Many Americans suffer from social anxiety, which can be debilitating. While there are anti-anxiety medications available, they only mask the symptoms and do not cure anxiety. Choosing to treat the underlying causes may be a better choice. Neuro-linguistic programming from a life coach at Premier Life Coaching can help you to conquer the anxious feelings that you experience so that you can enjoy a more rewarding life.
What is social anxiety?
People who have social anxiety have an irrational fear of being negatively judged by others. This fear can lead to feeling inadequate, self-conscious, inferior, embarrassed, humiliated, and depressed. If you tend to become overly anxious when you are in social situations but are better when you are by yourself, you may have social anxiety. Researchers have found that social anxiety is the third most common psychological disorder in the U.S.
Specific vs. generalized social anxiety
People who have specific social anxiety have irrational fears about a single activity. For example, if you are fine in most social situations but have a fear of public speaking, this would be considered to be specific social anxiety.
Most people who suffer from social anxiety disorder have a generalized form of the disorder. When your anxiety affects most of your life events, your social anxiety is generalized rather than specific.
Physiological symptoms of social anxiety
Social anxiety often includes a number of physiological symptoms, including the following:
Intense fear
Racing heart
Blushing
Dry mouth and throat
Muscle twitches
Excessive sweating
Difficulty swallowing
People who have social anxiety often understand that the anxiety that they feel is irrational. However, understanding something does not translate into believing it. The feelings and thoughts of anxiety may be ongoing without appropriate treatment.
Treating social anxiety disorder
People who are diagnosed with social anxiety disorder may be prescribed benzodiazepines. The problem with these anti-anxiety medications is that they become less effective over time, and they may also lead to addiction. Benzodiazepines also simply mask the symptoms of your anxiety rather than addressing the disorder itself.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is often used to treat anxiety. However, seeing a psychologist for cognitive-behavioral therapy may require an ongoing commitment and take many months or years to be effective.
Some other strategies may also be helpful in treating your social anxiety. Meditation can help you to calm and recenter yourself. Meditating every day can allow you to get in touch with your emotions so that you can become better at identifying what you are feeling.
Several techniques that are used in neuro-linguistic programming can also be very helpful in treating your social anxiety disorder quickly and effectively. NLP is an approach that allows you to identify your unconscious thought processes so that you can change the way that you think and feel.
Anchoring is a very helpful NLP technique that helps many people with social anxiety disorder. Anchoring helps you to replace negative emotions that you experience to feelings that are more useful to you. It is a type of associative conditioning in which you create anchors that help to recreate a positive feeling that you want to have.
You can create an anchor by thinking back to a time when you felt happy and confident. As you visualize how you felt at that time, perform a simple movement such as touching your thumb and forefinger together. Relive the memory multiple times, using the same movement each time. When you are preparing to enter a social situation that would normally make you anxious, using an anchor that you have created can help you to feel more confident and can lessen your anxious feelings.
Other NLP techniques such as reframing and storytelling may also be beneficial for treating your social anxiety disorder. Meeting with a life coach who uses neuro-linguistic programming techniques might help you to learn the approaches that work the best for you.
Contact Premier NLP Life Coaching
If you struggle with anxiety in social situations, it is possible for you to treat your anxiety so that you can improve the quality of your life. Contact Premier Life Coaching today by filling out our contact form.