Social Anxiety and Self-Esteem
October 11th, 2006 by Aaron
I’ve always had low self-esteem. I’ve tried at various times to pretend that I don’t, that it’s just a particular run of bad luck and that’ll be much happier with myself when I’m doing better. But the truth is I’ve never felt all that positively towards who I am.
I read recently in the Social Anxiety Institute’s Social Anxiety Mailing List, mentioned by Dashh (with a link to sign up) in a recent comment, that low self-esteem and a lack of self-confidence can be caused by social anxiety. I had always assumed that they all sprung from the same ground. Or honestly, I assumed having low self-esteem was why I have social anxiety and lack confidence. It’s interesting to consider it as happening the other way around.
One of the main problems of social anxiety is the constant feeling of letting myself down and certainly that must be a huge factor in how I feel towards myself. But, also, whenever I do manage to push through a little and talk to people I surge with confidence. As I mentioned earlier, something as simple as anticipating and following through with one positive social interaction helps my confidence immeasurably.
This creates an interesting moment of hope. The idea that working through social anxiety might do much more than simply make me capable of talking to people more freely.
Of course, much of the confidence gained from a good encounter can be undone if followed up by social situations that go badly. I have found that over time bad encounters bother me less, but I am assuming this has to do with becoming more self-conscious of SAD and being aware enough to remind myself not to put much stock in my terribly negative interpretations of events.
But those darkly negative interpretations have long been with me, something I remember very well from what you might call my formative years. Knowing that those interpretations are a common symptom of social anxiety I can really see how social anxiety could be why I have low self-esteem and not just a product of low self-esteem.
But if SAD does not come from low self-esteem, where does it come from? And in trying to deal with social anxiety, how much does understanding where it came from matter?
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Gus wrote on 10/12/06 at 10:27 pm :
Hi Aaron, interesting post, maybe you can check my blog, I posted some of the facts I have found about my social anxiety symptoms when I was a child.
I am wondering if you find similar things in your life? It would be interesting to know several cases of people with social anxiety during their childhood, would we find similar facts?
This is my blog:
http://socialanxietyblog.blogspot.com/
Aaron wrote on 10/15/06 at 9:53 am :
Thanks for the link and info. I’ll be checking the blog out. It’s a topic well worth exploring.
Ryan Oelke wrote on 10/16/06 at 4:37 pm :
hmmm, tough question. seems like a “chicken and egg” question, but valid nonetheless. I haven’t seen much solid research on the roots of social anxiety, only general possibilities. As for me, I’ve spent my whole life experiencing it - so far as I can remember - so I have no clue:) But the two do seem to be independent for me, although completely intertwined. I notice that my self-confidence and self-esteem in general can increase tremendously, regardless of social anxiety. But social anxiety and self-esteem influence each other. SA can lower my self-esteem and if I’m experiencing lower self-esteem I can be more anxious.
Gus wrote on 10/18/06 at 7:11 pm :
Aaron, Ryan, I have been in therapy for almost a year now, we are working on the origins of my SA, trying to find out where it comes from. We did work on the symptoms for a while, things like how I was dealing with my SA everyday and how I felt. Now me and my therapist are more focused on where does it comes from, what originated it. I have found very interesting things related to the way my mother raised me and the type of relationship we stablished, I have been able to relate my SA with my childhood, what I noticed is that what I feel now is what I felt as a child, I was not able to construct a positive relationship with others in my childhood because of the agressive relationship with my mother, I learned through her that people were agressive and that they could harm me, that was the message I got from her… so all of that is in my blog, if you guys want to check it, I was just wondering what was your child story like ? What happend there, do you find any common facts?