Not Weak. Not a Freak.

One major problem that people with social anxiety often have is to believe that we are different than everyone else - in a bad way.  I remember talking to a counsellor about this. I talked about how embarrassing is is to feel so nervous about everyday situations like eating in front of people.  She reminded me that everyone has their own stuff!  Some people are terrified of things like spiders, bridges, dogs, small spaces, flying, being alone, darkness, intimacy, failure, aging, and about ten million other odd things.  Why do we think that social fears are  so different?  What makes us so much more deficient and worthy of self-hatred?  The answer is of course that we just have particular fears and issues, just like every other human being alive today.  Our fears might be a little more obvious, but everyone has their stuff. You are not a freak, you are just human!

One big step in the process to overcoming social anxiety is to stop beating ourselves up about it.  We can't let it define us.  If our primary identity is "I am someone with social anxiety", we are focusing too much on one detail of our own lives.  If you think that you are weak for having social anxiety, just grab a sheet of paper and write down all of the strengths that you have. Are you kind to people? Are you good at your hobbies, your job, your relationships, readings, writing, math, helping people?  I'm sure that if you write all of these things down and then put "has social anxiety" on that list, you will see that one weakness does not outweigh all of your strengths.  It is the favorite trick of social anxiety, and many other issues, to become our primary identity. In my counsellor training, we learned a great technique to seeing "problems" outside of ourselves rather than an integral part of our identity.  In the future (once I find that sheet I have on it), I will post it on this blog for you to try. It's actually fun, quite humorous, and gives a new perspective of the problem. In essence, you talk to your problem as if it was a separate person, asking it a variety of questions. Sounds weird i know, but it can help a lot.

In the meantime, here is great book on the subject of externalizing problems. It's written for counselling students or counsellors but we are all our own counsellors in some way aren't we? :)