Social Anxiety - Symptoms, Causes and Solution

What is Social Anxiety and how does it impact our professional and personal life? Lack of confidence and self worth are also a part of it.

Social Anxiety is a kind of behavior which is accepted as a part of personality by many of us. The reason may be –

• We are suffering with it since a long time, possibly as far as we remember

• We have seen the same kind of personality in the adults of our family while growing up

• We have heard some people around us having the same.

And the bad news is, once we accept something as a part of personality, we don’t even think of getting over it and keep going with it, letting it impact our professional and personal life in every way we never wanted.

But the good news is, we can get over it, if we want.

So first thing, let’s understand what social anxiety is? How do we identify if we or anyone around us are suffering with it? So if we know the symptoms of it, we can easily identify it, right? There are two types of symptoms we can feel or observe someone else feeling the same – Emotional and Physical

Emotional symptoms are –

• Worry, Stress and Intense Fear about social interactions

• Constant replay of social interactions after they happen

• Anxiety about future events

• Fear of embarrassing self (Assuming people will think badly about you)

• Avoiding places where you can’t easily hide

• Making excuses to skip meeting or get-togethers

• Avoiding asking people for help

• Not showing your true self

• Not able to speak out in a discussion, even if you have an idea and want to speak. Regretting later.

• Being extremely aware of how you behave

Physical symptoms are –

• Upset stomach (Butterflies in stomach)

• Sweating

• Dizziness

• Blushing

• Muscle Tension

• Shaky voice (includes Stammering)

• Sensation in palms and feet

• Faster heartbeat

So if we feel or observe someone else feeling these symptoms, we can identify the existence of social anxiety.

So this was all about how social anxiety feels or looks like. Now, we will understand how does it impact our professional and personal life.

Let’s talk about the professional life first.

We all know that in today’s world, being good only at the desk work, cannot make you progress in your professional career, right? So what else is necessary?

Presentation!!! Yes. Presentation is having much more weightage than desk work in today’s corporate culture. Doesn’t matter how good you are at desk work, if you cannot present yourself well in public, you can never be a part of middle or top management. You will only be assigned the clerical level work. And even if you get to be a part of any managerial position somehow, you will always feel low among your colleagues in any kind of meetings or get-togethers. You will start feeling all the symptoms what we have discussed in the beginning. And this is applicable to everyone in today’s world, irrespective of your area of work. So not only front office like Sales and Marketing, but back office also like Finance, IT, HR, whatever area you are working in, you cannot progress well in your career without having confidence to handle social situations.

Doesn’t matter how good you are at analysis, if you can’t present the outcome of your analysis and further action required on it confidently, you will work only as a tool for your manager.

Even if your analysis is much better than your colleague, but you can’t convey the outcome of it confidently to the management, it is of least use and if your colleague presents his work well, he will win the show and you will be left with frustration and complaints with yourself.

During a discussion, doesn’t matter how good idea do you have to put forward on the table, if you are not confident to speak, it is of no use at all and you will lose all the appreciation, promotion etc. you could get if you had that confidence to speak.

Even for a analyst level job, if you can’t present yourself confidently in interviews, doesn’t matter how good you are at work, you can’t impress the recruiter in any way because they will see your work only after the recruitment, but first thing they will see is, how do you present yourself.

So, social anxiety is a big hurdle in your way to progress professionally and if you don’t work to get over it, you will always keep on regretting of losing the opportunities came your way and limiting the use of the caliber you have been gifted with.

So to summarize, where all this plays a major role in your professional life –

• Giving presentations

• Floating ideas in meetings and discussions

• Addressing wider audience in an event i.e. Public Speaking

• Cracking interviews successfully

And much more…effectively, the whole of your professional growth gets jeopardized if you have social anxiety, irrespective of your qualifications, degrees and diplomas. Because even if you have been considered for an opportunity on the basis of qualifications, your performance in that will be limited to working on desk only and soon you will be left behind.

So this was all about the impact on professional life. Now, let’s understand the impact on our personal life as well.

Human being is a social creature. We all need to talk, feel connected and have healthy relationships with the people around and ourselves, right? So what is the most important requirement of a healthy social life? Communication!!!

Doesn’t matter how much we feel connected to someone, if we don’t communicate well with them, our relationships will start getting fade. If you will avoid the social get togethers, even if you attend any, you will just avoid talking to people and being a part of groups, it is near to impossible to make good social connections and you will always feel lonely. And when a person lives with this kind of lifestyle for a certain years, it becomes a part of their life and they start feeling comfortable with it. But the truth is, being comfortable with loneliness, is itself indicating that you have high level of social anxiety. You know, our mind loves familiar and actively works to avoid unfamiliar. So once this anxiety becomes familiar to us, our mind finds an excuse of being with it and we start saying – “I am comfortable with myself only. I don’t like to be surrounded by people”.

It is also possible that a person actually likes to have a small circle of close friends only. There is nothing wrong in it and we should not judge them to have social anxiety. It is the way they like their life to be and they have all the rights to choose it. But if these kind of people start showing the symptoms we have discussed, when they are exposed to any social situation or have to address an audience, then we know that there is a problem. And if they comfortably perform in these situations, then nothing to worry about.

So this a kind of test, reserved people can do or think about to check if they are socially anxious or their reserve nature is just what they actually want because sometimes, we ourselves don’t understand if something can pose a hinderance in our way to lead a satisfactory life. We will understand this now with the help of possible causes of social anxiety.

These causes can be related to any time in our life from the time we were born till present, like –

Children who experience teasing, bullying, rejection, humiliation, physical or emotional abuse, trauma; or who have seen family conflicts, domestic violence, divorce of parents, are more prone to develop this anxiety. Even if a pregnant woman is exposed to high level of stress, then baby may develop social anxiety when grows up. This can be even at the time we don’t remember consciously in adulthood, but the impact stays in our subconscious mind and gets into our personality.

So many times, we feel that it is just our choice to stay alone, but actually, we feel like that due to an impact our subconscious mind is carrying from the time what we don’t remember consciously. And when we take the clients to the deepest relaxation state of mind where they can access their subconscious mind, they recall those scenes, understand the impact, reframe the beliefs any unpleasant event has got on them and achieve a completely transformed personality. That’s the only way they can get over permanently. Explaining to only conscious mind will be just like mopping the floor again and again when there is a leakage in pipeline. And working with subconscious mind is like repairing the point of leakage to have everlasting solution.

So social anxiety is nothing but an intense fear of rejection and being judged, which our subconscious mind has acquired from any unpleasant event happened anytime in past. And the good news is, we can reframe our subconscious mind and get over that fear forever. Without removing the root cause from subconscious, doesn’t matter how much and how many times we try, we will always keep on feeling it because it is nothing what we are intentionally feeling, but it comes automatically from inside. And what comes automatically from inside, is all controlled by our subconscious mind.

So if you can relate to it, find your root cause today, reframe the beliefs in your subconscious mind and achieve phenomenal personality transformation.

You know, I have spent many years of my life and Corporate Finance career with Social Anxiety and I didn’t even know there is solution to it, until I came across this powerful therapy technique called Rapid Transformational Therapy. And the people who know me, they noticed a big change in my personality after that and I got a very fast growth in my career. That’s why, I can totally relate to the people who are having this issue, but living with it silently.

So get in touch with me either through my website, email or a Direct Message and we can discuss more about it.

Thank You. Take Care.