"If you are going to buy only one book on social anxiety, this is it. This book that not only compassionately presents various perspectives on social anxiety, but it also offers a vast array of solutions. It turned out to be more of a "self help" book than I expected in more areas than just shyness. The author had experience in social anxiety, so he really hit home with things he expressed. I was able to finally overcome my social anxiety thanks to this book!"
-Drew
Throughout my life, I have spent hundreds of hours listening to tapes and reading books on social anxiety and personal development. While Ive become very well-read on the subject, I have had limited success in trying to program my sub-conscience with positive self-talk. (more…)
My brain processed social input very fast - too fast, in fact. It did this in a very efficient and predictable manner - so quickly that I had little chance to think about it. The most efficient way to deal with what it thought was routineĀ information, was to process it through the express line. It had all the information it needed from past experiences to efficiently process things with little input on my part. (more…)
If you think about the amount of input we receive on a daily basis, it is truly fortunate that we have our automatic systems to deal with most of it - otherwise, there is no way that we could consciously handle the sheer volume. I would say that, for the most part, these systems handle things pretty well for me. They keep me safe and, generally, the instant decisions work well. Well, that is for everything except social input. (more…)
Now that I had peeled back the layers and uncovered the source of my social anxiety and poor self-esteem, I had to determine the best way to interrupt the negative cycle that had developed over the years. Attacking it head-on seemed pointless - it was too powerful and had way too much momentum. (more…)
I have been writing about my social anxiety for a while now. Ive talked about the different layers involved and how it seems that there is no end to it - just one level after the other.
I decided that confidence and self-esteem would be one entire section of my new foundation. Then I discovered that there were automatic thoughts in an underlying layer that were controlling my life and sabotaging my efforts. Was there another level lurking in the background - something below automatic thoughts? (more…)
I truly believe that there is some sort of programming hard-wired into every living thing on the planet. You can observe this by watching any mother in the wild care for her young. Even domestic pets show traits that just seem to be there. (more…)
Automatic thoughts and responses control much of our daily routine. We trust that they are accurate and we normally let them do their thing without question. However, in my case, the auto-responses/thoughts that looked after my social interaction were not right and far from normal. (more…)
I was comfortable in my routine - a little too comfortable, actually. The problem was that I also felt like there was something horribly wrong with me. My brain/subconscious was completely comfortable in the rut that it had been in for years. It was a familiar rut and the brain had all the various auto-responses for any given situation - thousands. Most of them served me well, but when it came to my social anxiety problem, well, I think I was being short-changed. Something was not right - not accurate. (more…)
I was determined to get to the root causes of my social anxiety. However, just when I thought I had broken things down to the most basic level, I would discover a few more under that. Where would it end? (more…)
Exposure therapy never really worked for me. I mean, it makes sense that the more you do something, the better you should get at it, however, I always felt that there was something missing. (more…)
