Whats the best way to get rid of SOCIAL ANXIETY?
437936
Hi Pablo, I too suffer from social anxiety.Believe me I understand your frustration and sadness about it. Ok well, firstly I have to tell you that as a result in doing drugs -you have created an imbalance in your brain. I know this cos i did drugs for years to hide from my problems. This rapidly reduced the seratonin in my brain. You need seratonin to feel happiness. Anyway, the point of telling you that, is that you may need to take a short dose of seratonin tablets. Lexapro is especially used for panic disorders and anxiety.(ive started it myself recently and it is working) I didnt agree with tablets either for the same reason as yourself, but the point is, the reason youre feeling like this is because of a chemical imbalance.\nSome things that will help you in the mean time are: You have to cut out coffee and sugary foods from your diet. Cut down on alcohol also. This is just for a little while. These things actually make you feel more anxious.\nIf you are feeling particularly anxious, the best thing to do is go for a power walk. Exercise really helps get rid of that anxious feeling.\nYou need to go to a cognitive therapist then, to help you find out why you feel like this in social situations.You know,get to the root of the problem.The cognitive therapist will tell you how to control your anxiety and what triggers this etc.\nThen you need to join a group of people that are going through the same thing as yourself. It will make it easier to go to group therapy ( your cog.therapist will probably refer you later on)until you feel comfortable in social situations.\nI know its daunting..but youve made the first positive step by asking for help. It is a long road, but you will make it through. You are not alone in feeling like this.\nPlease get help as soon as you can because, it can get worse over time. I made the mistake of thinking that i could get over it myself, but over 5 yrs it got progressively worse. \nI wish you all the luck in the world. Feel free to pm me as i am going through the daily battle of social anxiety myself.\nCheck out the website below to give you an idea that others feel as you do
478141
It sounds like you may have some self-esteem issues as well as social anxiety.  Maybe you need to request to a therapist that you focus on your self-esteem and assertiveness and by focusing more on that, I'm sure you can overcome your social anxiety without even having to resort to medications.
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I aggree. Real friends are not just for going for a walk.\nFirst try to identify that this depression is not so serious that maybe need pharmacological treatment.\nHow will you identify?\nThe best you can do is to visit a doctor and describe what you feel. If not, there are several sites in the internet describing the symptoms of the disease. Usually the pharmaceutical companies selling this category of drugs, have also this kind of questions in their site.\nIf the result is negative, try some simple tips, like the ones described by me in a previous question, entitled:\nIs there any medicine for removing social anxiety?\n\nAll the best for you and your loved ones\n\nKaterina
458296
try a love note and flowers.  sorry; i don't know a cure for shyness.  I used to be, but it's been fading recently.  Just try diving in and doing it.  If you start hesitating, just do it without thinking (worked about 50% of the time for me)
73746
Hi there,\n\nHere are a couple of websites that give you some tips on how to overcome shyness: \n\nhttp://www.romanceclass.com/miscr/howto/shyness/index.asp\nhttp://www.shakeyourshyness.com/
1079186
First, make the decision that you are not going to be shy.  Believing that you are shy, or somehow not as worthy as others around you will make you continue to be shy.\n\nSecond, start slowly, by giving yourself an assignment.  Try making small talk to one new person.  Practice at home when you are alone, so you have some things ready to say.\n\nThird, try finding an activity that interests you, so you will meet people with the same interest.  Then you have a topic to start talking about.\n\nThat is how I overcame my shyness.  (It also helped when I turned forty and stopped caring what other people thought about me!)
1067519
Smile at people and say hi. Take walks in your neighborhood so that you can see new people. Hold your head high enough for people to see your face, but not so high that they think you're into yourself. Good Luck! :)
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practice and know what you are going to say. The more confidentand comfortable you are, the easier it is to speak in public. \n\nremember almost everybody - even the smoothest of speakers has some anxiety when talking in public - it is only natural.
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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.
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Eat a little something about an hour before your presentation - you don't want to pass out from low blood sugar due to your anxiety first of all. \n\nSecond, practice some breathing and relaxing exercises before your speech. Take a slow deep breath in with the nose, slow exhale from the mouth. Then do several mouth exercises - say the vowels A,E,I,O,U with very exaggerated facial muscle use - stretching each one as far as you can while saying them out loud. This will relax the facial muscles that you will use to speak as well as smile.\n\nForcing a smile, even when you don't feel it on the inside, really can improve your mood. \n\nDon't look directly at the people you are speaking to. Look just above their heads - they will not realize you are not actually looking at them.\n\nTry to relax. People are just people. To put it bluntly, we all still sit on the toilet, barf when we're sick, blow boogers out of our noses, do stupid things, have problems at home, etc. etc. etc. Don't ever put anyone on a pedestal, no matter who they are - it's easier to speak to people when you realize they are not above you.
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Talk to people.  If you're waiting for courage to come you'll be waiting a while.  The way it works is, you just do the scary thing and you're scared the whole time.  Then the next time you do it's not so bad, the time after that less so, until you're not scared anymore.\n\nAlso, having something to talk about helps, so see if you can find people who are into the same things as you so there aren't quite so many awkward pauses in the conversation.
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Hi, Shyness was my problem for a long time--what got me over it actually was going to law school--its not a place for a shy person.  Even college afforded me anonymity and an ability to get by without "being noticed."  My loss too.\n\nI'm not saying go to law school to cure your situation, but you have to do something extremely hard--just keep putting yourself out there.  Don't try too hard, don't act desperate, because people sense that.  You just have to force yourself into social situations and be yourself.  The rest will come by itself.  IF you have a friend who is at ease in social situations, play second banana to that friend for awhile....that person will be a magnet for others, eventually you will make friends who will be accepting of and responsive to your views and thoughts. \n\nOther possibilities--take a class that requires an oral presentation, take a public speaking class.  Take a class that requires collaboration with others, that will assure that you mix with people and that you have to share your views--since they took the class too, they will be open to you and just as vulnerable as you.\n\nThe key is to keep trying, you have to overcome it at each step, the nerves of entering a room full of people, the stress of trying feel and look natural when nobody seems to be paying attention, learning the art of knowing how to interject with a comment at the right time....etc...its stressful no doubt and not easy....but like most things it gets easier with practice.
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Tips For "Shaking Your Shyness"\n\n1.Conversation topics-never leave home without them.\n2.Let people know you're shy.\n3.Reward effort not outcome!\n4.Make things easy for the other person.\n5.Pick one social skill to practice at a time\n6.Take classes \n\nConversation Topics-never leave home without them.    Good conversationalists are rarely at a loss for words because: 1) they do so many things and go so many places that they have lots to talk about or 2) they prepare.  Good conversationalists never leave home without something to say to the people they think they'll be seeing that day.  If they're going to a party, they brush up on topics of interest to the people they know will be attending.  Before returning to work on a Monday, they think about the activities their colleagues had planned for the weekend.  They brush up on current events, the weather and anything else that might be the small-talk they need to get a conversation going or to keep it going.  Never leave home without at least a half-dozen things to talk about.\n\n   2.\n\n      Let people know you're shy.  This is a controversial subject.  Some people recommend that you never tell people you're shy, because people will use that information to label you.  Then again, if you avoid people, look down instead of making eye contact, stammer and stutter or turn three shades of purple when you're uncomfortable in social situations, people are going to draw conclusions of their own and odds are they'll be less favorably impressed with you than if you just tell it like it is---that you're nervous or feeling shy.\n\n      I think the problem arises because there are two ways to be shy---the obvious way and the not so obvious way.  The obvious way to be shy is to blush, tremble, twitch or otherwise physically manifest your shyness.  The not so obvious way is to avoid eye contact with people, not have much to say or decline offers from others you'd like to accept, but that are too far outside of your comfort zone for you to feel comfortable attending. \n\n   3.\n\n      Reward effort not outcome!   Memorize this one, because it's absolutely critical for conquering your shyness---or anything else you want to master, for that matter.  The only thing we can control in our life is our self---and even that can be a stretch sometimes.  We can't control other people and we certainly can't control how other people react to us and the things we do.  Nevertheless, most of us define our successes and failures by the way other people relate to us.  If we smile and they smile back, well good.  But if we smile and they don't smile too, we see it as a failure.  WRONG!!!   You won't get very far that way. \n\nIn fact, at least  in my book, what you did was a smashing success.  You tried.  You made an effort and that's all you can be responsible for.  You can't control how other people respond to you.  Sure, you can look back on your effort and speculate about things you can do to improve your performance next time, but at that very moment--at the precise time that you smiled, you made an effort and it's your effort that needs to be rewarded.\n\n   4.\n\n      Make things easy for the other person.  This is a tuff one, because as shy people, most of us are too busy worrying about ourselves---about how we look, what we say and whether other people will like us--- to stop and think about what we can do for other people.  But really, that's what being social is about---the other person, not us.  Dale Carnegie knew that.  He built a career on teaching people how to make other people feel good.  In his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, he lists principle after principle for putting people at ease and helping them feel special.   \n\n5.Pick one social skill to practice at a time.  You don't need to become a social butterfly overnight--and it's unlikely you could if you tried.  What you can do
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Sounds like you might need to get some type of anti anxiety prescription meds.  Talk to your doctor about options and try to get something that isn't going to be a sedative.  Anti depressants seemed to work well for me without knocking me out cold.  Also, smoking pot might help but it is said that it can cause more anxiety in some people.  It did for me with my social anxiety.
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relax and be urself. u will feel less shy later
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Talk about anything and everything to Everyone you come across, small talk or whatever, they are just like you(human). Most people are sociable and will talk back and make conversation, if they don't, then its their problem. Practice. Keep Trying. good luck.\n\nI Agree With Superscribe below me. " The book How to win friends and influence people, by Dale Carnegie, would be a good start." It's a Really Great Book.
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Get out and meet some new people. Take a class, join a club, try a new hobby, join a gym, etc...\nAnything to help take your mind off your troubles.