If you’re looking for help with Social Anxiety Disorder, one option to consider is participating in research studies. At the Stanford Psychology Department, the CAAN lab is doing a study on social anxiety, and offering free treatment as a part of the research.

We are conducting a study measuring the effects of different stress reduction therapies.

The Wellness Program works on:

1. Improving physical fitness through cardiovascular and weight training
2. Stretching your body to enhance flexibility and improve posture
3. Implementing changes in your life towards better diet, sleep, and exercise habits

The Mindfulness Program works on:

1. Training in purposefully directing your attention from moment to moment, without critical judgment
2. Enhancing awareness and acceptance of external events as well as internal thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations
3. Implementing a meditation practice in your life to cultivate these skills

Mindfulness classes are once a week and take place either on Stanford campus, or around the San Francisco Bay area.  The Wellness program involves a one-on-one meeting with a coach, to tailor a Wellness course for you, with a requirement of participation in a group fitness class of your choice. The study is 8 weeks long, with research assessments before and after the treatment.

You can find out more here.

The first step to determine eligibility for either of these studies is a 15-20 minute phone interview.  Give us a call at 650-723-5977 when you have 20 minutes free, or email your name, number, and some good times to call and we will try to reach you. Email us at caan.mbsr [at] gmail [dot] com.

On another note, if you have some time and are looking for a little entertainment you can head over to take a look at one of the projects that has been taking up my time lately. It’s a webcomic my friend and I are putting together. Thirty some strips so far. It’s probably one of the only (don’t want to say THE only given how large a place the internet is) webcomics about a depressed cartoon bear written by someone with SAD.

Hope you enjoy. Mr. Huggins & Snugglypoo. First strip is here.

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?