Ever dreamed of a world in which you are no longer socially anxious?
I often do. I often imagine what my life would be like had I never been a social anxious person. Where I was confident and outgoing.
When I was younger I often found myself searching for remedies online, looking for quick fixes where I would wake up the next day and be a completely different person…
So lets remind ourselves what is social anxiety?
‘Social anxiety disorder is a chronic mental health condition characterised by ongoing feelings of intense, persistent fear caused by the anticipation of, or participation in, social situations’ (Yale Medicine)
What causes social anxiety?
A combination of genetic and environmental factors cause social anxiety. For example, toddlers who are more shy are more likely to develop social anxiety disorder. Also, overprotective and hypercritical parenting is associated with social anxiety. (The New England Journal of Medicine)
What do we mean by ‘cure’
The simplest definition of cure is ‘to make a person or an animal healthy again after an illness’ (Oxford Dictionary)
Curing social anxiety would mean completely purging ourselves from any anxiety in social situations. But social anxiety is a natural thing that even the most confident people experience; it is the degree with which myself and others like me experience it which leads it to be diagnosed as a disorder. I do not think removing social anxiety is natural or beneficial to the individual.
Furthermore, in my opinion, the word ‘cure’ has the implication of a fast acting medicine, such as antibiotics used to clear a bacterial infection. In the context of social anxiety, the question, ‘can social anxiety be cured’, suggests that a quick fix is being looked for.
(This is not to condemn anyone for searching it, believe me I have asked Google this question many times!)
I looked for a quick fix for social anxiety when I was 17 all the way to 20; I turned to drugs and alcohol to remove the anxious feelings which I felt. Sometimes it worked and I had a temporary reprieve from neurotic thoughts. But that was all it was; a reprieve. Mostly it was just a way of escaping, ultimately only exacerbating the problem. Injuring my own and others’ lives around me; during this period, I dropped out of university twice and was kicked out by my mum three times because of my behaviour…
So, in my opinion, a cure is not what should be looked for as whilst it is important to imagine what life would look like if you were free from social anxiety, to motivate yourself, looking for a quick fix is not beneficial to recovery as there is no quick fix.
(Furthermore, I do not believe in the SSRIs which I was prescribed almost instantly by my GP. This is my opinion, but before taking SSRIs do some research as they are very addictive, and some studies even suggest there is no difference between the results of a placebo and the actual drug in mitigating anxiety disorders or depression. Link to one here)
So what can social anxiety sufferers do?
Bear with me; I am going on a tangent on an to attempt to explain some of my own ideas that I gathered from Carl Jung! (based on my own very limited understanding).
Carl Jung was a ‘Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, psychologist and pioneering evolutionary theorist who founded the school of analytical psychology’.
He stated that there is a part of the self called the persona.
The persona, according to Jung, is the mediator between the ego and society, designed to make an impression others and conceal the true nature of ourselves.
“the persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society” (Jung)
It is a representation of ourselves in the context of the society around it. We each have multiple personas depending upon the environment in which we are in. For example we may have one persona at work, and one at home.
If the persona is an extension of the ego what is the ego?
It is our own sense of what or who we are, our commander in chief, our centre of consciousness responsible for our own sense of identity throughout our life.
“I understand ego as a complex of ideas which constitutes the centre of my field of consciousness…” (Jung)
Socially anxious people, as you know, obsess over others’ opinions of themselves. According to the information above, we are obsessing over how people perceive our persona; what we offer to the world around us as a representation of ourselves.
Due to hyper-sensitivity and a desperate need to be perceived in a positive light socially anxious individuals (like me) are hyper-vigilant over what the other person is thinks about them. In my case, this leads to me going very quiet because the fear of a negative judgement is so great and to then be conscious of my own quiet, leading me to sometimes desperately say something in order to not seem quiet in cased of a negative judgement. When I was younger I used to lay in bed and fantasize about what phrases I could speak in order to impress others in fictional social situations.
Because of this obsession, the balance between the ego and society within the persona which is presented is so dominated by the society that the persona is totally incongruent with the ego. So when people say to a socially anxious person, ‘others’ opinions do not matter, they really, really do not as they are not really judging us at all.
The absence of sharing our own thoughts, feelings or desires means we are never sharing who we think we are, our ego, with anyone else.
Moreover, this obsession with perceived judgement leads to insecurity, in which our own sense of self is completely tied to how we believe others perceive us. For example, when I was younger, if I felt that someone perceived me badly it would lower my mood and visa-versa. Others judgements were how I defined myself.
This lack of expression of who we think we are and the attachment of our sense of self to other’s perception of ourselves, leads to an undefined sense of self.
Back to the initial question, can social anxiety be cured?
I used to ask myself the same question and now I stop myself from asking it. This is because of the aforementioned reasons; being free of social anxiety is impossible as we all suffer from social anxiety in some degree and a quick fix is impossible as there is nothing that you can do to rapidly erase behaviour patterns that have been carried out for years.
Will social anxiety ever go away? Will I ever experience ‘normal’ levels of social anxiety? I do not know. As we all experience some level of social anxiety, I think it would be hard to know when someone begins to experience ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ levels of anxiety in proportion to their surroundings.
However, do I think that a socially anxious person can lead a life in which they find something in which they excel at, a partner who loves them and friends whom they trust, a life filled with meaning and connection? Yes!
How do I think this can be achieved?
By building up your ego. Which I know is contrary to what you hear on the internet, in which the ego is a negative force.
But without the ego you have no idea who you are, you cannot understand your own place in the world.
As explained previously, a socially anxious person has an undefined sense of self (this is based on what I have experienced). Therefore, by building up your own sense of self your reliance on others’ perceptions as a means of self-evaluation decreases and you rely on your own perceptions of yourself, based on your own morals and ideals, in order to judge who you are.
My goal is not to rid myself of social anxiety – it is to be free from the judgement of others.
What does this mean?
To be so secure in who I am that how I perceive others to judge me has little to no influence on my own sense of who I am, and how I act (I do not think it is possible to be completely free of the judgement of others as it is, again, a natural human worry).
Jung states, “The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”
As somebody who watches lots of self improvement videos (can you tell?!!), watch any David Goggins or Chris Williamson video on confidence and they will tell you to build a locker of evidence, of things you have accomplished.
Importantly, sometimes I fantasize about how people will perceive me after I have accomplished something challenging. Which stems from my own insecurity. It is hard to differentiate whether you are trying to achieve something for your own or for others approval. I think it is important to be conscious of this; making sure you accomplish things for yourself.
When you are socially anxious you lock yourself away, not giving yourself the opportunity to explore or pursue anything. I think it is important to get out and try, even if you fail.
Jung states, “The perpetual hesitation of the neurotic to launch out into life is readily explained by his desire to stand aside so as not to get involved in the dangerous struggle for existence. But anyone who refuses to experience life must suffocate his longing to live – in other words, he must commit partial suicide.”
So develop a sense of who you are. What do you like to do? What actions do you think are morally unjustified? What books do you like? Do you even like reading?…
Try and isolate your own desires from what society tells you you should enjoy. Which is really hard.
Then try and improve at something, achieve something that you can remind yourself, not others, that you accomplished.
Try and engage someone in conversation; it will not go to plan but at least you can walk home with the security that you faced up to the anxiety you experience.
And maybe, just maybe you will be more secure in yourself, less controlled by perceived judgements and better able to face up to any anxieties which come your way.
Hey, thank you for reading, hopefully you can gain some insights with what I have shared.
As much as I am writing this for you to read, I am also very much doing this as a guide to myself. I am aware I am saying this like a bit of a ‘know it all’, as if I have overcome these negative thought patterns. I have not; I still lock myself away and have lots of work to do in this area…
And I am an idiot twenty-two year old boy, so take everything with a grain of salt!
I have done a fair amount of research into Carl Jung but I do not think I have even scratched the surface of what there is to know.
I do not think this is the only way social anxiety can be ‘solved’, their are many other routes. I think this is a very important stage in anyone’s life, and if you suffer from SA it could give you that jump start which starts the ball rolling, a slow but consistent source of momentum.
And If you want to see how my own personal journey with social anxiety is going just click below!
Leave a Reply