social anxiety

I am slowly reading through the comments and questions I have received from my Listserve post ten days ago.  I am going through them when I can, but I also have have my day-job, the three grand-kids, a wedding I attended, a bit of time with the wife and friends, and then the Sox clinched the pennant and the patriots caught the ball and won another game.

But a few of the questions were about how to deal with social anxiety.  As one woman put it:

I'm in a field that requires a lot of 
networking, but I have a lot of social anxiety when I spend time with these 
people outside a professional setting. I don't feel like I belong, that I have 
any right to be there. I get seized by dread. Any advice?

These feeling on not belonging, not being worthy, feeling conspicuous, and constantly

lacking, are very common, much more than anyone who has them realizes, mostly because 

no one talks about them.  But they can be very powerful, and they put a great strain on a

person's life, and a strain on the lives of others who depend upon them.

I have treated many, many people who have many different shades of anxiety disorders, and most of them make a great deal of progress and function much better.  Only a few are ever  completely free of  those feelings and are never bothered again.

It is because of this I am fairly certain there is some genetic component to this.  Some          people are designed to be more sensitive and more reactive.  There are good parts to that, 

to being more aware of how other people feel, and what is going on around you, but it can 

get way overdone and make a person so uncomfortable and be such a strain that it greatly   limits their lives.

That isn't to say that the cause is totally genetic; that is never the case.  But when someone who is prone to anxiety is put through circumstances of great stress, ambiguity, or is with  people or in circumstances that they cannot control, they are vulnerable to panic attacks     and strong feelings of anxiety, doom and dread.  

Given all that, this was my reply to the people who asked about social anxiety:

Social anxiety really sucks.

 some tips:

 1.  When you go into an social setting don't expect to be fine; that will only disappoint you and make it seem worse.  Expect the anxiety and sit with it. See if you can let it pas through you.







 2.  Of course you belong -- we are all united by our real insignificance -- even if you don't feel it.  if you are surrounded by people and feel tense, just sit and observe.  Don't pressure yourself to talk until you want to.  Try to pay attention to the conversation more than your internal feelings.  If you can show people you are actually listening to them they will be very flattered and they will think you're a great person.







So, that was my "Internet Advice," It's worth about as much as she paid for it.  I hope it was helpful.  Anxiety increases when people try to control things that are not within their power to control.  Your mind churns and churns trying to find a solution.  Then you feel that your mind is out of control and you must be crazy.  That's when things get worse.




Anyway, I hope that none of you feel like that today.  



Enjoy the beautiful Autumn weather. ( and forgive me for the disjointed formatting, I'm not sure where it came from.)

Who is brave?

Let's think about three appointments I had in a row last week. Let's call them 10, 11, and 12.

10 is a woman in her early thirties who has been seeing me for several months because she had a series of bad panic attacks. She doesn't have too many full-blown attacks any more but she is constantly afraid that she will. This makes her afraid that she has lost control of her mind and that she is about to go completely crazy. She won't, but she thinks about it much too much, and with too much intensity.

She had been telling her husband about her fears, but after a few months of trying to reassure her, he just tells her to get over it.

I want her to take some medication. I think it would really help. But she is afraid that once she swallows the pill she has no control of what it will do to her mind, and that the pill will push her over the edge. She is a brave, tough young woman and she fights her fears all the time. You would never know that she is constantly fighting off thought of a mind explosion.

11 is a man I have also been seeing for a while. He is finally beginning to make progress battling a terrible depression. He has spent months in his house, mostly lying in bed trying to find the energy, and in his mind, a reason to get up. He has a lovely wife and a beautiful daughter and he stares at them, knowing he should do more to take care of them. He has been taking many pills, and they have helped a little.

He lost his job months ago. He is behind on his bills. He feels like a failure and is just beginning to get passed hating himself for it. There are some very complicated and involved reasons why this all descended upon him, but no one can see those. People look at him and wonder why he can't just go back to being what he was two years ago.

He is making progress. The thoughts of suicide are less frequent. He is bravely fighting through the dark clouds that have filled up every room of his life.

12 drags herself in on crutches. One leg is worse than useless to her, as it also causes her almost constant pain. Her ankle is not only busted, it is deteriorating, as are several of the bones in her spine. This deterioration has put pressure on her spinal chord and caused seizures. The seizures have caused her to fall and re-injure her ankle, as well has her knee and her wrist.

The pills she takes, and the devices she has implanted in her serve to somewhat diminish her pain. She can take more pills, but then she will sleep all day and all night and not be able to finish a sentence. She does that some times.

There are things she can have done to her that could help. There is a list of three more surgeries. They could relieve most of the pain, or they could paralyze her, or even make her heart stop.

She has one hand and arm that works without pain. She uses it to bravely kill hordes of zombies that attack her through a video game.