What is social anxiety?
There are many hypnotherapy (and psychotherapy) solutions for social anxiety. Social anxiety is one of the most common mental disorders, but the good thing is that there are ways to overcome it. It is more than shyness. It is fear of being judged by others and is often accompanied by shame and embarrassment.
Public speaking or walking into a room full of strangers can be quite daunting for all of us. But, with social anxiety, it can affect daily life and relationships. It can lead to you avoiding social situations and events altogether, which can result in isolation, paranoia, low self-esteem and loneliness.
What does social anxiety look like?
- Cancelling plans even if you were looking forward to going out
- Fear of being judged by others
- Becoming very stressed prior to social situations
- Overthinking the social events beforehand
- Feeling isolated
- Feeling lonely
- Excessively worrying how you came across
- Avoiding social interactions all together
- Worrying you will embarrass yourself or say something wrong
- Losing sleep worrying about social situations
- Nervous and sweating
- Expecting people to view you negatively.
Hypnotherapy solutions for social anxiety
Hypnotherapy is a great tool for combating social anxiety because it opens up a communication pathway between the conscious and the unconscious. The brain is incredible because its function is to protect you, but the trick is to teach your brain when it needs to protect you and when you are in fact okay. For instance, a smoke alarm is there to protect you in the event of a fire. But, it becomes problematic if the smoke alarm keeps going off from a boiled kettle or pot and you have to keep re-setting it. Hypnotherapy teaches your unconscious when it is okay to react and when it is not okay.
Further information about Inner Resolve hypnotherapy can be found here.
There are also a number of psychotherapy solutions for social anxiety. One of my favourite psychotherapeutic tools for helping with social anxiety is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Gestalt therapy. CBT is a great practical exercise which allows you to think about your automatic thoughts, consider what evidence backs up those thought and how you can change those thoughts to reflect the reality of the situation. Gestalt therapy gives you an opportunity to ‘act’ out your thoughts, feeling and emotions from an 3rd person perspective.
Further information about Inner Resolve hypno-psychotherapy can be found here