxiety will naturally weaken.
In addition to the above, you should learn to improve your social skills and practice facing social occasions step by step.
Generally speaking, people with social anxiety disorder have poor social skills. If you can improve your social skills, learn to integrate with others as soon as possible and become a member of the occasion, you will feel comfortable and comfortable in social occasions, thus achieving the purpose of relieving anxiety. To improve social skills, the most effective and commonly used method is self-affirmation. Louise Hay, the author of Rebuilding Life, said: "Starting to identify and accept yourself now is the beginning of positive change." She teaches people to say "I agree with myself" every day, so that this sentence keeps rolling, especially when negative thoughts come. The biggest function of this exercise is to help you open the door to self-affirmation, make you more and more confident and stop looking down on yourself, then you will not be so insecure in the crowd. When your self-confidence improves, your social skills will naturally improve and your anxiety will be greatly reduced.
In addition to improving your social skills, you should consciously train yourself to face social occasions bravely, and don't avoid socializing and others because you feel uneasy. Escaping can only aggravate and delay social anxiety disorder. After you really face it, you will find that the disastrous consequences you imagined will not happen. Gradually, your symptoms will be alleviated bit by bit until they finally disappear.
Of course, everything is not done overnight.
Facing the social field, we still need to cooperate with special training, and we should follow the following principles: First, try to keep the training time at least 30-40 minutes at a time. Too short training time is not conducive to relieving anxiety. Second, this kind of training can't end once or twice when the symptoms get better, but should be trained regularly. Only by accumulating the experience of facing anxiety again and again can we effectively relieve anxiety and resolutely repel it forever. Third, follow the principle from easy to difficult, that is, you should make an overall evaluation of the situations you are afraid of, and arrange them in order according to the anxiety degree of these situations, and then start with the situation with the least anxiety degree, step by step, in order to achieve good results.
Finally, it is also helpful to divert attention and learn to live in peace with various physical symptoms.
As we said before, anxiety patients are very afraid of the recurrence of symptoms, so they will pay too much attention to their physical reactions. As a result, this excessive attention will aggravate the symptoms and fall into a vicious circle. In view of this, we should learn to divert attention and learn not to take these symptoms seriously. There is a doctor in England, Claire Wilkes, who has her own unique theory on self-help of anxiety disorder. She believes that "the disappearance of symptoms is not a cure, but a cure when symptoms become unimportant." The essence of this idea is to let us learn to accept our symptoms. Simply put, it is to continue to work and live normally, and don't care too much about these problems.
For example, many urbanites suffer from insomnia for many reasons. Some of them have been playing mobile phones for too long, some are afraid of falling asleep, some are anxious, and sometimes they feel finally asleep and can't get up the next morning. Some people are always worried that insomnia will accelerate aging, and that excessive sleep will lead to myocardial infarction. ...
In short, after a series of worries, the more anxious I am when I can't sleep, the more anxious I am when I can't sleep. At this time, you might as well wake up and accept the fact that you can't sleep. When you can't sleep, don't deliberately sleep, don't deliberately make yourself tired, and don't refuse a refreshing cup of coffee in the afternoon because you can't sleep. You can even do things that you have no time to do during the day when you can't sleep at night. Step by step, maybe your heart will start to calm down and insomnia will be improved. In fact, this is the same as social anxiety. Maybe when I get over it, I will still feel uncomfortable when I arrive at a new occasion. I don't want to accept all kinds of uncomfortable feelings, but don't try to escape at this time, try to live with it for a while, don't try to control it, and fight it. You should firmly believe that as long as you are willing to wait calmly and step by step, your anxiety symptoms will definitely be alleviated.
Well, after such a long discussion, I believe you have mastered the self-help method of social anxiety. First of all, from the beginning of paying attention to this disease, change your wrong cognition and thinking mode. Then through self-affirmation, I constantly improve my social skills, train myself to face various social occasions step by step, and learn to live in peace with my symptoms. As long as you persist, the symptoms of anxiety will gradually go away.
With the help of several specific cases, this paper explains in detail what patients with social anxiety disorder are afraid of and why they are afraid, and puts forward clear methods and guidance for patients to get rid of their fears.
Social anxiety disorder is a nervous system disease that feels strong fear or anxiety about social or public places. Patients have obvious and persistent fear of being in front of strangers or social or performance occasions that may be carefully observed by others, fearing that their behavior or nervous performance will cause humiliation or embarrassment. Everyone will show different levels of anxiety according to different occasions of fear. When we analyze the psychology of patients with social anxiety disorder, we will find that no matter what occasions they are afraid of and who they avoid, what they are really afraid of subconsciously is the negative evaluation of others, hostile reaction and the recurrence of their anxiety symptoms. So what is the cause of social anxiety disorder? The author of Fear of Strangers tells us that genes and family environment provide the basis of anxiety, traumatic events and overall social values are the boosters of anxiety, and unreasonable cognition intensifies this anxiety. To get rid of social anxiety disorder, patients can seek professional treatment on the one hand, and need their own efforts on the other. Patients should first change their wrong cognitive and thinking patterns, and then improve their social skills through self-affirmation, deliberately train themselves to face the situation of fear bravely, learn to unconditionally accept various symptoms of the body, and live in peace with them.
If you are also a social anxiety patient in your life, you don't have to feel sorry for yourself or blame yourself. Chairman Mao has a famous saying: despise the enemy strategically and attach importance to the enemy tactically. As long as you hold this attitude, you can overcome social anxiety and embrace a happy life.