Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder

Is normal for most people to feel anxious in some social situations like speaking in public, getting a date, performing, taking a test and many other situation, but when your anxiety and fear is preventing your from doing your daily activities and you have a constant fear of dealing with people then its social anxiety.

Fortunately there are already some proven treatments and therapies to recover from social anxiety. The most common are

• counselling
• psychotherapy
• cognitive behavioral therapy
• medications
• Natural Remedies

All those treatments work in some degree and vary the results on each person. For example medications can be very effective to relieve some of the symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress but the results are temporary and can cause side effects.

Natural remedies such as supplements are herbal products dont produce side effects and can be as effective as anti depressants and medications but the main problem is that you will not recover from social anxiety you are just relieving from some of the symptoms in the short term

On the other hand Cognitive Behavioral Therapy which is a type of psychotherapy has proven to be the most effective method to treat people with social anxiety disorder.

There are different possible causes for Social phobia, it could be genetics, unbalance of chemicals in the brain, the environment, negative experiences and some others, but the root of the problem is in your beliefs and negative thoughts.

This Therapy for social anxiety disorder will walk you through a process with the help of a psychotherapist so you can identify your beliefs that are causing you fears in every social situation and then he will help you change those irrational beliefs for positive ones that will make you feel free of worries and fear of people.

The therapies will begin by asking you some questions about your childhood and life experiences that might have trigger your fear of people. He will help you to be less self conscious and accept your self as you are.

In fact one excercise that you can do to experience this process by your self is this:

• The next time you have a social encounter and you feel a lot of anxiety and fear write down exactly what were your feelings, emotions and thoughts.
• Identify those beliefs that you had at that moment that cause you that fear. Were you thinking that the other person was judging your image? were you thinking that the other person dont like you? were you thinking that you are worth less than him? Were you thinking in a past embarrassed situation that he saw you?
• pay close attention to your thoughts, feelings and images that you had, ask your self questions like the ones above and see if your fear is irrational, do you really think the other person is judging your image?

That is a kind of self therapy that you can do to identify the real source of your fears. When you talk with your psychotherapist you can tell him what is your experience on a given situation and he will help you change those negative beliefs.

I encourage you to follow a therapy like Behavioral Thearapy, dont let this pass, you dont want to loss any more opportunities in your life, even if you improve a little bit it can mean a great difference for you.

Another part of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is Exposure Therapy, which means that you should start to gradually expose your self to social situations so you can practice and little by little feel more comfortable.

I want to give you one last recommendation, for some people what increases anxiety a lot when dealing with new people is our lack of communication abilities, you just dont know what to talk about, you dont have anything in common with the other person or you are afraid of being embarrass for making the wrong moves. In this cases taking a course about social communication, physical confidence or communication skills can be very effective and rewarding for the rest of your life, because it will give you the ability and confidence of talking with almost any kind of person.