Stop Anxiety from Stopping You: The Breakthrough Program For Conquering Panic and Social Anxiety(16)

Bob’s story is not uncommon. If you have ever been the object of teasing or bullying as a child, the ill effects can often stay with you into adulthood. Kids can be outright brutal in their teasing. In part, this is due to the fact that their ability for empathy is still developing. Adults tend to be much more compassionate and tolerant of differences. If this is an issue for you, please consider how you would respond if someone else made a mistake in public. Would you try to say something to highlight their embarrassment or mistake, or would you respond with compassion? If you answered that you would respond with compassion, isn’t it likely that others would respond in kind?



Thinking Errors

If you struggle with social anxiety, you are probably making some or most of the following thinking errors. Some of these thinking errors are similar to the panic thinking errors that we went through earlier, and you will notice some overlap and similarities.



? Personalizing

Problem: Assuming that someone’s negative behavior is in direct response to you.



Solution: Other people’s behavior usually has a lot to do with them; who they are, what is happening in their life, how much sleep they got the night before, and so on.



? Mindreading

Problem: Assuming you know what someone is going to think about you.



Solution: We do not know what someone else is thinking; it is better to focus on being kind in our thoughts towards ourselves.



? Labeling

Problem: You refer to yourself with names, like “I am a loser,” or “I am boring,” or “I am just not good at being social.”



Solution: We know that labeling is going to make you feel lousy and increase your anxiety. You are better off practicing compassionate self-talk.



? All-or-Nothing Thinking

Problem: Looking at things in categorical or diametrically opposed terms. For example, “I am either anxious or everything is fine.” “I am either well regarded or people think I am a social failure.”



Solution: Most situations in life are dimensional. Anxiety is something that runs from mild to medium to high in level. Embarrassment can also run mild to medium to high. When you notice that you are focusing on extremes, try to remind yourself to look for a middle ground.



? Fortune Telling

Problem: Assuming you will know how the situation will turn out. “I should skip the party because I will be miserable and have a terrible time,” or “I had better come up with an excuse not to do that presentation, because if I do it, everyone will know how incompetent I am.”



Solution: Keep your focus on the situation at hand, by looking at the present moment and what you need to be doing right now.



? Discounting the Positive

Problem: You focus only on the negative aspects of the situation, and ignore or minimize what went well.



Solution: Anxiety will produce the negative feelings and thoughts automatically. All you need to do is to supplement the positives to balance out the picture.



? Focusing on the Negative

Problem: You focus only on the negative aspects of the experience and keep replaying them in your mind (also called “the postmortem”), or keep trying to rewrite a negative event in the past.



Solution: Instead, look at what is going well or what went well.



? Catastrophizing

Problem: You focus on the worst possible outcome when you take the initial scenario through a series of “what if ” questions.



Solution: Focus on the present moment and the situation you have to deal with at this moment. Go back to the original problem, rather than solving hypothetical ones.



? Good Things Happen to Good People

Problem: You assume that by acting flawlessly in social situations you are assured of social success and can avoid having any social mishaps or embarrassment. You adopt an attitude of politeness even when it does not benefit you.



Solution: There is not always a way to be “nice” or “polite.” Sometimes you have to be assertive and set limits, address an uncomfortable issue, or simply walk away. There are no perfect social interactions, and even when a situation does not go flawlessly, people usually move on quickly.



Social Anxiety Beliefs

Please look over the following social anxiety beliefs to see if they apply to you to any degree.



1. I Am Not Likeable.

Problem: Social anxiety can make us question our very likeability and desirability as a social companion. We may start to wonder if we are simply less likable than other people and therefore have more difficulty in social interactions. This is a common belief, and so it is important to examine.



Solution: Let’s look at some people in the world who had social success and were not very likeable. Adolf Hitler was a great orator as well as an atrocious human being who was responsible for mass genocide. Charles Manson was a convicted mass murderer, and he was also charming and very successful socially, and attracted many women. My point is, let’s really take your likeability out of it. In my experience, I have not met a single person with social anxiety who I thought had a “likeability” issue. Let’s just assume that you are likeable. This does not mean that you will be liked by everyone. We cannot control that. Some people simply will not like you, and that is okay. Really, not everyone will or has to like you. This is not the problem you need to solve. You need to be okay with people not liking you some of the time for reasons unknown to you.