For the last four months I have been doing a form of therapy known as EEG biofeedback (previously more commonly referred to as neurofeedback). On the most basic level it is a system that allows the brain to get information about itself and thereby correct certain imbalances or traumas. As I get into further posts describing the process in more detail I’ll provide plenty of links. For now I’d like to concentrate on my initial experience.

I was skeptical when first offered the chance to try the therapy. Skeptical, but curious. Anything that might work was worth a shot.

A session of EEG biofeedback consists of being hooked up, via three sensors placed on various points on your scalp, to a laptop with specialized software that reads information about your brainwaves and then, based on that information, gives you feedback in the form of sounds and visual images. The loop this creates allows your brain to make the corrections I mentioned above. Which protocols you will use are determined by an evaluation given before the first session.

Almost immediately, it was startling how good I felt. The session would end and I would head home, elated by a sense of ease and comfort. As my sessions continued that immediate jolt of feeling good subsided and I seemed to hit something of a lull (which is apparently common). And, yet, at the same time, I could step back and recognize that when I got into anxious states, particularly when I would get stuck in a building sense of dread, they didn’t seem to be lasting as long.

And then, somewhere around twenty sessions in, something extraordinary happened.

I had agreed to go to an alumni get-together. It was just the kind of situation that has always been terrible for my social anxiety and I dreaded showing up. On the evening of the event, I parked and headed for the location. My mind began a familiar refrain: “Why do I have to do this? No one will remember me. This is going to be horribly awkward and embarrassing. I’m going to stand around holding one drink and looking lost and feeling pathetic. I could just turn around right now…”

But then I noticed something. My body was calm.

My heart wasn’t racing. My stomach wasn’t churning. My breathing wasn’t shallow. I had no numbness in my fingers. I didn’t feel any chills or trembling. I wasn’t having the physical symptoms of social anxiety.

As soon as I recognized this I was floored. I worried I might be imagining it. I stood still, waiting to see what would happen. My body remained calm. And as the realization that I really was feeling okay settled in, my mind began to relax. I stopped thinking about how terrible the evening might be. I went inside.

And while it wasn’t the perfect gathering, it was nothing compared to how events like that usually are for me. I was able to find ways to talk to people, meet people I knew, and not worry so much about what everyone else might be thinking.

The feeling of physical calm I first noticed that night has continued to build. And I have slowly realized that something significant is changing. It is as if my central nervous system has long been out of whack and now is not. I am more content, less thrown by events, and able to experience greater joy.

This therapy is affordable and easily accessible. If you’d like any kind of follow up information you can email me at umguyduh@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to both discuss this and pass on details as to who you can contact to try it yourself. I’ll post further details and links in a future post, once the website being put together by the person who got me involved in this is finalized.

But eventually, around the time the posting stopped, I began to feel like, no matter how much progress I made or effort I put into getting better, the intense discomfort I felt in difficult situations made lasting improvement something of a mirage.

I don’t want to sound too pessimistic. I was enjoying my life and enjoying a more relaxed attitude towards my own metal state, but I was seeing just how constrained by this thing I had always been and how constrained I would continue to be. No matter how much progress I made I wanted, very deeply, not to have to deal with SAD.

And a lot has happened since we stopped posting here. I moved. I took up a number of other writing projects. And I tried to get back into dating after playing at being a hermit. All of these things troubled my social anxiety. Especially being single.

There is a way to find comfort in avoiding social interactions. And there are many things it is easy to give up or to never want in the first place. But there are some things, like dating, that avoiding will make you feel just as bad as SAD is going to make you feel when you give them a shot.

Trying to manage all of these different emotions, while on the look out for any new techniques that might help, had become my routine. But it didn’t feel like there was going to be anything that really shook up that sometimes rather uncomfortable stasis.

Until recently.

Something unexpected and very positive has happened and I want to share it here because it has had such a powerful effect on my social anxiety. I have had a major reduction in the physical symptoms of social anxiety and the associated thoughts are loosening their hold. This is thanks to a very specific form of therapy I have been doing for the last three months.

I’ll get into that therapy fully with a handful of posts and provide links so that anyone interested in trying what has helped me so much will know who to contact. But for right now I want to establish this site as active once again. My next post will be a catch up post and then I’ll get into the story of what has happened with this therapy.

I’d like to take this opportunity to invite anyone who is dealing with SAD to write for this site. Please contact us with stories you’d like to share or insights you’ve gained. Take a look through the archives and see if anything we have written speaks to you. We’d love to see a post about your reaction to a particular topic we once covered. Anything at all will be welcomed. I would like to keep this site going once again.

One thing that keeps coming up, even in the smallest of moments, is that I fundamentally do not trust myself.  It started as a flash of insight, a kind of recognition of the obviousness of something I had been dancing around for some time, and grew form there.  Over the last few weeks I have begun to understand just how many parts of my life it affects.

I do not trust my own judgment.  I do not trust my ability to make good decisions, to say the right things, to behave in the appropriate manner.  I do not trust the choices I make.

This lack of trust leads to a lot of doubt and second-guessing.  It leads to fear and inaction.

But this distrust is not even remotely rational.  It’s a deeply ingrained pattern so familiar that it took a lot of self-examination before I was even able to spot it and begin to understand its influence.

So how does one get at something so deeply ingrained?

I want to write more about this, as it feels important.  I’ll be looking for ways to better understand it, to work with it.  If anyone knows of any avenues worth pursing, I’d be grateful.

Is this kind of doubt common to people dealing with social anxiety?

Some part of me wishes deeply that I could somehow stop or prevent their behavior.  If I could, I’d make it so that no one ever does anything embarrassing, so that no one ever acts inappropriately.

If I see it done on TV, a character thoroughly embarrassing him or herself, I have trouble watching.  Some voice in my heads, says, “Please don’t do that.  Please don’t do that.”

It seems like this is a fairly clear example of projection.  I am seeing my inner feelings in all of these outside events.  In many cases, the people I’m feeling so embarrassed for might not feel the least bit of embarrassment.  Some people don’t mind standing out.  Some crave it.

This is most difficult when I am with friends whose behavior I sometimes find embarrassing in just this way.  I try not to let my discomfort show, but have not always been successful.  More than one person has thought me judgmental because I was so obviously uncomfortable with their behavior.  I didn’t know at the time to explain that it was simply my own anxiety that I was wrestling with.

Sometimes, if I remind myself to relax and breath, if I tell myself over and over that I am not responsible for anyone else’s choices, I can let go of this discomfort.  But it isn’t easy.

Does anyone else have trouble like this?

In each of my relationships, I put a lot of effort into making sure I do not make whomever I am with uncomfortable. I try not to say or do anything that might seem, even mildly, out of place.

A simple example brought this home recently. I was out hiking with a group of friends. A man stopped to ask us for directions.

I probably knew the area he was asking about better than anyone, but I let one of my friends give directions. I didn’t speak up because I didn’t want the people I was with to see me behave in a way (outgoing, etc) that might make them uncomfortable.

I didn’t immediately understand as much. I mostly thought about how I probably should have spoken up (although the directions my friend gave were certainly good enough). What got me to thinking about appropriateness was the thought that, if alone, I would have had no problem giving directions and might have even enjoyed chatting with a fellow hiker for a few minutes.  But there is something in the way I perceive the social expectations of my friends that made it impossible for me to do the same thing when I was with them.

So it seems, upon reflection, that my anxiety has a lot to do with the fear of acting inappropriately and thereby embarrassing other people, particularly those who are closest to me. Has anyone else noticed this about their anxiety? Is the idea that, free of my usual social expectations and relationships, I could be a less anxious person, that I would talk easily to a stranger, merely wishful thinking?

The first has to do with how I talk to people.

I was having lunch with a couple of friends who I have known for awhile, one who I’ve been spending more time with recently and another who I hadn’t seen in awhile. The first guy, who I’ve been spending time with, started talking to the second. He spoke to him exactly the same way he talks to me. And immediately a thought popped up in my head, “Be careful. You might say the wrong thing.” Which is a little odd as the second guy is a very reasonable person. It’s just that I have always interacted with him fairly differently than I do with the first guy.

I change how I am around different people.  My friend doesn’t.

It goes beyond something as simple as I swear around some people and not others, or that with some people I revel in being silly. It’s that I let the other person lead. I watch for what they seem to think good interaction is and then tend towards that.  Over time it develops into a particular way of being around each person.
I might not have looked closely at this habit if it hadn’t been for that moment when I thought, “Be careful.”  It speaks to a closely self-monitored behavior of trying to control interactions through appropriateness.

So is this behavior about anxiety?  Could it possibly be a useful skill as well?