Archive for August, 2006
The Trouble With Authority
August 30th, 2006 by Aaron
One characteristic of the socially anxious that is listed in The Shyness & Social Anxiety Workbook is a difficulty relating to experts or people in authority. This is certainly true of me. I am extremely unnerved by anyone who I believe knows more than me. In fact, given any field I might get interested in, I’ll just as soon want to give up on it because I can always find someone who knows so much about it that my pitiful attempts seem ridiculous.
Focus of Attention and Social Anxiety
August 28th, 2006 by Ryan Oelke
In situations, individuals with social anxiety tend to focus more people then anything else. I observed this in myself today during one of my first class sessions for the semester. Of course, this is not a real surprise to those with SA but I find it helpful to notice how partial my attention is and how many other aspects of any given situation I could focus on. Read the rest of this entry »
Stress and Social Anxiety
August 23rd, 2006 by Aaron
This last week has been bad for me. Lots of stress, which leads to lots of anxiety. I definitely have a lot more trouble with social anxiety when under stress. In fact, the two feed off each other. The more anxiety I have the harder it becomes to handle the stress.
Online Transparency
August 16th, 2006 by Aaron
Since writing my last post, I’ve been thinking even more about the role of transparency in my struggles with social anxiety. One of the first places that I have been able to bring a little more transparency to my life is online. I was grateful for Ryan’s post on using the online world to help cope with social anxiety when I first read it and lately I have been thinking about it even more.
Transparency
August 10th, 2006 by Aaron
I was recently listening to an interview with Elizabeth Lesser, author of Broken Open. In it she talked about how crisis tends to either trigger growth and opening up or leads to falling apart. She discussed what qualities people who learn and grow in the aftermath of a crisis have in common. She said that one of the most important is transparency. Apparently, being able to tell someone about what you are going through seems to really matter in your ability to grow from painful experiences.
Using Notecards as Cognitive Reminders
August 7th, 2006 by Ryan Oelke
One technique that has helped me tremendously is creating notecards that I carry around, particularly before and during more difficult situations. I don’t remember if I picked this up from the Social Anxiety Workbook, but what I do with them stems from a technique found in that book. One of the first things you do in the workbook is to identify your common thought patterns going through your mind when you experience social anxiety. That helps to show that you are not just “magically” have feelings, that they have roots, and that you can change them. Next you test them out for validity. Finally you create more accurate thoughts and conclusions.
So, I’ll tell you how this works for me. A common SAD thought I have is that I should be perfect in social situations. On my notecard I have, “It’s ok not to be perfect.” It seems so simple, but it actually helps me. Another example is that I really dislike feeling overwhelmed by anxiety, especially wondering if others will notice, which causes more anxiety. On my notecard I have, “Feeling anxious does not make me weird.” “Weird” is my projection when I am SAD-ing. I also have, “It won’t be the end of the world if I become anxious”, which is what it usually feels like. I have a lot of these little one-liners and I put them to test during my transition to Boulder and a new job, which was extremely hard on me in terms of SAD.
Have you tried anything like this? If so, what has been your experience? What other ways have you worked with your SAD thought patterns and conclusions?
Self-Help Questions
August 2nd, 2006 by Aaron
Awhile back a few bloggers I read linked to a study on the self-help industry. The gist of the study, the part that made the news at least, was that the biggest determining factor in whether someone bought a particular kind of self-help book was if they had bought the same kind in the last eighteen months. This was taken, in what I read, to be evidence that self-help is in large part a scam.
I’m a little late coming to the conversation, but something about it didn’t sit right with me. It ignores a key factor in personal growth: time.
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