I've realized what the essential cause of social anxiety really is - a lack of meaningful differentiation in social situations. Whether you make a simple mistake like fumbling your words or not being able to handle eating in front of strangers, the cause of anxiety is the inability to differentiate between what is really socially damaging and what is not.
The socially anxious person confuses (emotionally or perceptually) all social faux pas and even regular behavior into this one horrible thing. Its seeing little difference between tripping in front of strangers and perhaps being outed as a pervert. Much like how someone who isn't familiar with spiders can't differentiate between the types of spiders and their danger to humans, he reacts the same way in horrible fear. Regular people seem to have this ability to quickly move from blunders because they can differentiate between social non-events and actually damaging stuff.
This doesn't seem like a rational problem, as most socially anxious people can realize their symptoms are overblown and irrational, yet they cannot help it. The necessary cure would be to learn this process of differentiation to be able to perceive social situations in finer detail. For instance, you might feel really bad after a trivial trip to the store because you couldnt differentiate the clerk's ambivalent expression meaningfully, leading yourself to believe that you were rude or just a horrible human. Perhaps there's a lack of ability to differentiate between situations where you are responsible for another person's emotion and behavior and when you are not. I know that most SA people will instantly blame themselves and feel like shit whenever people are nasty towards them, because they cannot perceive the situation properly, in terms of the necessary detail. The socially anxious person's 'social perception is much more blurry than a regular person.
what the hell, am i reading bible or lurking r9k? sorry OP but im too tired to even read half of this, maybe if thread will last till tomorrow i will do it.
Angel Long
Your writing is magical in that my brain simply refuses to read through your shit.
Zachary Collins
I think for me it has to do more with struggling to make up for the difference between how I want to be seen and what I am. I cant go up to a group and let them know im a faggot neet poly addict who is not very fun and has niche hobbies most people dont care for. So I have to carefully coordinate everything I say and how I look to hide myself. I have tension because I hate myself. I dont want people to hate me like I do. So I hide the reasons I hate myself. People pick up on this tension and avoid me which makes it seem impossible to have success. So I give up and my fear is reinforced.
If I was respectable, beautiful, smart and charming, with interesting things to say I would have no social anxiety because I wouldnt be worried about revealing myself. If I did something wrong then it wouldnt be a big deal because I would know that I make up for it in other ways.
Also chemical bullshit happens that makes you anxious for no reason at times. I get so anxious I cant breathe just trying to buy cigarettes. If I was a girl it would be cute but as a man it is reason enough to abandon me. A coward is the worst thing a man can be.
Hunter Howard
I think you are somewhat right I'm not sure if it's so black and white for everyone who has the problem though. For me I have social anxiety and panic attacks but from what I've observed through rumination on whenever this issue occurs I find that my problems almost never come from intrusive thoughts like you described. There are some social situations I can handle and others I can't.
I've been to a therapist and have talked with others about my issues but it's almost like all advice has boiled down to "just stop caring what others think about you" yet I feel as if that's not what my problem is and I find it hard to explain. It almost always just feels like a fight or flight response and either some situations I can overcome and fight and others I just can't and flight.
For example if someone is looking at me depending on the specific social situation it's either extremely terrifying or I pay no mind to it but whenever anxiety does arise I'm never really thinking about things like "what does this person think of me" it always just makes me feel extremely uncomfortable and I want to escape the situation as fast as possible to escape that feeling. I don't know if there are some underlying thoughts like you describe and maybe I'm just plain wrong about it but I feel it just doesn't describe my personal problems. I see this as very irrational obviously yet like you said I can almost never help it the feeling just overcomes me 90% of the time.
Another issue is that I'm very introverted which makes me not even want to tackle this problem. I feel as if I get nothing out of facing this problem cause I rarely want to interact with others in the first place and I'm in a position where I don't have to since I'm NEET so I am comfortable. I'm not sure if my introversion is entirely cause by this anxiety either cause when I was younger this problem was not nearly as bad as it is now and I still always just kept to myself when regarding social situations.
Camden Ortiz
>Whether you make a simple mistake like fumbling your words This happens to me because I have severe ADD and can't concentrate on even one thing for a significant period of time, let alone several.
thats why Anxiety can only really be overcome by going out and facing this shit headon and rewiring your brain to get over it. Other forms of anxiety though come from different things. My anxiety comes from I'm a fuckup, which makes me super anxious when it comes to things like interviews and I freeze up, making it a self-fullfilling process of failure.
Landon Wilson
>the cause of anxiety is the inability to differentiate between what is really socially damaging and what is not.
Strictly speaking, if you believe you can tell the difference in advance, you are mistaken.
*Any* error may be the thing that someone else decides to pick up and harp on. Any stupid trivial thing may be the thing that a coworker or classmate decides to use to give you a life-long nickname. Any stupid trivial thing may be the thing that leads every last girl you know to decide that you are "ick". Conversely, you may completely skate by when you tell people you like to fuck kids, or that you hate niggers. It's not likely, but it's possible and I have seen it happen.
That means that if you think you know, you don't.
Nathaniel Clark
That's true more or less.
The issue is CARING about those things. When I'm at my best mentally, any faux pas or tiny things don't worry me, but when I'm not doing well I think people are judging me and being mean even when they're clearly not. Only hard thing is how to get into that 'good' mindset. I have arrived at the conclusion that it is outside of my control, and that we are living in a simulation or game where external parties are making those decisions for us (like how we see the world at any given time, and how others respond to us). Absolutely nothing in this life feels like base reality, and I am certain its all outside of our control.
Brayden Jenkins
More like the things I know don't correlate with the things other people know, so there's no opportunity to make a conversation. So I just sit there while their opinion of me dwindles. It doesn't really bother me since it'll happen anyways
Liam White
I have no anxiety in my mind, but it is in my body. I'll just be talking to someone and my body will start shaking. Its pretty stupid because ill just be talking then my jitteriness will inherently throw off a bad vibe. Nothing mental but it fucks up the social aspect because my body
Benjamin Ross
Weirdly, weed helps me a lot with this but you wouldn't think it. It makes me think of how high Graham Hancock has been this entire time, he wakes up, gets baked and goes "I'm going to read about wacky alternative history all day"
Christopher Fisher
Yes that's almost exactly how it is for me every time. It's like this bodily reaction I just can't get control over it's like being chased by a serial killer or something. I get so jittery and it's like my heartrate triples I don't even have thoughts during this my mind just goes blank and I can't function it's like it's in my nature to have this reaction in some situations it's fucked.
Lucas Powell
No the cause of SA is your brain producing chemicals that makes you neurotic too much, the cure for SA is preventing your brain from producing those chemicals which is what an antidepressant does.
Asher Williams
Yeah its not cool. Like you'll finally get an opportunity to talk to new people and then your body starts to fuck you. Like why does it need to do that?
Benjamin King
This is a really good summary. Great job user
John Turner
SSRI helps, just go to a doctor and ask for meds
Bentley Russell
I know exactly what you mean. It's infuriating that sometimes a situation can be horrible and other times it can be fine, as if a dice is rolled.
Yeah, I too find that often the anxiety is wordless now. I've been isolated for so long that on a busy train I just think "I gotta get out of here asap" and feel light-headed without any real reason. Nothing bad is happening, but fuck does it feel like there is.
Ian Gonzalez
I'm 29 and honestly that's pretty insightful, OP. Exposure therapy works and is explained with this theory. I am lucky in that the people at my workplace are now fundamentally good people, and I can tell this. This gives me a framework to interpret all their interactions, and even when I can't figure things out, I can still fall back on "they are good people with generally good intentions".
Jaxon Lopez
Doesnt seem correct to me. I dont think youre right
Social anxiety is having your inner self dialled up to 11 so you are overly jumpy to stimuli. thats all it is in my case. For example I was at a restaurant today and a cute girl was sat to the table next to us. I saw her looking at me a couple times. And I got extremely tense. I seized up. Even when she wasnt looking which was 99% of the time I was uncomfortable. because my mind was convinced she was staring at me.
Jacob Brown
Boy are you ppl fucking stupid. Absolutely zero self awareness
Justin Cooper
They are horrible. People who are cold and distant, who talk to you in a funny way they do with no one else with that vacant stare are doing this because they do not even consider you human and if there were no consequences to their actions they'd make sure you were never in their sight.
They are literally disgusted by you. You not being part of their "tribe" and not sharing their pop culture elicits some kind of extreme emotional reaction. That is why they say "ew" or fake gagging. This is especially true among women. Men want to put you low down on the pecking order, it is an instinct to gain breeding rights inherited from chimpanzees. When women sense you have low social status they want to get rid of you, they are repulsed, because the beta males in the chimpanzee troop can't provide for their children and probably have flawed genes.
This is the ooga booga reality of human society, and we deny it. Evolutionary psychology is taboo. Perhaps because people don't really want to change. They don't like being compared to animals and want to keep exercising their animal libidinous urges.
It is ironic, they view us as less than human yet they behave like animals. They're more like animals than us who control ourselves with the rational parts of our brains.
I'd never bully anyone, I'd never hurt someone or socially ostracize them for no fucking reason.
William Adams
"us and them" dichotomy
not going to make it. if anything you are the "other". you fail to assimilate socially because you are weird. Being a """Nice guy"""" doesnt make you the more honourable person. if anything its a desperate attempt at looking virtuous but the actuality is youre probably a hateful person behind that "im a nice guy" persona you tell people you are
"no reason" isnt really the answer. the real answer is you give off weird vibes and you break the social cohesion of any group youre in. arousing feelings of suspicion, fear, anxiety and the like. You Are the other of the group. yet you like to other everyone else
