Proactive and reactive
September 22nd, 2006 by dashh
I was thinking today about how the difference in being proactive versus reactive can be a huge factor in anxiety levels of those that are socially anxious. For many, many years I have been (and many times I still am) reactive in social situations. For instance, if I was at a party or social function I would stay in the background of conversations or groups and never initiate anything. Then when someone did ask me a question I would usually get that hugh rise in anxiety and the fight or flight response would kick in. I might reactive defensively to a question or just freeze up, stutter or stammer out a brief response and then feel shame and guilt. I was reacting all the time to my surroundings.
One technique I have found that helps with this is attempting to be more proactive in social situations. For instance I may introduce myself to someone first instead of waiting for them to do so. Or, when walking down the street I might smile and say hello to people to practice being proactive instead of just looking away or waiting for someone to say hello to me first. There is something about feeling more in control that seems to ease the anxiety response. It also seems to help me not identify and get caught up so much in the whole internal anxious drama that can happen in those situations. I am a little more free to just be me. It is hard and takes patience and practice but can help out a lot.
Do others out there have similar experiences with being very reactive and not very proactive? If not, try observing your behavior and think back to social situations and contemplate if you were reactive. If you are aware of this, how have you tried to deal with it and what has and hasn’t worked for you?
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Ryan Oelke wrote on 09/23/06 at 8:32 am :
“For instance, if I was at a party or social function I would stay in the background of conversations or groups and never initiate anything. Then when someone did ask me a question I would usually get that hugh rise in anxiety and the fight or flight response would kick in.”
Oh man, this is one of my numero uno struggles. And I HATE the feeling of knowing that what I am doing. I recognize that I’m sitting back, holding, which makes me more anxious, feel like others can tell, then I get extrememly anxious when I do speak up, which makes me want to speak less.
Being proactive is so helpful, although really hard for me to do sometimes. When I do it, it produces almost entirely opposite results: I feel confident for having initiated conversation, which encourages me to speak up more.
What are some other techniques that helped you to get you to be more proactive in social situations? I’m interested to hear so that I can try them out:)
Aaron wrote on 09/27/06 at 1:51 pm :
A habit I picked up at work, where I was on the phone pretty much all day, is asking everyone I have to interact with something basic like, “How are you?” or “How’s your day been?”. It sounds simple, but I remain surprised the number of times it has smoothed the small social interactions that can cause me stress.