My best friend recently encountered something, that is, a boy kept sending messages to my best friend on Douyin , and wanted to date my best friend. The key is that this man is just like Yang Li described, He is so ordinary but extremely confident. I told my best friend that he is a common man, and my best friend said that he is probably not a social cow, right?
I said I’m afraid yes, I particularly admire people like this, people who are born with serious social twitching syndrome. Of course, this is much better than being afraid of society. I am not a bad person, and I am not afraid of society, but I am far from the level of being a social cow. In the book "How to Overcome Social Anxiety", people with social anxiety are taught in detail how to overcome social anxiety.
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Part 1: What are people with social anxiety worried about?
The psychological process of social anxiety can be divided into three consecutive stages:
In the first stage, I feel very abrupt. I don’t want to participate in exchanges with others because I feel that I am stammering in speech, unable to answer fluently, and the views I expound are not new, which seems particularly abrupt when everyone is expressing themselves freely. Therefore, it felt like there was a villain holding a big loudspeaker and shouting: "You can't do it at all. This is too embarrassing."
After feeling the suddenness, it developed into the second psychological stage, convinced that others would see it. The suddenness. I felt that my nervousness and discomfort were all written on my face for everyone to see. This psychology is called spotlight effect , just like when you are performing on stage, a spotlight shines on you, and everyone will see your performance.
will then further develop to the third stage, which is to think that everyone who sees it will criticize you, for example, they will laugh at you for not making any preparations, or think that you are not capable, or even suggest that you will not be allowed to participate in activities in the future.
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After such continuous psychological fermentation, people will hide out of fear of being judged by others. Sometimes it is hiding, and some people will try not to participate in similar activities; sometimes it is hiding, and although they are at the meeting, they try to avoid communicating with others.
Therefore, the essence of social anxiety is the fear of exposure. So what are people afraid of being exposed? The author believes that there are four things that people are most afraid of being exposed:
The first is appearance. They feel that they are too fat, have a strange hairstyle, have a lot of acne on their face, or that today’s clothes don’t look good, etc. The second is personality, such as feeling that one is not humorous enough or confident enough. The third is social skills, such as not being able to say hello when seeing acquaintances, talking about topics that others are not interested in, etc. The fourth is the physiological reaction caused by anxiety, such as blushing and sweating easily when you are too nervous.
When one or more of these situations occur, people will be the first to criticize themselves. The author calls this self-criticizing voice inner judgment.
Intrinsic judgment is sometimes activated before social interaction. For example, some people feel that they are not humorous enough and simply do not communicate with others. In psychology, this is called anticipatory processing. If a person expects processing for a long time, he will not be able to accumulate corresponding experience and will lack the confidence to do it.
Internal judgment also occurs after the fact. After something happens, people review their performance and feel that they performed very badly, and then they shrink back when similar things happen again.
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So where does social anxiety come from? Is it like this from birth, or is it influenced by the environment? Scientists have concluded that it's a bit of both. First, social anxiety does appear to be hereditary. Research data shows that if a parent has social anxiety disorder, the risk of a child having social anxiety disorder will increase by 3 to 5 times. Additionally, social anxiety can be learned.
Many people confuse social anxiety and introversion, thinking that people who choose to be alone are all because of introversion. In fact, introversion and social anxiety are completely different. So how to tell the difference?
You first need to judge whether you feel comfortable when you are alone. If you're an introvert, spending time alone will refresh and recharge your batteries.But for people with social anxiety, spending time alone will just make you feel less anxious. Anxious people actually want to integrate into the group, but they choose to be alone because they are afraid of being exposed.
Another criterion for distinguishing introversion and social anxiety is whether they demand perfection in everything? For people who are introverted but not anxious, they just talk less, but they don't think it's a big deal if they say something wrong or can't answer the right answer when talking to others. But for people with social anxiety, they secretly want everything to appear perfect.
Is social anxiety bad? In fact, from an evolutionary perspective, the benefits of social anxiety outweigh the costs. The source of social anxiety is called social awareness, which is people's ability to assess the emotions, ideas, and intentions of others and respond appropriately.
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Social awareness can bring at least two major benefits to human evolution and development:
The first is that it can make the group more harmonious. Humans are social animals, and social awareness allows us to easily notice other people's emotions, ideas, and intentions, which helps maintain group cohesion.
The second is that it can make individuals feel more secure. Individuals who are unable to detect the feelings of others will naturally be ostracized from the group. In the early days of mankind, being exiled meant certain death. Therefore, in order to avoid being exiled, many people will work hard to make friends and make others like them more. This is an underlying rule for group survival.
Therefore, appropriate social anxiety makes people more sensitive, which is not a bad thing. It will give us some beneficial traits, such as caution, responsibility, empathy, etc. Moderate social anxiety can also make us more aware and considerate. In modern society, these qualities are very necessary. But if we are excessively anxious and even develop into social anxiety disorder, it will make us afraid of doing anything and affect our normal work and life. We need some methods to overcome these anxieties.
Part 2: How to overcome social anxiety?
In Part One, we already knew that social anxiety is a person who sees their true self in a distorted way and accepts this distortion as real. When overcoming social anxiety, first of all, you need to change this distorted way and find a correct way to view yourself. Then, take action and extend the correct approach to all aspects of your life.
To find a correct way of looking at yourself, you must make changes in your thinking model.
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As mentioned earlier, people with social anxiety usually have perfectionist tendencies, so when changing their thinking patterns, there is a general principle, that is, there is no need to pursue perfection in everything, people can exist in an imperfect state .
With such a general principle in mind, we can then address the three psychological processes of social anxiety in a targeted manner and make changes in thinking.
In the first stage of feeling awkward, the method is to correct your inner judgment and stop misdefining yourself. The author introduces two specific tools for transforming thinking.
The first tool is called the substitution method, which is to replace vague fears with clear concepts. You can ask yourself three questions:
The first question, what is the worst outcome?
Second question: How likely is this to happen?
Question 3: How can you deal with it?
When you solve these three problems, you will find that everything seems to be no big deal.
The second tool for changing your thinking, the hug method, also has three steps:
First, you can try to find your own anxiety points from the perspective of spectatorship. You can think of a recent humiliating moment. What you might be thinking is: "I really messed up that report summary. I kept stumbling when I spoke. It was so embarrassing.” From a spectator’s perspective, you need to say to yourself: “My thinking is that I really screwed up that time and it was embarrassing. ”
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After finding the anxiety point, the second step is to talk to yourself with kindness. You can say: Dear, I know you are a little scared when you are doing the report summary, because there are many people and everyone is watching. It will make you nervous, wait for you to try more After a few times, you will get better. This way of speaking is the understanding, love, appreciation and encouragement you give yourself.
The third step of the hug method follows the second step. You have to tell yourself. Human nature is the same. What does it mean? Most people feel nervous when making reports and summarizing in front of others. Few people are born with it. Speaker, if others are in your situation, they will not be able to do well. This is human nature, so others will not criticize you harshly and will understand that you may have such small flaws.
When you change your self-judgment, Next, you need to reduce your self-focus to solve social anxiety. The second psychological process is to make sure that others will see you being abrupt. place.
The social spotlight is never as bright as we think, because when you are at the center of your inner stage, so are others, and they do not give much attention to others. It doesn't focus on you as much as you think, you can completely reduce the focus on yourself ht. ml3
Next, you can reverse the third mental process, people will always judge you.
This is actually the worst situation you have imagined. Think about the last time you noticed someone. Do you judge someone who suddenly pauses during a speech or makes a strange expression? ? Probably not. You may just notice this, and then continue to look at the information in your hand or think about your own things, without taking this matter to heart. , and then we need to take action to get rid of it completely Social anxiety.
The author's suggestions can be summarized into four points:
First, action comes before reason. What does it mean? Action is more important than confidence. You have to pretend that you can do it first. After a while, you really can. It can be done.
’s second suggestion is to preset a role for yourself when taking action, so that it is easier to achieve the action. For example, for Rosie who attends academic conferences, she can act as the “mentor’s spokesperson” and conduct research under the guidance of her mentor. Discuss your direction and viewpoints with others, or you can act like a "professional headhunter" and use a headhunter's perspective to discover all job opportunities that are beneficial to you.
When you play a role, you have to look like the role, so you have set up a strong and confident persona for yourself, which forms two feedback loops: one is feedback to yourself, so you can do this well. ; Give feedback to others and use your confidence to influence more people.
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I have found the role and know what to do. The next step is to repeat it again and again. This is the third suggestion, repeat the practice.
When you practice something repeatedly and get rid of the anxiety about it, you can make a list of challenges for yourself and try them one by one. This is the fourth point. How to make a list with
? Can you imagine your life after overcoming social anxiety? What would you do if anxiety didn't hold you back? Put those big and small things on your list.
The long-term and meaningful thing is that we should try to build friendships with others. If you treat others warmly and friendly, and there is a deep relationship based on warmth and trust between you, then your shortcomings and clumsy behaviors will not matter. In front of friends, you can bravely share your thoughts, Feel and act.
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