If you have social anxiety, do you need to seek help, or can you deal with it on your own?
95962
It would depend on how bad the case was. I would go to the doctor for it, because there is medicine they will prescribe you for it.
451208
Sounds like you might need medication for both. Certainly the anxiety. Medication in combination with individual/group therapy could be beneficial to you.
114362
we need to share our problems with others because we need to "let it all out". they dont necessarily have to be your friends to share your problems with, anyone who is willing to talk to you and give you some advice will help you ease up on your problems. sharing your problems with others will help you feel better because if you keep everything inside, it won't go away and most likely get worse.
394033
You didn't give enough information about yourself but you may be suffering from "social anxiety disorder". Look it up on the internet and if the symptoms fit your description, there are medications that can help. I've had a lot of success with and prescribe a beta blocker called "propranolol". I tell my patients to take it before they give a speech or engage in social events. The medication helps but the real treatment is psychotherapy...
567820
You have a phobia and should seek professional help.  There are many things in today's world that will help you deal with this.  But it all starts by seeking professional help
210720
yes it is true,   definitely consult a psychologist / psychiatrist, get diagnosed  with anxiety  disorder,  keep seeing a therapist, to document   your  continuing  treatment,  keep a  log   consisting of how your anxiety disorder affects your daily life not just at work ,  everywhere....consult a disability lawyer ( your gonna need one) and apply for disability.
896776
I have 3 children by myself,I have severe depression due to the death of my daughter and 20 years of domestic violence [I don't have that anymore]\nMy youngest is 1 and I get up in the night with her.\nI'm also learning to drive,studying law,decorating my house which I just moved into and selling on ebay in my spare time.\nI have no parents or close help.\nYou have to just get on with it,everyone else does.\nI'd love to be able to go on the sick,but I ain't got time to.\nIt's called being a grown up,everyone has anxiety,gets tired and stressed but the difference is most of us don't have time to even get to the doctors let alone moan about it all.\nGet tough.\n\nbtw I did sort myself out,I had 6 months of counselling,and anxiety can be part of depression.\nThe doctor can't cure your ignorance or self pity though.\n\nAnd if you are struggling that much why post a question about wether or not should you have another baby ???
563278
Counselling would also be of benefit to you. A therapist will help you to figure out what thought patterns or other triggers cause the anxiety in your life and provide you with the necessary mental tools to combat that anxiety.\n\nIt's a longterm treatment, but what you can apply those techniques you learn in therapy to all of your life for the rest of your life.\n\nOr find a support group. Contact your local Alliance for the Mentally Ill office. They are a wonderful resourse.\n\nwww.nami.org
234624
Self-help\n\nIf you are naturally shy, you may find it helpful to join a self-confidence or assertive course at an Adult Education Centre. Relaxation exercises may help you feel generally less anxious - you can get details of these from many GP surgeries.\nPsychological treatments\n\nSocial Skills Training: This helps to make people feel more relaxed and confident in company. It does this by teaching some of the simple social skills that we tend to take for granted, like how to start a conversation with a stranger. There is a lot of practice with other people and so-called 'feedback' - people watch themselves practising on video to get an idea of what they are doing and how they appear to other people.\n\nExposure Therapy: This involves helping a person to relax while in the situation that they find frightening. It can be done in stages, each time making the situation a little more intense and frightening. Another way is called 'flooding'. The patient is first taught how to relax in a frightening situation and is then put into a situation that would normally worry them, such as a crowded room. They are then helped to relax and wait for their anxiety to disappear, which it does after a while.\n\nCognitive Behavioural Therapy: We can often make ourselves anxious by the way that we think about things. This treatment helps people change the way that they think about themselves and other people. Take the situation when a conversation dries up. Someone with a social phobia will tend to think that it is their fault, and so will start to feel anxious. In Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, the therapist will remind them that it is just as likely that the other person has run out of things to say, a much more realistic and less worrying way of thinking about the situation. \n[Top of page]\nDrug treatments\n\nBeta-Blockers: These drugs are usually used to treat high blood pressure. In low doses, they control the physical shaking of anxiety - which can be a symptom of the social phobia - and can be taken shortly before meeting people or before speaking in public.\n\nAnti-depressants: A particular type, the so-called 'Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors' (MAOIs), have been found to help, and sometimes to stop the anxiety and panics, although it often takes a few weeks for the treatment to work. There are drawbacks though. They tend to lower the blood pressure, which can make people feel faint. Some foods, such as cheese and yeast extract, may produce dangerous reactions with these drugs, so people using MAOIs have to follow a special diet which leaves out these foods. Some cough medicines that can be bought at the chemist can produce similar reactions to these foods.\n\nThere are now some new MAOI drugs called RIMAs (Reversible Inhibitors of Monoamine oxidase - A). These don't seem to produce the above reactions and so the user can eat what he or she likes. Other types of traditional anti-depressants don't seem to work very well in social phobia.\n\nMore recently developed anti-depressants (known as SSRIs - Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors) have been found to be helpful in social phobia, but may sometimes cause headaches and dizziness in the first few weeks. You can eat what you like if you are taking these drugs.\n\nTranquillisers: Drugs like Valium were used in the past to treat all sorts of anxiety. We now know that they are addictive and that they do not help in the long run. They should usually not be used to treat people with a social phobia.
581569
He can help a lot, the fact of being there with his friend that helps a lot, see people with social ANxiety nedd to feel secure, need to see friendly faces,so my advise would be to take that person with this anxiety and introduce him to knew people only one a a time not so many people together, plus he must see a couselour he knows better how to talk and explain cause he has the experience! Good Luck!
450799
You may feel that you are compleatly alone in your anxiety, but you really are not!  It actually gave me chills to read your question... It was an exact picture of me a few years ago.  My attcks got so bad that I had to leave a nice job at the radio station I was working at. I got to the point that I could not even get into a car.  I spent most of my time in my bedroom basically afraid to go out for fear that something else bad would happen to me.  I finally got to the point where I was going to end my own life.  Well, Oviously, I did not do it!  The next day I made an appointment with a theripist and reached out for help.  I would have never seen myself sitting on the "shrinks couch" bearing my dark inner thoughts, but there I was... And I am glad I did.  I learned that my attacks were being triggered by Post Traumatic Stress.  I had been in a terrible auto accident a number of years ago, but I fully recovered from my injuries, and never gave it another thought.  But apperently the memories of the accident lingered in the deep recesses of my mind, and would come back to me every once and a while in the form of a pannic attack.  It took me some time in theropy to actually see that not everything in my life was negitive.  I learned to look at the positive side of every sitation, instead of sitting back and waiting for the worst to happen.  I was also given Zoloft to help with lingering depression.  It has helped, sure I still get "down" from time to time, but nothing compaired to how things used to be.  It all takes time, and you have to be willing to compleatly change your way of thinking.  If you ever have any other questions about this situation, you can feel free to email me at jam961@yahoo.com  I am not a theripist, but I have been exactly where you are now, and I was able to fight back... If I could do it, I just know you can too!  Just stay strong!
703079
Somethning does I am sure. When in a terrible situation and your looking for external help silently, do you get it? I do many types, unmanifested by self anyway. However I have only seen it in cases I just can't handle myself. Nothing small and stupid.
683088
Out of curiousity, what kind of anxiety to do experience in these situations? The scenarios you mentioned all seem like ones in which help or escape is difficult: are you worried about being 'escape-less', or are you worried that you will have a panic attack or health problems in such situations and are limited in getting help or looking foolish?\n\nIf it is the former, it sounds like a form of classic phobia, perhaps a combo of claustrophobia or agoraphobia...\n\nAlternatively, if you are worried about panic symptoms, you may have panic disorder, with agoraphobia...\n\nIf your anxiety as associted with a stimulus (i.e. when driving a car, on an escalator', it is unlikely to be a generalised anxiety disorder, as this implies that anxiety develops without a known source.\n\n\nHere are the diagnostic criteria for phobias and panic disorders\n\nSpecific Phobias:\n\n.......Marked and persistent fear that is excessive or unreasonable, cued by the presence or anticipation of a specific object or situation\n\n.......Exposure to the phobic stimulus almost invariably provokes an immediate anxiety response, which may take the form of a situationally bound or situationally predisposed Panic Attack\n\n.......The person recognizes that the fear is excessive or unreasonable\n\n........The phobic situation(s) is avoided or else is endured with intense anxiety or distress\n\n.......The avoidance, anxious anticipation, or distress in the feared situation(s) interferes significantly with the person’s normal routine, occupational (or academic) functioning, or social activities or relationships, or there is marked distress about having the phobia\n\n\nPanic disorder with agoraphobia\n\no         Anxiety about being in places or situations from which escape might be difficult (or embarrassing) or in which help may not be available in the event of having an unexpected or situationally predisposed Panic Attack or panic-like symptoms.  Agoraphobic fears typically involved characteristic clusters of situations that include being outside the home alone; being in a crowd or standing in a line; being on a bridge; and traveling in a bus, train or automobile.\n          Note: consider the diagnosis of Specific Phobia if   the avoidance is limited to one or only a few specific situations, or Social Phobia if the avoidance is limited to social situations.\n\noThe situations are avoided (e.g., travel is restricted) or else are endured with marked distress or anxiety about having a Panic Attack or panic-like symptoms, or require the presence of a companion. \n\n\nPanic attack is:\n\noA discrete period of intense fear or discomfort, in which four (or more) of the following symptoms developed abruptly and reached a peak within 10 minutes:\n\nPalpitations, pounding heart, accelerated heart rate\nSweating\nTrembling or shaking\nSensations of shortness of breath or smothering\nFeeling of choking\nChest pain or discomfort\nNausea or abdominal distress\nDizzy, unsteady, lightheaded, faint\nDerealisations (unreality) or depersonalization (being detached from oneself)\nFear or losing control or going crazy\nFear of dying\nparesthesias (numbing or tingling sensations)\nchills or hot flushes\n\nDistinguishing between panic and anxiety: panic attack symptoms develop abruptly and reach peak intensity within 10 minutes, rarely last more than an hour. Periods of anxiety, by contrast, are not as abrupt, intense, and are more long-lasting. \n\n\n\nHope that helps!
904149
Yes, there are medications and many different types of therapy.  I'm sorry for what you went through.  I can only imagine what it must have been like with the lack of social grace and kindness of most adolescents.  That you make it on stage at all is quite remarkable with the level of anxiety you are experiencing.  And the meds available are far better at reducing anxiety than alcohol so maybe you can give that up.  Start with your family doc or a psychiatrist or even a therapist (many people overcome this without any meds at all.)  Best of luck.
945755
Not wanting to talk about it is also symptomatic of depression.  Yes, you should get some help.  Talking to your doctor is a good starting place.  A good friend or family member would help, too, but sometimes it's easier to talk at first to someone that's not so close in your life.  A counselor or therapist actually is a better way to go than your doctor if you want to see if talking it thru will help before trying meds.  Keep in mind that all people experience depression at some point in their lives.  If you're questioning, then it's probably at or beyond the point where help is what you need.  It's a matter of how bad it is and how long it goes on.  Sometimes meds are necessary no matter how much talk therapy you do, so if you do choose a therapist and your symptoms persist, get medical assistance as well.  Btw, at some point you need to let your g/f in on what's going on with you if for no other reason than communication is essential for a healthy relationship.  Hang in there.  It does get better if you get beyond your reluctance to talk and do seek help.
750375
GOD apparently lol i think not : P seek help from the person or persons you trust the most...maybe they can help you find a way to help yourself
383759
I think you need to learn how to be with yourself for a while. I understand how lonely it can feel, but if you can't learn to deal with yourself, how you can expect you deal with others.\n\nLove yourself, then you can know what it means to love others.\n\nYou can't always expect to have someone else always be there for you. Your always going to end up alone anyway, so its better to get used to it.