Soical Anxiety

[Zak]

Can I ask why you get nervous and panic a lot in the situations described?

[MKR&*42]

@Chloe7355; I know I already posted in here but this blog just reappeared on my tumblr and I know they sometimes reblog useful stuff. Here's their anxiety tag:

http://onlinecounsellingcollege.tumb...tagged/anxiety
--

Show Hide personalstuffiguess

Also, I can't speak for your experiences obviously but I myself sometimes do get irrationally anxious in certain social situations - primarily ones where it's me starting a conversation with a friend online or offline. If I start the convo I get paranoid that they never wanted to speak to me in the first place, if they go offline [internet example] midconvo I assume I bugged them, If I meet a new group of people (primarily males) IRL I panic that I'm not masculine enough or interesting to fit in etc.

Though I have actually come quite far with being anxious in social situations (like 2 years ago I would be terrified at the prospect of speaking to a staff member in a store, now I'm fine with it) and with all my other emotional problems and stuff. The moodgym link I gave you earlier has an interesting section on warped/distorted thoughts which has actually bloody stuck in my mind for ages. They're in the spoiler with links just in case you can relate to any of them:

Show Hide warped thoughts

http://sourcesofinsight.com/10-disto...king-patterns/ or if you have acct https://moodgym.anu.edu.au/moodgym/thoughts/david_burns

All-Or-Nothing Thinking – You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

Overgeneralization – You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

Mental Filter – You pick out a single negative defeat and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water.

Disqualifying the positive – You dismiss positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

Jumping to conclusions – You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
A. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out.
B. The fortune teller error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.

Magnification (Catastrophizing) or Minimization- You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.”

Emotional Reasoning – You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.

Should Statements – You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

Labeling and Mislabeling – This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

Personalization – You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

Most probably, jumping to conclusions probably relates better to anxiety than the others. The aim is to identify the distorted thought pattern, realise you are actually having a warped thought and then challenge it.

Sorry this was a long post and might not even help you but identifying thoughts has actually helped me loads, still have a way to go though haha

[Chloe7355]

Can I ask why you get nervous and panic a lot in the situations described?

I don't exactly know tbh ;l

[Empired]

I don't exactly know tbh ;l

If you wanted to go to CBT or something, which I thoroughly recommend that you do, they'd want you to try and work out why. Find out exactly when you start to panic and under what circumstances. If you see any correlations, they might be something to do with it.

My therapist told me to make a list of the things that scared me and rate them /100 for how scary they were. 0 obviously being a breeze and 100 being I'd die if I did that.
I'll take a few examples from my list:
Getting on a bus on my own - 60
Making a phone call - 80
Asking a friend over/out to do something - 85
Being in crowded spaces - 30
Having to ask a stranger a question - 50

Once I'd worked out as many things that I was afraid of as I could think of, I had to start working on the list. You always start with the smallest thing, so using my example I'd have to go into town during a busy time and tell myself to keep calm. Obviously we worked on coping strategies for me to use so I didn't panic when I got there (see my first post in this thread for examples of coping strategies).

This post has gone on a bit but I suggest making a list of all the things that make you scared, rate them on their scariness and then ask yourself WHY and could I overcome it? If not, who could I ask for help?

[Chloe7355]

If you wanted to go to CBT or something, which I thoroughly recommend that you do, they'd want you to try and work out why. Find out exactly when you start to panic and under what circumstances. If you see any correlations, they might be something to do with it.

My therapist told me to make a list of the things that scared me and rate them /100 for how scary they were. 0 obviously being a breeze and 100 being I'd die if I did that.
I'll take a few examples from my list:
Getting on a bus on my own - 60
Making a phone call - 80
Asking a friend over/out to do something - 85
Being in crowded spaces - 30
Having to ask a stranger a question - 50

Once I'd worked out as many things that I was afraid of as I could think of, I had to start working on the list. You always start with the smallest thing, so using my example I'd have to go into town during a busy time and tell myself to keep calm. Obviously we worked on coping strategies for me to use so I didn't panic when I got there (see my first post in this thread for examples of coping strategies).

This post has gone on a bit but I suggest making a list of all the things that make you scared, rate them on their scariness and then ask yourself WHY and could I overcome it? If not, who could I ask for help?

Thank you, I will try doing this, I appreciate it x

@Chloe7355; I know I already posted in here but this blog just reappeared on my tumblr and I know they sometimes reblog useful stuff. Here's their anxiety tag:

http://onlinecounsellingcollege.tumb...tagged/anxiety
--

Show Hide personalstuffiguess

Also, I can't speak for your experiences obviously but I myself sometimes do get irrationally anxious in certain social situations - primarily ones where it's me starting a conversation with a friend online or offline. If I start the convo I get paranoid that they never wanted to speak to me in the first place, if they go offline [internet example] midconvo I assume I bugged them, If I meet a new group of people (primarily males) IRL I panic that I'm not masculine enough or interesting to fit in etc.

Though I have actually come quite far with being anxious in social situations (like 2 years ago I would be terrified at the prospect of speaking to a staff member in a store, now I'm fine with it) and with all my other emotional problems and stuff. The moodgym link I gave you earlier has an interesting section on warped/distorted thoughts which has actually bloody stuck in my mind for ages. They're in the spoiler with links just in case you can relate to any of them:

Show Hide warped thoughts

http://sourcesofinsight.com/10-disto...king-patterns/ or if you have acct https://moodgym.anu.edu.au/moodgym/thoughts/david_burns

All-Or-Nothing Thinking – You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

Overgeneralization – You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

Mental Filter – You pick out a single negative defeat and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water.

Disqualifying the positive – You dismiss positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

Jumping to conclusions – You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
A. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out.
B. The fortune teller error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.

Magnification (Catastrophizing) or Minimization- You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.”

Emotional Reasoning – You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.

Should Statements – You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

Labeling and Mislabeling – This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

Personalization – You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

Most probably, jumping to conclusions probably relates better to anxiety than the others. The aim is to identify the distorted thought pattern, realise you are actually having a warped thought and then challenge it.

Sorry this was a long post and might not even help you but identifying thoughts has actually helped me loads, still have a way to go though haha

Thank you, the website seems rly helpful I appreciate it x