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Social anxiety, or social phobia, fear of public speaking or the inability to communicate, including with familiar people …. How people with social anxiety behave, says a cognitive psychologist.
Each of us probably has something to remember: excitement on the eve of a speech with a big report or anxiety at the moment of meeting new colleagues … But we can talk about a disorder – social phobia, or social anxiety – only if we are not just afraid to speak (or meet ), but we also avoid performances (or acquaintances), and all this lasts for at least six months.
Social anxiety is a very common disorder, slightly more common in men. It can begin in adolescence, or maybe with some episode and in thirty years. Social anxiety doesn’t go away on its own. Moreover, it often leads to alcohol addiction (if a person tries to relieve anxiety with the help of alcohol) or depression – it is impossible to consider yourself a worthless person for a long time and without consequences.
There are three features of thinking and behavior of people with a high level of social anxiety: “protective behavior”, “anticipation of failure” and “posthumous” analysis of the situation.
1. Protective behavior
Despite the fact that socially anxious people often face situations that contradict their beliefs, their fear does not decrease from this. This is explained by the phenomenon of “protective behavior”, which consists in the fact that anxious people look for various ways to prevent or minimize an imaginary catastrophe.
If disaster does not occur, the person is more likely to attribute it to “protective behavior” than to admit that the situation is less dangerous than they previously thought. At the same time, “protective behavior” can increase manifestations of anxiety that a person carefully tries to hide (for example, a girl who is embarrassed by blushing covers her face with her hands, which draws attention to her and her redness even more).
2. Anticipate failure
People with high social anxiety tend to “prepare” themselves for failure. Before going out into the world, they carefully think through everything that they think might happen, all possible negative scenarios. From such thoughts, anxiety increases significantly and blocks the ability to see positive (neutral) options for the development of the situation. In addition, all past failures are remembered.
This “winding up” of oneself before going out leads to an acute desire to avoid a frightening situation and not go anywhere. If it is impossible to avoid it, a person enters into interaction with others focused on the expectation of an impending failure, which finally leads the situation to a dead end. On the other hand, avoiding the situation does not bring relief and get rid of negative thoughts, as it reinforces the worst forebodings.
3. “Post-mortem” analysis of the situation
Immediately after the end of interaction with other people, what is called a “post-mortem” analysis of the situation begins. Everything that happened is reviewed in detail, in the process of this review, anxiety and negative self-beliefs are activated, which are characteristic of people with high social anxiety – “I’m stupid”, “I’m weak”, “I’m boring”.
Ambiguous signals from other people tend to be seen as negative, and through such a distorted mirror of distorted perception, the situation appears much more negative than it really was. Accordingly, this situation is now attributed to the number of “failures” that will be remembered before the next events that cause anxiety. The circle closes.