Dealing With The Physical Symptoms of Social Anxiety

For many people who suffer from social anxiety disorder

, it wouldn't be all that bad if only they could overcome the sudden physical sensations of social anxiety that appear at the worst moments possible. For some people this is blushing. For others, it's shaking when signing a check in public. For some, it's being unable to pee when standing at a urinal in a public restroom. Still others may experience a shaking voice when speaking, or even difficulty breathing when asked to say something to a group of people.

Your symptom may be different from any of these, as people with social anxiety disorder have manifestations of physical symptoms in all sorts of different ways. The only root cause tying all of these different symptoms together is the fear of exposure (someone noticing these symptoms) and the body's learned physical stress response to that psychological stress.

At the root of the fear of exposure is an exaggerated shame response. You may not like the word shame, but let me explain a few things that you will find extremely helpful if you've never conceptualized your social anxiety symptoms as having anything to do with shame. For a person with social anxiety disorder, early life experiences of shame are much more potent than they are for other people. The experience of even a single situation in which intense shame was experienced can lead to some of the same long-lasting brain reactions that have been associated with severe, life-threatening trauma. While people who were not born with a socially anxious temperament do not have this level of traumatic reaction to shame, someone with a sensitive temperament (due to their genetic predisposition) may develop a heightened sense of danger when ever faced with situations that involve the possibility of becoming ashamed again.

Now think about when your social anxiety symptoms surface. It's always when someone is watching. That's because the risk for being shamed is nonexistent outside of the social context. But the shame issue goes farther than that. Many of the physical symptoms of social anxiety appear much later in life, when we are old enough to reflect on the potential social consequences of a strong fear response or shame response in front of others. Once the thought, "Oh no, not now!" pops up in your mind, you have a nearly permanent link between that set of circumstances and the fear of your social anxiety symptom appearing.

Your mind begins to move from the original stress response (such as blushing, or shaking) to a much more powerful set of stress responses (such as automatic blushing at the thought of blushing, or experiencing a pounding heart that nearly takes your breath away).

That's why you may have noticed that your social anxiety symptoms are stronger when you are being observed by certain people. While no hard and fast rule applies, the tendency is for your fear of an anxious response to be stronger in situations where the consequences would be worse. So the larger the group of people observing you, the stronger the symptoms become. If it's a boss who has the ability to promote you or fire you, the symptoms are more likely. If it's someone you would like to develop a long term relationship with, the symptoms are likely to be stronger here as well.

There is a solution to this problem, but it's not simple. Getting the brain to unlock from its singular focus on feared physiological reactions is not going to be accomplished simply by trying to suppress thoughts about your fears. That's not how our brain works. If you are serious about overcoming the physical symptoms of social anxiety, download the "Social Anxiety Secrets" manual you will find to the top right side of this web page under the heading, "Recommended."

Dealing With The Physical Symptoms of Social Anxiety

By: Eddie Smith

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