It is a while since I did my last blog. I am now winding down my counselling practice and devoting more time to writing and voluntary counselling people tramuatised by war or sexual abuse. In the last blog you saw how difficult it was for Jason to attend lectures. I
Social Anxiety is a Huge Obstacle for Third Level Students
Jason, the case study of my book, lost friends due to his fear and avoidance, but resolved to move in with friends from home. He found new excuses to avoid facing the fact that this was now a deep rooted coping mechanism with detrimental results, particularly in attending lectures. As
Social Anxiety can be general or Specific. It is a serious complaint
In the last blog I looked at how to assess the seriousness of you social anxiety. Martin Antony and Richard Swinson in their book, The Shyness & Social Anxiety Workbook, suggest a simple technique for self-assessing the seriousness of your social anxiety, where you can measure on a scale from
Understanding your social anxiety better
There are ways to assess how serious your social fear is and to examine its particular underlying causes. The following list of questions will help to clarify this – Has the fear fettered you and limited your capacity to make friends? Can you list the reality and the details of
Toxic shame is always part of social anxiety.
In the case of social fear the depression and anxiety are often accompanied by toxic shame, which is very often the basis of this condition. Some researchers, however, also theorize that social fear is a social issue rather than a personal one. That is true insofar as people with social
Social anxiety is often accompanied by depression
Social anxiety is often part of a bigger problem. I have found that depression, lack of assertiveness, aggressiveness, worry, addiction and many of the issues listed in Appendix 1, are sometimes comorbid with social fear. In their book, The Essential Handbook of Social Anxiety for Clinicians, Rick Ingram and his
Social anxiety has different components
Gillian Butler correctly sums up the components of social fear as thinking and behaviour, with physical and emotional symptoms. Thinking symptoms include consciousness of other people’s opinion of you, lack of concentration, focusing on yourself and worrying about what might go wrong. Behavioural symptoms might be avoiding social occasions, mumbling,
Negative beliefs drive social anxiety
The negative self-view, mentioned in the previous blog, is also reflected in a number of assumptions that fearful people have about themselves and about social behaviour. In his article, A Cognitive Perspective on Social Phobia, David Clark sees three divisions in such assumptions – unreasonably high standards for social performance,
Particular types of parenting can sow the seeds of social anxiety
Seeing a pattern of pathological issues in the ancestry and wider family is not at all about blaming them or blaming parents, most of whom do the best they can. Nevertheless, we must be realistic, and it can be safely argued that particular types of parenting can unintentionally sow the
DIFFERENTIATING BETWEEN THE GENETIC AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL CAN BE DIFFICULT WHEN TRACING YOUR PSYCHOLOGICAL PATHOLOGIES. We should be aware that people often mistakenly use genetic or hereditary terms without realizing that these more often than not are about our environment i.e. our parenting, school environment, social environment. For example, you
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