Overcoming Social Anxiety - The First step to Recover your Life Back

Overcoming Social Anxiety was the main issue I had to deal with at the beginning of my “journey”.

This was basically what kept me down and what gave me the motivation to move towards social excellence. It’s a goal I have by no means met yet, but something I’m moving towards to.

If you have mild, intermediate or strong social anxiety and you’re reading this, I feel like it’s my responsibility to share my story. Overcoming social anxiety for me was basically a ‘get social or die trying’ kind of deal. I really hated the way my life was at that point; I had two ways to go - either do nothing and be miserable or at least try to improve.

Trust me that I know how it feels, being petrified about talking in groups and when you do talk then you get ignored. As a guy, talking to girls was normally nerve-wracking.

And basically this was the approach I took; I figured that talking to girls would mean by default improving socially and by default I thouhgt, overcoming social anxiety.

It took me about 2 years to see some sort of result. The way I figured I would go about this was that I would expose myself to every social situation I had avoided before; situations where I would normally feel awkward - such as finding someone in the elevator, or walking on the side of the street that was more crowded.

To the “normal” person this might seem rather silly, but keep in mind this was the lowest state of social shape I’ve ever been in. If you want to overcome social anxiety I’m pretty sure you can identify with these feelings.

So it started like that and doing those things kind of helped me a bit, but not too much. The most important part of this first step was the part where I made the decision of improving no matter what. That was step one.

This pretty much made me think that I had to make a fool of myself a bunch of times before I could improve - give myself thick skin. Keep this in mind; a thick “social skin” helps a lot and you can only develop it going through embarrassment, new social situations, and so on.

Improvement:

It really began when I found a social group to stick with.

I had very few friends before finding my social group, and they would never hangout with me. Finding a social group is like joining your “social team” in some way - find the people you somewhat admire and do whatever it takes to hang around them more, and eventually their attitudes in some way will stick to you.

You can’t get good at soccer without playing soccer; you can’t get good socializing without practicing.

Finding your social group:

If you cant find one, just find a way to interact with people a lot daily. This is step number two. It allows you to learn the ins and outs of what socializing is about. For me, it started really badly.

I was basically an outcast hanging out with my friends, but soon I learned on a conscious and unconscious level what it was like, and it started happening naturally for me.

How to make Friends: Check out this article on connecting with others socially and how to make friends.

After I found my social group and really exposed myself, it took about a year for me to be competent. There was a lot of stress going on for me in this period - I’m not saying it’s easy, but with discipline it’s completely achievable.

And this is a lot of what overcoming social anxiety is all about, isn’t it? I could describe social anxiety a lot like an intense sense of self-consciousness that’s accompanied with social incompetence.

So look at it this way: you can’t control the self-consciousness. It’s temporarily all wired into your brain, and is something you will get rid of over time - that’s something you’re going to have to deal with daily and fight while you’re trying to improve.

However, you have FULL control over improving your social skills. It’s as easy as facing your fears and practicing them.

Lets over-simplify this overcoming social anxiety article just for those who love “to-do lists”:

Make the decision of going through the stress that improving socially means (based on how badly you want it).
Expose yourself to massive amounts of social situations. It’s like training for any sport - practice, practice, practice.
Read lots of resources on socializing and social dynamics to keep yourself motivated and on the right track.
NEVER give up.

Really guys and girls, this is all it took for me, and what inspired such passion for me on this topic.

Overcoming social anxiety

for me has been a long steady process, it takes time and at times it might seem like your making no progress but stay on it, cut yourself a ton of slack (no one expects perfection out of you) and follow the path I took and I’m certain that anyone can improve this way. Just Go out and get social!

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