While some people are social butterflies, others find interactions nerve-wracking. However, it’s never too late to improve your social skills and become a people person. Learning how to manage your anxiety in social situations will help you enjoy your life more and open the doors to more friendships and professional opportunities.
Here are a few tips that can help you overcome social anxiety:
1. Master stress-management techniques
The best way to manage anxiety regardless of what social situation you’re dealing with is to regularly practice stress-management techniques. You’ll benefit from this approach the most if you combine two or more methods. For example, one of the most popular techniques is mindful breathing. To give it a go, put your hand on your belly and the other hand on your chest, then inhale through your nose so that your belly pushes your hand out. Exhale through pursed lips and repeat the whole process. Alternatively, you can try to remember to breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth whenever you feel stressed.
Another effective relaxation technique is visualizing yourself in your happy place. All you must do is think of a place that is soothing; it can be an actual place or an imaginary world where your worries don’t exist. At the same time, try to engage all your senses and focus on what you can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste. Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, you can combine it with breathing techniques.
2. Understand your fear
If the prospect of engaging in social interactions fills you with dread, you aren’t alone. Many people struggle with social anxiety to some degree; however, everyone’s experience is different. Some might simply feel nervous when meeting new people, others might get sick just at the thought of going to a social event and avoid leaving the house. But whichever category you fall into, you should start by understanding the way your fear works.
First, think about the last time social interaction made you feel anxious and try to write down all other emotions you experienced such as fear, shame and so on. Then try to pair the emotions with thoughts, bodily sensations, and behaviors. For example, you might have been nervous at a party and your inability to interact with strangers made you feel helpless, evoked negative thoughts about yourself and caused you to sweat. Eventually, you decided to stay in the corner and not talk to anyone. Getting to know your fear will give you more clarity on how to approach it and eventually overcome it.
3. Practice social interactions to help keep social anxiety at an arm’s length
It might not be what you want to hear but exposure is important. If you want to get good at something, you must practice it a lot, just like you would if you wanted to master a new language. Being social is a skill and while you might need more time to get there than other people, you can learn it.
So how can you get out of your comfort zone? You don’t have to force yourself to chat with strangers straight away or have conversations you don’t want to have. You can start small and give yourself a daily challenge. For example, you could make it your goal to smile at strangers when you’re out and about, then progress onto asking shop assistants how their day is going, initiating social meetings, and showing up to social events. This might seem terrifying to you now but the more you practice, the easier it will get.
After every exposure, it’s important to reflect on it. Once you’ve completed a challenge, ask yourself, was it as bad as I thought? How did that experience compare to what I think was going to happen? What did I learn from it? For example, the more you interact with people, the more you’ll realize that people aren’t as harsh on you as you are on yourself and that seeing someone smile back at you might put you in a good mood. And even if you happen to do something embarrassing, remember that it all of us do at some point.
4. Ask your friends for support
As you gradually learn how to get out of your comfort zone, it’s sometimes a good idea to reach out for support. For example, if you want to go to a party, you can ask your friends to go with you. However, it’s important to remember not to rely on this kind of aid too much because it might result in increased anxiety when you’re on your own and prevent you from directly testing your fears which is essential to overcoming social anxiety. Your friends should encourage you to get out of your shell, not speak for you or do things for you.
5. Become a good listener
People who experience anxiety in social situations are focused on the way other people view them and how their bodies react (for example, you might experience trembling voice, sweating or stomachache), often failing to connect with the other person. So, if you want to distract yourself from feeling anxious and become a better conversationalist in general, you should make practice being a good listener. A good listener is someone who pays attention to what the other person is telling you about but also empathizes with it. Remember to visualize everything the other person is saying and respond with nonverbal cues, which can be as simple as nodding.
6. Try positive affirmations
Imagine that you’re feeling disappointed because you’ve just failed an exam. If you’re not an optimistic person, your inner voice might tell you that you’re stupid and you’ll get nowhere in life. And the more thoughts like that arise in your mind, the worse you’ll feel. As you can see, your thoughts can influence your mood and your mood can influence your thoughts. Knowing this, you can manipulate the way you feel and improve your confidence by learning how to adopt a more positive mindset.
The simplest way to become more positive and self-confident is by practicing positive affirmations. All you need is to stand in front of the mirror every day and repeat motivational statements to yourself for a few minutes. It doesn’t even matter if they’re true or not because the more you repeat them, the more you’ll start believing them and a change of behavior will follow. For example, you can tell yourself that you’re self-confident, friendly, and sociable and that people like you. Additionally, try to visualize whatever you say to really influence your thoughts.
7. Try a guided meditation
Nowadays guided meditations are popular as they allow you to improve a lot of issues by simply listening to a voice and following simple steps. And, of course, it means you can find plenty of resources to help you deal with social anxiety. One of the most popular ones is social anxiety hypnosis by Michael Sealey that you can find on YouTube. As you can see in the comments, a lot of people swear by it and say that it helped them make a tremendous change in their lives.
8. Pay attention to your thoughts
You might think, but wait, aren’t you supposed to silence the inner voice that’s telling you that you’ll make a fool out of yourself? The problem is that ignoring the issue won’t help you progress. Additionally, your thoughts might already be so automatic that you might not even realize you’re experiencing them and so can’t really change them.
Whenever you feel anxious, try to pay attention to what thoughts accompany this feeling. For example, you might engage in self-deprecation: “I’m boring and nobody likes me” or catastrophize, “I’m feeling anxious, so I’ll probably fail this interview.” For every negative thought that arises in your mind, you should come up with a more realistic statement. For example, you can tell yourself, “I’ve been anxious many times before and that didn’t stop me” and that people will worry more about how they come across to others than whether they like you or not.
Believe it or not, you’re your worst critic and people see you in a more positive light than you think. This phenomenon is known as the ‘liking gap’ and it’s supported by research. For example, in the study published in Psychological Science Journal participants were invited to have 5-minutes conversations with each other followed by ranking how much they liked their conversation partner and how much they thought their partner liked them. Most participants underestimated the impression they made on others which shows that people don’t judge you as harshly as you judge yourself. [1]
Changing your thoughts doesn’t happen over time and takes a lot of practice. It’s recommended that you first learn how to be more mindful to become more self-aware of your mental state. You can check out our last article that explores what mindfulness is in-depth, but the general idea is to become aware of your surroundings. You can practice it by fully focusing on what you’re doing in each moment instead of letting your mind wander.
9. Become your own cheerleader
Struggling with social anxiety can be very isolating as people who feel comfortable in social situations don’t understand how challenging they are to you. Even if your friends are supportive, they’ll never fully comprehend what it feels like to fail to navigate something you’re expected to be good at. Therefore, you should remember to be your own cheerleader and congratulate yourself on every effort. Did you smile at a stranger? Tell yourself that you did well. Did you manage to start a conversation? Treat yourself to your favorite food.
You can also keep a journal in which you document every successful interaction and even the smallest improvement. Whenever you feel like you aren’t advancing enough or face an obstacle, you can read through your past entries and see how far you’ve come. This kind of positive reinforcement will encourage you to keep going and consequently boost your self-esteem. The better you feel about yourself, the less likely you are to struggle with self-deprecating thoughts and anxiety.
10. Think of creative ways to boost your confidence and manage social anxiety
If it works, it doesn’t matter what it takes to get there. This doesn’t mean you should use alcohol or drugs to manage your anxiety but there are plenty of creative techniques you can use to become more confident. For example, a lot of people benefit from watching a TV show with a strong lead and drawing inspiration from their behavior. You don’t have to transform into a completely different person, but it helps to adopt some of the mannerisms and then imagine yourself that you’re the character whenever you have to interact socially.
Another thing that can help is listening to motivational music. If imagining yourself as a TV character doesn’t work, why not visualize yourself acting confident? Before any upcoming social event, play the chosen song and do your best to picture yourself nailing all social interactions. Combine it with positive affirmations for more effect.
And if you enjoy a challenge, you could always sign up for acting classes. This is a huge step out of your comfort zone but can serve as a ‘shock therapy’ and help you get over the fear faster.
11. Consider therapy to help manage your social anxiety
In many people’s cases, social anxiety is a result of certain personality traits and traumatic childhood experiences so professional help might be necessary to appropriately address the problem. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the best treatment option for people who struggle with social situations as it involves making changes to your thought process and emotions attached to specific situations to eventually modify your behavior.
CBT recognizes that negative self-talk can lead to avoidance behaviors and gradually introduces you to anxiety-inducing situations. Even if you’re having success with some of the tips mentioned in this article, professional treatment is always a good idea.
References:
[1] The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think? - Erica J. Boothby, Gus Cooney, Gillian M. Sandstrom, Margaret S. Clark, 2018 (sagepub.com)
