subject: A Look At The Causes Of Social Anxiety Disorders [print this page] Whether one is dealing with a generalized anxiety disorder or with very specific types of phobias, there's one difficulty that plagues doctors and researchers alike, and that is that nobody can actually pinpoint one particular cause of social anxiety. In some cases, it may be clear that substance abuse has been the trigger, while in others there may be evidence of either a genetic or a cultural factor. But while some causes might be suggested with a fair degree of confidence, everything has to be judged on a case-by-case basis.
The genetic cause of social anxiety may not be a cause at all. This is because it's possible that children learn from a parent's own anxiety disorders and social isolation, with some of them adopting the same view of the world. And yet there are also cases of twins raised separately; if one twin ends up with a social anxiety disorder, the other twin has a much higher likelihood than average for developing a similar disorder. So while some kind of "family" connection is seen, nobody has quite pinned down what role genetics actually play.
The place where social and cultural influences have definitely been shown to be a partial cause for social anxiety is in the realm of trauma. If the person, especially as a child, had some humiliating public experience, this could trigger a traumatic response that magnifies itself over the years. Often the phobia then becomes associated with that particular type of event going on into the future. So this sort of trauma tends to lend itself to specific phobias like pubic speaking, rather than to a more generalized type of anxiety disorder.
Brain chemistry also appears to play some role as a cause of social anxiety, stemming either from a pre-existing inherent imbalance in the body's chemistry or from a person's substance abuse.
What all of this indicates is that it's almost impossible to point to one specific "cause" of an anxiety disorder. There may be several factors, all of which need to be taken into account for proper diagnosis and treatment.
