Overcome Shyness and Social Anxiety

Contrary to popular belief, people who experience social anxiety are not people who suffer from a lack of self-esteem or who have not learned how to socialize. The difficulties are in fact rooted in a genetic predisposition. However, the secret of overcoming shyness and social anxiety are rooted in developing a different way of thinking about social situations.

Social anxiety develops over time owing to a hyper sensitivity to how other people perceive you. A typical example is that person can become aware of a particular symptom (a hand shaking or blushing perhaps) - perhaps exacerbated by someone pointing it out to you. Subsequent social encounters may well be marked by you trying not to exhibit this same symptom again, which only means that they symptom you are trying to avoid gets worse than it was in the first place. Trying not to feel anxious just does not work. In fact quite the opposite, it only makes matters worse.

People who experience shyness and social anxiety tend to anticipate how other people perceive them. Whilst this can be an asset for many people in modifying behaviour and presentation, people who experience social anxiety find that this takes over and cripples their ability to function in social situations.

Beating social anxiety is about re-training your brain to think differently about social situations and how you view them.

Find out more about overcoming shyness and social anxiety.