Beat Social Anxiety: Avoid Avoidance & Tell Yourself Some Good Things

Beat Social Anxiety: People who suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder become very adept at avoidance or safety behaviors. It’s a natural reaction to something that feels bad, and of course, they will do whatever it takes to avoid those situations. But, unwittingly they are reinforcing their anxiety and even making it worse. Have a look at the common avoidance behaviors, and see if in trying to minimize exposure, you’re feeding the beast. We'll also talk about feeding your mind the right thoughts to get you feeling better right away.

 

That can range from just not turning up to parties and refusing invitations, to changing jobs so as not to have to give presentations or even dropping out of college.

2.    Partial Avoidance

Partial avoidance is a less obvious safety behavior because the sufferer still seems to be participating while still keeping themselves safe. These behaviors include:

·       Sitting in the back of the room

·       Keeping your eyes lowered and looking like you’re absorbed in taking notes

·       Protective body language like crossing arms, or avoiding eye contact

·       Daydreaming

·       Drinking or taking drugs.

 

3.    Escape

Not surprisingly, people use escape as a safety valve for anxiety. As in partial avoidance, the sufferer seems to be participating but gets to a point where the stress is unbearable, and they have to leave. This sort of behavior includes leaving a party or other gathering early, pretending to get an urgent message so they can leave a meeting, or hiding in the bathroom

 

What can you do?

While such avoidant behaviors help in the short term, they act to reinforce your vulnerability. They keep you in a hypervigilant state, constantly on the lookout for danger or fearful situations.

 

Avoidant behaviors keep you stuck right in the middle of social anxiety. They stop you from trying and failing, but they also prevent you from working and succeeding. You won’t learn how to overcome your fears or learn that you’re pretty good at giving presentations. If you never speak up in meetings, all your good ideas stay in your head. If you hide your light under a bushel, you never get the chance to shine.

 

An easy gateway technique to beat social anxiety is to try the five-minute strategy. When you feel the urge to avoid or run away or shrink down, give yourself five minutes. You can put up with pretty much anything for five minutes, right? Just give it a try, be kind to yourself and encourage your real self to take it easy.

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Beat Social Anxiety:
Start filling your mind with helpful thoughts

So what you can do is find a statement that is more neutral and feels more real. You might say “I feel better and stronger every day,” or “I am more in peace with myself with each day passing.”

These are just examples to illustrate the point – you should find your own statements that make you feel better.

One of my favorites is “I am completely calm and relaxed deep within.” While saying that, I also intentionally bring up the memory of a moment when I was calm and relaxed.

Another one of my favorites is “I am connected to other people with harmony.” Once again, besides just pronouncing the words, I intentionally bring up the feeling of a moment when I felt that with someone. It could be a close friend or a family member. Then I imagine experiencing this peaceful feeling with other people as well.

Remember, the whole point is to create new, positive feelings, not just to pronounce words. Words themselves are just letters put together. You are the one who gives words meaning and with meaning come emotions.

If you cultivate positive feelings through affirmations regularly every day, those feelings grow and become a natural part of you.

3. When choosing your affirmations, consider the following:

Our subconscious mind takes our statements literally. If you use affirmations in the future tense, your feelings will most likely reflect the absence of what you want because you project the desired outcome somewhere in the future. As long as you project it in the future, it will stay there and you won’t be cultivating the feeling of having what you desire here and now. In the same way, if you say “I want…,” the feeling you will create will reflect exactly that: wanting. The feeling of wanting and not already having is probably not something you are looking for. This brings me to the next point:

Don’t use words that imply a struggle or lack of something, like “want,” “wish,” and “try.” For example, instead of saying “I want to feel relaxed,” or “I will try to stay calm,” say “I am more and more relaxed every day,” or “I am completely calm.”

Our subconscious mind doesn’t know the words “no,” “don’t” and “not” very well. So instead of “I am not feeling anxious,” say “I am at peace,” or “I am calm and relaxed.”

Use only positive words and statements to beat social anxiety. Besides the “no” and “not,” it’s also better not to use any words associated with unhelpful states. For example, don’t say “I am overcoming social anxiety.” Instead, say something like “I am connected with other people in harmony.” You can even use a general affirmation like “I am calm and relaxed deep within me.”

Keep your sentences short and simple to beat social anxiety.

Use only present tense and speak as if it’s already happening.

Once you choose your favorite affirmations, write them down and stick with them for at least one month. It’s important to repeat the same affirmations regularly to truly imprint them into your mind. Using different affirmations every time is far less effective.

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Beat Social Anxiety:
What to say to yourself

• I am completely calm and relaxed deep within. This inner peace is expanding into everything surrounding me.


•  I am connected to other people with harmony, love and compassion.


•  I trust in the infinite abilities of my higher self.


•  I allow the infinite power of my higher self to guide me.


•  I am okay, I can do this.


•  Everything is okay.


•  Everything will be okay. (Yes, I break one of the rules here because sometimes things really aren’t okay and it just feels good to remind ourselves that everything changes and that it will be okay. As long as using the future tense is an occasional exception to the rule, it’s fine.)


•  I connect with people openly and spontaneously.


•  I can always find something good in every person I meet.


•  I focus on everything that’s good in my life, no matter how small it might seem.


•  I am in complete harmony with myself and others.


•  I am more confident with every passing day.


•  I feel stronger with every passing day.

•  Complete peace and harmony are taking over my whole being.

•  I am grateful for all the good people and things in my life.

•  Relationships enrich me and help me grow.

•  I welcome new friends into my life, and they welcome me warmly as well.

•  All the power is within me. ~parts adapted for beat social anxiety via FreeFromSocialAnxiety.com

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Beat Social Anxiety
There's good news...

Social anxiety isn't just shyness...

People who have been socially anxious at any time know that social anxiety actually hurts. Anxiety knots your stomach, stress makes your head ache and the constant jolts of adrenaline and fear sap your energy.

The consequences of social anxiety hurt too. You know how isolating it is. You know how hard it is to really get to know people, to form the friendships you'd like to, when social situations feel like torture.T here's a reason it's called 'painfully' shy.

Scans of the brain have shown loneliness activates the same centers that pain does.

Just because you suffer from social anxiety doesn't mean you don't need human contact. Laughter, intimacy and friendship are like food and water. You wilt without it.

Beat social anxiety. Why having social anxiety is like being a pilot in World War II

Remember the book Catch-22? You probably had to read it in school. In the book, no sane pilot would be crazy enough to want to continue flying really dangerous missions, but could only be grounded if they were certified insane.

Social anxiety is a true Catch-22

You feel lonely, but the thought of being with other people is frightening. You're churning with anxiety when you're out socially, but you hate always being alone.

It gets frustrating and it feels like there's no way out. But there is. Hypnosis is a natural and fast way of changing your emotions about socializing

Hypnosis changes the way your unconscious mind reacts to situations, or imagined situations. It gently and naturally eases your fears about socializing and your anxiety over not being liked so that social confidence becomes a natural part of your personality.

Beat social anxiety. Why focus on calming the emotions behind social anxiety?

Well, it's because if you are very calm about the thought of socializing, then the battle is half won. It's so much easier to enjoy social situations if anxiety isn't clouding everything you do. It's so much easier to make small talk when you're actually focusing on the conversation and not imagining how badly you must be coming across.

It's impossible to really connect with people if you're stuck inside your own head. If you don't take care of the emotional aspect of social anxiety, then all the techniques in the world won't help (and we have some very useful techniques for you too!)

Beat social anxiety. We're talking here about calm, quiet confidence...

In case you're wondering, we're not promising to turn you into some sort of socializing machine.

Being socially confident does NOT mean:

• You are the life and soul of every party
• You never, ever get nervous socially
• You want to be the center of attention all the time.

There's such a thing as quiet confidence. There are perfectly happy people who can enjoy parties and gatherings in a calm, understated way.

Beat social anxiety. This is social confidence:

• You're at your friend's house and some people you don't know call by. You're not extremely nervous, and you join in the conversation, interested to find out about them.
• You're happy to answer the phone, ask for directions or say hi to the people in your neighborhood.
• You go to a wedding and don't mind that you're seated at a table with people you don't know very well. You chat to several of them and go home with a couple of numbers to follow up later.
• You decide you want to learn Italian so you go to night classes, without worrying what the others there will think of you.
• You're at a work function and enjoy chatting to your colleagues, even the ones you don't work directly with.
• You feel butterflies before going on a first date, or to a job interview, but you feel the fear and do it anyway!

Social anxiety can be crippling. It stops you getting what you need the most - friends and human contact. Luckily, hypnotherapy for social anxiety can be highly effective, because relaxed, calm hypnosis trains the brain how to be calm around people.

Using hypnosis, you can quickly and easily learn how to get on with just being yourself, and stop being self conscious about how others might see you.

Whatever is holding you back from getting the most out of your social life, or from having a social life at all, one of our hypnosis downloads for social anxiety will soon put you on the right track.

You can build up your motivation to get socializing and overcome shyness and even blushing or nervous laughter. With our advanced hypnotherapy sessions we'll get you over the unconscious programming that's made you feel so awkward in the past so you can get out and really enjoy being yourself with other people.

The good news is that brain programming can be changed. It is possible to reprogram your brain to feel quite calm and relaxed in the situation that used to set your alarm bells ringing. In other words, you can 'disassociate' that trigger from that automatic reaction, and replace it with a new, calm and detached response.

Hypnosis and brainwave entrainment are the most powerful tools we know for carrying out safe and gentle brain programming to beat social anxiety.

When you calm down your limbic system using hypnosis and/or brainwave entrainment you'll find yourself:

• relaxing more quickly and more deeply each time
• able to relax more in many different situations
• learning powerful techniques that not only beat the OCD but help you in so many other areas of your life
• becoming more and more detached from worrying thoughts
• hardly even noticing triggers any more ~parts adapted via HypnosisDownloads.com

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Beat Social Anxiety and Other Healthy Tips for Anxiety