One of the more commonly used screening instruments for helping mental health practitioners to determine if a person has social anxiety is the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale.  While the scale is a little too complex to explain in a blog post, I’ll give you a taste of the kinds of questions it includes.  If you find yourself frequently anxious in the following situations, or frequently avoiding the following situations, there’s a very good chance you have at least some degree of social anxiety at play in your life.

1.    Talking on the telephone with others listening in
2.    Speaking up in small groups of friends or acquaintances standing in a circle
3.    Eating out, especially eating alone in a restaurant
4.    Speaking with someone who is some form of authority figure in your life, like a boss or a police officer.
5.    Doing some kind of acting are performing, like showing your friends a magic trick
6.    Showing up at a party
7.    Being observed while you’re working (even if it’s not someone who’s a supervisor)
8.    Feeling nervous about someone watching you write (or being nervous that someone will see your hand shaking while your write)
9.    Talking to people you don’t know well aor calling people you don’t know well.  Anticipating being introduced to a stranger
10.    Using a public bathroom
11.    Being the last one to walk into a meeting or class where everyone else has already taken a seat
12.    Voicing your opinion in a meeting at work
13.    Trying to stand up for yourself when you disagree with someone or disapprove of something they’ve done
14.    Making eye contact
15.    Returning something you bought at a store
16.    Dealing with a salesperson that pressures you to buy something

Do these situations make you anxious?  Do you avoid some of them and go way out of your way to escape some of the scenarios?  If you do, I’d encourage you to learn more about social anxiety by signing up for my mini-course on overcoming the symptoms.  Alternatively, you may want to look into my e-book that explains a system for overcoming social anxiety symptoms.

The critical element that I’m referring to is extremely difficult to understand because of what’s known as the paradoxical effect of anxiety.  Regardless of genetics, bad life experiences, or any other factor, the most powerfully negative cause of social anxiety that sustains it over long periods of time is the paradoxically reinforcing aspect of anxiety itself.  When you fear something, you fuel the thing you fear in your thoughts.  Our brains were designed to solve problems.  This works really well for many tasks and problems we find in the world around us.  Our instinct is to try to control and suppress the things that we fear inside of us.  It never works.  The more you try to control anxiety that stems from within you, the more dominant the anxiety becomes in your thoughts and awareness.  That leads to a crescendo rather quickly which can feel overwhelming and can elicit all kinds of dramatic anxiety reactions from blushing to shaking to pounding heart and sensations of terror that cause us to clam up, flee, or freeze.

So what can we do about it?  The key is very painful.  The medicine tastes bad and a spoonful of sugar isn’t going to change that.  The only reason I even tell you this is because no matter how bad the medicine tastes, I promise you it is worth taking to overcome a lifetime of fleeing from and trying to control social anxiety symptoms.  If you want to improve your social anxiety symptoms, you must walk into the face of humiliation while simultaneously practicing self-acceptance and self talk that bolsters your self-esteem.

If you have a fear of blushing and public, you must allow yourself to blush and fully accept it along with all the humiliation that comes with it, while simultaneously remembering that your value far exceeds the minor inconvenience it may cause to others as they wonder about your unusual symptoms.

If you shake when giving a speech, you must choose to allow yourself to shake violently and as much as possible and not try to hide it or conceal it in any way while simultaneously reminding yourself that your speech has great value and people will appreciate you and will like you for your many good qualities regardless of whether they understand your shaking reaction.

If your face freezes and your lips turn downward and you clam up and get sweaty palms or even drip sweat down your face when you talk in a small group of friends, you must walk into that group of friends with the full anticipation of all of these symptoms emerging while simultaneously reminding yourself that it’s okay and you no longer have to hide the symptoms because your friends will like you even if you have social anxiety.

You see the most painful part of social anxiety is the humiliation and the attempts to control and avoid that humiliation.  It becomes a self reinforcing formula that can literally destroy lives.  Those of us who’ve overcome social anxiety symptoms and live life all out in full pursuit of our dreams and with the ability to “be ourselves,” are those who have established an open willingness to experience humiliation while recognizing that we are greater than that humiliation.  We no longer experience social anxiety symptoms precisely because we allowed ourselves at one point in the past to stop hiding the symptoms but rather allow them to surface while holding strongly to the thought that are value to other people far exceeds any of the symptoms that may cause them to question what is wrong with us.  After experiencing that kind of open non-fearful acceptance of our symptoms on just a few occasions, the symptoms begin to remit rapidly.  Our entire lives begin to open up in front of us.  It sounds crazy, but this is the truth.

The difficult part is getting into the mindset that causes the symptoms to stop.  Most people try but while secretly holding back and still trying to control or hide the symptoms.  This kind of halfway attempt to succeed will only create more pain and frustration.  For this method to work (and it’s really the only method that ultimately can vanquish symptoms rather than mask them) you must decide that you have come to a point your life where you will no longer hide whatsoever from the humiliation that you expect.  Happily, 95% of the people I’ve helped to walk down this road report to me that the symptoms began to disappear far more rapidly than they imagined possible once they truly mastered the concept embodied in this article.

Join us, and become one more person who overcomes this unusual quirk of social nature sparked by a genetic predisposition and a set of unfortunate life experiences.  You are more than your social anxiety symptoms.  Learning to like yourself in a social context while experiencing the symptoms in a way that others can see them will set you free from fear and allow your true nature and true social value to emerge.

If you are serious about drawing a line in the sand and taking your life back, learn the details of the best social anxiety treatments by downloading the my social anxiety self-study treatment guide at this link

Positive thinking alone will not eliminate social anxiety symptoms.  However, changing your actual limiting beliefs can have a profound impact on your ability to overcome social anxiety.

Consider the impact of your current belief system as it relates to the way you interact with others.  Do you believe that your social anxiety symptoms are like a ticking time bomb, waiting to humiliate you when they suddenly show up?

Do you believe other people will suddenly realize that you are inferior to them when they see how shy, introverted, or socially anxious you become?  Do you believe that your anxiety symptoms could ruin your life if the wrong people saw them?  Let’s discuss some very powerful alternative beliefs.

What if you believed that your value as a human being far exceeds the negative impact your symptoms could have on any relationship?  What if you believed that you bring value to interactions with others, even if you show symptoms of anxiety?  I’m not talking about weak self-affirmation statements.  With that level of weak belief nothing would change internally and you would feel just as emotionally “beat up” as you would if you held no such positive belief.

What I’m talking about is a true, deep-level decision to value yourself in the context of social interaction, even if social anxiety symptoms emerge.

Think about the implications of this belief, because it goes deeper than is apparent on surface level evaluation.  The change I’m talking about is one that is profound and nearly always marks the point at which my patients suddenly have a phenomenal change in their ability to overcome social anxiety symptoms while living more fully and expressing their true self in the context of any interaction.

This deeper level implication of the belief change of this sort is not simply self-acceptance.  It’s not just about feeling good.  The change here is so profound because a belief system that FULLY accepts yourself as a person WITH social anxiety unlocks your mind from its obsession with controlling and hiding the symptoms of social anxiety.

One way to think of social anxiety disorder is that it is a very specific form of obsession that gradually grows in power as you become more fearful of the symptoms that cause your fear, embarrassment, or humiliation.

So how do you go about changing your belief?  That is a topic of study that I have poured much of my life into.  Early on in my career as a psychologist I realized that much of the change that I was trying to elicit in people came down to that difficult question, how do you change a belief on purpose and by will?

I have seen many of my patients do it.  I have done it myself.  I’ve been in the room when it happens.  And yet, psychology still has no easy formula to explain exactly what is happening in the mind when a person suddenly shifts their belief system in a real and powerful way.

What I do know is that there are things that seem to be highly correlated with an increase in the chances that you will succeed at changing a belief system.  One of those methods has to do with what I have come to term “mental acting.”

Browse the social anxiety secrets website to find the article I wrote on “mental acting,” as a psychological technique for shifting emotional and thought reactions to your environment.

Live well!
Dr. Todd Snyder

Let me start by laying a framework for the discussion.  Avoiding situations that bring up social anxiety is a very bad idea.  If you don’t understand why, the Social Anxiety Secrets System is a must read for you that could potentially save you from a life of misery.  Assuming you understand all of the intricacies and ways that avoidance causes social anxiety symptoms to worsen over time, let’s discuss the issue of building on your strengths.  When it comes down to it, you make a living by offering some kind of service or product to other people in exchange for money.  If you want to be “successful,” on a financial level, the basic formula is to figure out what people need, and find a way to meet one or more of those needs efficiently.

You can meet people’s needs in a job, by working for someone else who already has a system established for meeting other people’s needs, or you can work for yourself as a person who directly contracts his or her services and products to consumers.  Either way, you are meeting the need of someone, either an employer, or your direct customer.  The key to a strong and healthy career is to find ways that your particular strengths could enable you to elegantly and efficiently meet the needs of others.  That way, after making the trade (i.e. trading your time to produce a service or product) there’s a positive cash flow into your pocket at a price that was not too steep to drive away your customer for future purchases.

So what does this have to do with social anxiety?  Well, I’m getting back to the question that is underneath the question regarding whether or not social anxiety should be something that you consider when choosing a career path.  The shortest answer is, “No, finding your strengths and building on them should be the focus of choosing a career path.”  You may be saying, “Wait a minute!  I have social anxiety and it might get in the way of being successful if I don’t choose a job that allows me to avoid being in the spotlight.”  And you would be right.  The key here is to focus first on areas where you could bring some kind of benefit to others, and only consider social anxiety and the effects it has after first recognizing your true strengths.

Let’s say you have excellent communication skills, and you decide to leverage those skills in pursuit of making a living.  If your communication skills are excellent for speaking and for writing, but you know that speaking in public takes a toll on you because of an excessive adrenaline response, you may be tempted to write off public speaking and assume that writing is the way to go.  Not so fast.  Remember that your overall quality of life should be considered when choosing a career path, and mastering the art of public speaking could significantly improve your life by decreasing your sense of anxiety about being in the spotlight.

In essence, I’m saying that your career could be something that decreases your social anxiety.   That place where you spend vast hours every day on developing skills for providing a particular service (your career) could be thought of as a tool to strengthen you rather than a source of danger that needs to be tailored to help you avoid social anxiety.

The difference between the mindset of avoidance versus passionate pursuit of life to the fullest can be seen in all of its glory in this situation.  The person who cowers from their social anxiety and decides to live their life in avoidance of their own symptoms will remain trapped and imprisoned by their symptoms.

The person who chooses to allow courage to become a dominant force in their daily life will make choices that lead to difficult encounters that challenge their capacity to manage the innate symptoms of social anxiety.  As a result, their confidence will increase over time.  Their sense of life satisfaction will grow as their self-esteem rises in conjunction with their demonstrated ability to achieve things that seemed impossible at an earlier point in their life.  This is a life well lived.  Is it difficult?  Yes.  But do not underestimate the power of living forward, toward the things you do want, rather than away from the things you do not want in order to avoid fear.

Living a life centered on the control and avoidance of feared situations will lead to a painful existence.  Learning to transform your mindset so that you believe in your own capacity to overcome social anxiety will lead to an enhanced life and remission of symptoms to a degree that will set you free.

Is it possible for someone with extreme social anxiety to make a living at public speaking?  It absolutely is.  If you still doubt this and do not yet understand your mind’s capacity for change, I urge you to learn more about the concept of neuroplasticity.  Neuroplasticity is the mechanism by which stroke victims are learning to use an arm which was previously rendered useless by brain damage.  Neuroplasticity is the mechanism by which people with social anxiety train a new set of neural firing and mental programs in response to situations that previously evoked a fearful avoidance response.  Again, the path it is not an easy one and requires sustained effort over time, but the alternative (allowing social anxiety to rule your life) is not an alternative worth considering.

So we got onto the topic of the testimonials you see for the various self-help products on the internet for social anxiety sufferers.  I told her about the good and the bad and why my system does not include some elements of systems that are effective.  For example, self-hypnosis.  It’s in the “EL-Method” by Steiner Publishing” out of Germany.  It doesn’t come right out and say it, but basically the EL-Method is designed to gradually cause a shift in your belief about who you are and how you will react the next time you are in an anxiety provoking situation.  It does work, some of the time and for some people.

The reason I don’t focus on self-hypnosis is because that is a weaker and less certain form of belief shifting than what I teach in the Social Anxiety Secrets system.  It does come down to shifting your beliefs, but it is better to do so the hard way.  That’s right, I said the hard way.  Why?  Because by doing it consciously (instead of unconsciously) you gain greater control over what seems uncontrollable (social anxiety symptoms).  By gradually learning that you can beat social anxiety symptoms even when they surface, you stop fearing them, and they cycle of panic begins to reverse itself as confidence replaces it.  So, yes, hypnosis (as a simple form of belief-shifting) does work.  The problem with it is when you relapse at some point a few months or years later and suddenly lose all your progress because you don’t know how or why you were able to make the progress in the first place.  Build your foundation on the rock, not the sand.

Be courageous!

Dr. Snyder

You probably already know the basics about social anxiety treatments, but in case you don’t, it can be broken down into three major categories:

1.       Pharmacological treatments (meaning medicine)

2.       Psychological treatments (meaning manipulating your mind and thoughts to decrease anxiety)

3.       Scams like “natural cures” which just means a homeopathic remedy.  For those of you who were unfortunate enough to have parents that don’t know this, homeopathic by definition means any substance diluted to the point of having no effect.  Homeopathic remedies are sold for their placebo effect (meaning the power of your mind to bring about an effect because you believe it will).

If you go the medication route, you will find there are two basic forms of medication for social anxiety treatments.  The first are the meds that create a generalized dampening of your stress for a few hours.  In this category would be the minor tranquilizers like Xanax and Ativan.  The other category are medications that were first used to treat depression, like Prozac, Zoloft, and the other SSRI drugs or SNRI drugs.  A few of those depression drugs have been helpful for reducing generalized anxiety, so they were tested to see if they cause a gradual improvement in social anxiety symptoms.  The effect is week compared with psychological treatments, but they do work for a few people for as long as you take the drug (after about four weeks of taking it).  My experience has been that the effect is so weak that it’s not worth the unknowns created by the medications.  Some people get powerful relief from these drugs for symptoms like depression, while others get virtually none.  None of my social anxiety patients have ever reported much benefit from the SSRI or SNRI drugs.

Social Anxiety Treatments that rely on shifting your automatic stress response through practice and mental discipline work much better.  Obviously these approaches require a lot more work, but the benefits last way beyond the time period when you work really hard.  The social Anxiety Secrets course cuts straight to the heart of what needs to happen if you decide to use psychological change methods.  You can find it somewhere at the top right side of this webpage.  Whatever you do, don’t stop working toward building the best life you can.  There is nothing more exciting to me than seeing other people build more enjoyable lives by beating social anxiety like I have.  As a psychologist, and as a fellow human being, I wish you the best!

Dr. Todd Snyder

Certainly trying to will yourself calm doesn’t work.  Just think about it.  How effective is it when someone else tells you to calm down or relax?  In my experience it generally doesn’t work.  It’s not like the person is pointing out something you don’t already know.  If you could relax, you would, so giving the command to do so usually just infuriates you all the more.  So what can you do?

I want to share with you a strategy that will help you overcome any situation in which you feel social anxiety.  It is actually a very simple secret, but if put into practice, it is very powerful and quite easy.  The trick is that you have to move your focus from yourself to others.  Often we are so caught up in our own inner drama, stuck in a repeating tape of negative thoughts that play over and over in our heads that we do not engage with others.  We are so concerned about what others think of us, about how we appear, and what we are doing wrong, that we are focused solely on ourselves.  The more we focus on our shortcomings, our fears, our anxieties, the bigger and more formidable they seem.  So what can we do to break this cycle?

The strategy I’m going to suggest that will help you relax in social situations is to focus on others.  This sounds deceptively simple but please suspend your disbelief for just a moment.  Think of little children.  If they get upset, one of the quickest ways to make them calm is to distract them by focusing their attention on something else.  They quickly forget the cause of their distress and become absorbed in the next activity.  You can do the same thing for yourself when it comes to social anxiety.  All you have to do is begin to focus on others and your anxiety will melt away.

Is there a social anxiety cure?  The closest thing to an actual “cure” is rooted in a paradoxical technique for beating social anxiety jitters.

What is a specific strategy to accomplish this?  I’d suggest having some questions prepared that you could ask anyone at anytime.  Once you begin to find out what is going on for someone else, you tend to become absorbed in their story.  You become present for them, and ready to help in any way you can.  This naturally distracts you from yourself, and as your thoughts move away from yourself, your anxiety dissipates.  You simply exercise your innate selflessness and relinquish self-centered, self-absorbed thoughts.

Action Step:  Think of a time in the past when you were relaxed around others.  What were you doing?  What were you talking about?

One of the lesser-known social anxiety treatments has to do with building confidence (to learn more about why that is important…see the link to the right of this page about he Social Anxiety Secrets course).

There is something very attractive about a confident person.  But how do we know that someone is confident?  What subtle signals do they send that communicate their self-assurance?  And how can you increase your confidence?  In this article I will discuss a secret that will make you more attractive and can increase your confidence.

Have you ever wondered why so many of us go to great lengths to avoid eye contact?  When we do this we appear timid, weak, and submissive.  It communicates that we lack confidence and have little self-worth.  People who look away are not happy with who they are, and often think they are less worthy than others.  But the great news is it doesn’t have to be this way.  With the secret I’m going to share, you can “fake it until you make it.”  This means that you can use this technique even if you don’t feel confident.  As you practice the skill, however, your confidence will naturally increase.  You will raise your self-assurance from the outside in, soon making it your normal habit.

When you look at the human face, what is the most intriguing aspect?  You probably thought of eyes.  They are one of the most prominent and beautiful features on the human face.  They communicate volumes about a person, including their true emotions.  For instance, you can tell if someone is genuinely smiling or not if the smile reaches the eyes.  Because the eyes convey our true emotions they are powerful portals through which connect with others.  You cannot hide behind a false veneer if someone looks directly into your eyes because they convey your honest condition.

So what is the secret of confidence?  It is to look someone directly in the eye.  This may seem like a simple answer, but think about it.  How do you feel when someone stares you directly in the eye?  To make direct, unabashed eye contact is to communicate that you are fully present.  It is a subtle non-verbal declaration that you know you can handle anything that comes your way.  It also means that you don’t mind being seen or heard.  People who give and receive direct eye contact are confident because they are secure with what other people can see there.  They know that it is slightly vulnerable to allow someone directly in via the eyes, but at the same time have the self-assurance to know who they are.

Action Step:  Practice eye contact with a friend.  Stare directly at them for two to three seconds.  Hold their gaze for just a moment.  Wait a moment and try to match their gaze again, this time a few seconds longer.  Repeat this process counting silently in your head up to ten.  Practice different intensities of staring from playful to angry.  See if your friend can guess what emotion you were trying to convey.  Now that you are an expert at communicating through eye contact, you can employ this technique with strangers as well.  But even practicing it with a friend will begin building your confidence.

Noticing there is no convenient escape to a bathroom became a trigger for anxiety, and anxiety causes your gut to get diarrhea reactions.  For some people, the gut is so sensitive to anxiety situations, it becomes the number one social anxiety symptom.   That’s what happened to my patient, Jack.

One day, Jack told me about an e-book he found that really helped him out a lot.  He said the principles were similar to what I teach, but for some reason, reading the book helped it all to sink in.  He said the result was that he was feeling more free and alive.  Life became more fun for him, and his anxiety symptoms diminished quickly.

It took me a year to finally follow up on his recommendation that I tell my other patients about it.  Here it is for any of you who believe in the idea of investing your your quality of life.  Get it Here.

Keep moving forward!

Dr. Snyder

Sure, we all know that drugs can have side effects, but if the doctor prescribed something for you, then surely he has weighed the potential risks and judged the benefit to outweigh the potential cost.  There should be nothing to worry about.  After all, you are just following the doctor’s orders.

You may not be aware, however, of the long term problems that may arise with Ativan or Xanax use.  Ativan and Xanax are in a class of medications called benzodiazepines which are controlled substances.  This means they are even more tightly regulated than regular medications.  This is because, besides the potential risks for side effects or drug interactions, physiological dependence can and often does occur.  Not only do people become dependent on substances like Ativan or Xanax, but the level of dependence develops to a degree unparalleled by any other group of drugs, even opioids, like Oxycontin or Vicodin.

Dependence is so strong that it makes it extremely difficult to get off Xanax or Ativan once on them.  And, if a person does decide to discontinue them, withdrawal can be severe and life-threatening.  Symptoms of withdrawal can include restlessness, anxiety, weakness, low blood pressure, hyperactivity and generalized seizures.  Tapering the medication must be done over a long time period under the direction of a medical professional, and takes discipline, diligence, and determination.

The biggest problem with using Ativan or Xanax for an anxiety disorder is not the potential side effects from withdrawal.  It is that using the drugs does not address the root cause of anxiety.  The medication only temporarily masks symptoms of underlying problems.  These are problems that must be dealt with for long term recovery.  Ativan or Xanax may seem attractive in the moment, and may even help someone cope for a while, but ultimately they are a crutch and a way to delay the emotional work that must be done to heal.  And, with getting off Ativan or Xanax being so difficult, you might as well learn coping skills and ways to center yourself, and do the work to face your anxiety head-on to create a life you love, rather than getting muddled up monthly trips to the pharmacy, bi-annual trips to the doctor’s office, and paying for a drug that keeps you stuck and doesn’t cure your disorder.

Even if a doctor recommends something like Ativan or Xanax, it is ultimately up to you to be your own advocate and choose the best course of action. Educating yourself about the risks and benefits of any therapy, including drugs like Xanax or Ativan, is a great first step to making a decision that serves you best.