When you Chase the Rabbit Down the Hole and the Impact of Social Anxiety
Social anxiety is a little bit like chasing the rabbit down the hole. It often stems from a combination of heritable traits, an overactive stress response, childhood experiences, and learned behavior. Social anxiety is also often compounded by perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and rejection sensitive dysphoria. Social anxiety not only impacts daily social interactions, it can also affect your self-esteem and feelings of self-worth.
Here are some of ways social anxiety manifests:
Daily interactions with peer groups. Anxiety might come up during group projects or assignments, networking, or even in one-to-one meetings with friends or family members.
Anxiety causes high stress, and can lead to avoidance. Such as, canceling social plans or engagements, not responding to texts or instant messaging, and contributing to conflict-avoidance and people pleasing tendencies.
Social anxiety can show up as as a fear of judgement, or rejection-sensitive dysphoria. This may stem from experiences such as bullying, other people pushing your boundaries, or experiencing critical or rigid parenting styles growing up.
Learning to manage and alleviate the symptoms of social anxiety.
Counteract RSD. Learn to tune into the people who support and accept you, and ignore the people who don’t. Tuning out all the “noise” and focusing in on a small quality group of individuals who provide full support can counteract the inevitable experiences of rejection by others.
Face “Imposter Syndrome.” Tune out the little voice inside telling you that you are inadequate, and choose to focus on building strength and confidence from within. Imposter Syndrome only serves to limit your potential, and when it sets in, it can hold you back from all the things you desire to achieve.
Accept Imperfection. Having high personal expectations for yourself that are consistently out of reach can contribute to social fears. Learn to release yourself and others from this burden by acknowledging that no one is perfect, and everyone is doing the best they can.
Talk to someone. Get support from a trained therapist to gain a more clear perspective on these issues and help manage your symptoms. Anxiety tends to increase in isolation, and having a support network that serves as a sounding board really helps to eliminate these worries.
Coming up with positive ways to manage social anxiety in peer relationships can help to support your best efforts to succeed. Realizing that what others say and do is often less about you and more about their own issues or perception, can help. Negative past experiences can continue to impact your daily interactions until you address the specific triggers and lasting core beliefs that arise from these events.
Ways that therapy can help you alleviate your social anxiety.
Using cognitive reframing. What we think and assume about our interactions are often not what other people are actually thinking. The more we can check this, we can use a cognitive reframe to counteract the distortions.
Examine negative core beliefs through trauma therapy. Core beliefs often keep us feeling stuck, they can be highly detrimental and ultimately cause significant harm. Negative core beliefs such as the feeling of “not being good enough” or “I am a failure,” are often under the surface, waiting to make their appearance when we are triggered in social interactions.
Build positive supportive community and relationships. In therapy, we encourage our clients to get out and make connections with others, to get involved in other activities and not stay isolated. Behavioral activation can help people feel more motivated and get you out of the depressed cycle in your head.
Re-Parenting and building a stronger Self-Identity. The concept of reparenting comes from providing yourself with the support and encouragement you did not receive as a child. Defining the concept of who you are, apart from how others see you, is important to distinguish your own self-identity separate from the labels and criticisms of others.
Rather than chasing the proverbial rabbit and going back down the hole, we can begin to see the anxiety spiraling into the abyss, and identify the rabbit as only the figment of our imagination that keeps us living in the topsy-turvy world of social anxiety.
If you are experiencing social anxiety, please reach out to connect with a therapist from our group, @ everyheartdreamsfamilycounseling.
