About ten years ago I started to feel very anxious and soon developed a social anxiety disorder. I have since overcome this disorder using the techniques and processes discussed below.
While living with this disorder I felt everyone Anxiety Cure always judging me, would not want to be around me Anxiety Cure would think what I had to say was unimportant. The first step I took was to see if this was actually true. I was Anxiety Attacks university at the time, and decided make a comment in class (but this could be as simple as saying hello to someone, smiling at someone, or having a small chat with a cashier etc) and not think about myself but actually look around at other people to see what their reaction was. I made it into a non-personal (I was looking outward while doing it, not inward) experiment, and Anxiety Attacks somehow made it easier for me to actually speak up for the experiment I had decided to conduct. Of course I found that most people were in their own little world. They were not judging me, even though I felt embarrassed about speaking out loud in class. In other words, I had convinced myself of a false belief, and needed to start to give myself experiences that indicated people were not judging me.
The next thing to work on was the internal thoughts I was having. Right before I wanted to do something - meet someone, speak up, go to an interview, Panic Attacks to a stranger (basically anything social) - a negative thought would flash through my mind. I would sometimes spend considerable time building myself up to do something, only to be sabotaged by my own thoughts right before I was about to do it. This is what I now call a secondary thought. Often these secondary thoughts go unnoticed, but I started to pay attention whenever I had a feeling of anxiety. I listened to every thought that was running through my head. After doing this, I found secondary thoughts flashing through my head like "No one wants to hear you, " or "No one cares what you have to say."
After I realized this I worked on changing those thoughts - first by the process I talked about above (looking for evidence that it is a false belief, and that people actually do want to hear what I had to say, wanted to be with me, etc) and the next step was implanting a more positive outlook of myself and the world. I began to focus on the positive experiences and also feed myself a continuous stream of positive thoughts about myself. Even if I didn't believe that people really wanted to hear what I had to say, I told myself over and over again that they did. Whenever I remembered, I swamped myself with positive thoughts including what I liked about myself, things I could be proud of, what I had accomplished, all the things that were good in the world and good about other people. It does not matter if you truly believe it or if you think some of these things are really not that great. You tell yourself anyway. Force yourself to say positive thoughts about yourself, and even say them out loud when you can.
This was what really helped me and it took only a few weeks to start seeing significant improvements.
In conclusion, the most important thing is to start to look for evidence contrary to the negative feelings you are having. Find the source of anxiety through secondary thought probing and challenge those thoughts. There is evidence everywhere that suggests people think you are a valuable member of society, whether you believe it or not. Evidence exists in the fact that friends are there for you (even though they may not understand what you are going through), family loves you, people still talk to you...look for evidence contrary to your negative feelings about yourself and choose to embrace those positive things.
In addition, build yourself up as much as you can, whenever you can. When in a negative state situations can constantly add to that, and basically we see more and more negative, digging ourselves deeper. It is important to reverse that by feeding ourselves a constant stream of positive thoughts about the world and about yourself. Think about all the amazing and good things in the world and about yourself. Think about these things as much of you can. Eventually, after you have done it for a few months, often, the process will become automatic. You will start to automatically see all the amazing things about yourself and about the world. Your social anxiety, and anxieties in general, will start to fade away.
If you are battling with social anxiety I suggest doing the above. It does not require much actual work, and I think you should be able to see some improvements quite quickly.
Additional resources can be found on my website including a more in depth look into the "secondary thought" process, as well as additional steps you can take after you have started to ingrain this positive thinking method.
If you are interested in this area, fusing emotional, psychological and spiritual aspects http://elevatingthesoul.com provides information on attaining a life that is in harmony with our desires. The information presented allows us to be at peace with what is, live in the moment and through that create the physical (and spiritual) experience we seek. With new content continually added and everything open to discussion, it provides everything you need to have your questions answered.
In all I do it is my desire to help people attain a life they are happy with, determine their own measures of success, and see all the amazing opportunities that are available to us each day.
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