How to Manage Social Anxiety in Group Settings
Feeling shy or uneasy in social settings is a common and natural experience. Most people feel apprehensive and nervous when going on a job interview, giving a wedding toast, or presenting in front of an audience.
However, people with social anxiety may experience significant stress from everyday interactions with others, making them dread social gatherings and group settings.
Understanding Social Anxiety
Social anxiety disorder, also known as social phobia, is characterized by an intense fear of social situations and interactions. One of the critical components of social anxiety is the fear of being evaluated or criticized by others.
People who suffer from social anxiety believe that others constantly scrutinize and criticize their appearance or behavior. They often experience significant stress in social situations, frequently avoiding and distancing themselves from others.
How Can the Fear of Being Judged Keep You from Living Your Life?
The fear of being scrutinized and shamed in public can significantly influence your life if you have social anxiety.
Social anxiety can keep you from being involved in social events, diminish your self-esteem, and lead to isolation and loneliness. In social or group settings, your fear of being negatively evaluated by others can trigger physical symptoms such as:
Trembling
Sweating
Blushing
Dry mouth
Rapid heartbeat
Panic attacks
What Does Social Anxiety Look Like?
Living with social anxiety may be challenging. However, there are helpful ways to deal with your worry and fear when meeting new people or engaging in social situations. Anxiety treatment or online anxiety therapy can give you a safe environment to learn to control your social anxiety.
Fear of Being Judged
If you struggle with social anxiety, you may avoid situations where you are the center of attention. You may feel self-conscious in public, afraid others will judge or criticize you. In addition, you might find yourself expecting the worst possible outcomes in social interactions and experiencing a constant sense of being observed or scrutinized.
Fear of Embarrassment
You might fear saying or doing something embarrassing, which can prevent you from expressing your opinion honestly and openly. You may also dread embarrassing yourself in various social situations, such as meeting new people, engaging in conversations, delivering presentations at work, or even using public transportation.
Avoidance
As a result, social anxiety might cause you to become too concerned with everyday activities such as shopping, attending a teacher-parent interview at your child's school, or chatting with coworkers during a lunch break. You may avoid social meetings and events at work, community activities, and family gatherings.
How to Manage Social Anxiety
Social anxiety can prevent you from enjoying social interactions and daily life. Self-care strategies and seeking anxiety treatment can help if your social anxiety feels overwhelming.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a highly effective treatment for anxiety, helping clients challenge negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones, develop coping strategies, and overcome fear by gradually exposing them to fear-provoking situations in a controlled and supportive environment.
So, here's how anxiety treatment can help you manage social anxiety, especially in social settings or when meeting new people.
Challenge Your Negative Thoughts
People with anxiety often struggle with cognitive distortions, engaging in negative thinking patterns such as fortune-telling (predicting negative outcomes), catastrophizing (viewing the situation much worse than it is), or mind-reading (assuming they know what others are thinking about them). Anxiety treatment can be a great place to learn how to challenge and reframe negative thoughts.
Your therapist can help you identify negative thoughts, examine them, and then replace them with positive affirmations. They can help you create a list of positive affirmations for social anxiety and practice them regularly.
Practice Relaxation Techniques
Whether you seek anxiety treatment in your therapist's office or online therapy, they can guide you through effective relaxation techniques such as mindfulness meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, or deep breathing, allowing you to calm down before entering social situations or confronting social challenges.
Try Systematic Desensitization Therapy
Avoidance is a core feature of social anxiety. Anxiety therapy can progressively expose you to social or group settings and desensitize you to social anxiety.
A trained therapist can help you desensitize by progressively exposing you to the fearful events in vitro (imagination) or in vivo (you are actually exposed to the feared situations).
Even though it might be difficult to handle, social anxiety can be overcome. With expert help, learning to swap out negative ideas with positive affirmations, and regular relaxation exercises, you could feel comfortable enough to start exposing yourself to social situations and overcome social anxiety.
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