Social Anxiety Problems?

A lot of people don’t realize they struggle with social anxiety. Common internal monologues tend to go something like, “Did I talk too much?”,”Did I say that right?”, “Did I offend them?” We may even be unconsciously noticing peoples mannerisms or facial expressions and have negative thoughts. We may interpret these by thinking that we automatically did something stupid when really they could have been picking lettuce out of their teeth after lunch.

We get into overthinking and incurring so much social anxiety, panic and stress. This has the effect of disconnecting us from ourselves and others. One of the main limiting beliefs associated with this type of thinking is feeling incapable.

If only we could carry on this conversation or we would be interesting or they would think we were fun. What happens is we feel incapable and is causes us to withdraw and avoid the very social interaction that could allow us to eventually feel capable, diminishing our social skills. Learn about different types of anxiety here.

Another belief we can have is “I am vulnerable”. Feeling exposed and overthinking things is uncomfortable so we will often try to protect ourselves. Asking too many details about events or trying to manage situations to avoid interactions that will make us feel this way. At times simply feeling not good enough or masking our true feelings in effort to control the way we think others will think of us.