Recovery from Social Anxiety and Related Conditions

Robert F Mullen, PhD
Director/ReChanneling

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The distinction between social anxiety and social anxiety disorder is in severity. We are not all affected by the same symptoms or relentlessness. The characteristics and traits are equivalent. These conditions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior. While comorbidities dramatically benefit, the recovery methods identified are for social anxiety and social anxiety disorder, and reference to one includes the other.

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If you know the enemy and know yourself,
you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy,
for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself,
you will succumb in every battle.
 ̶  Sun Tzu

Knowing Social Anxiety

Few had heard of social anxiety before 1994. When I returned to university in my late forties, recovery methods were still in their formative stages and, as I later discovered, poorly invested in social anxiety. Even today, experts treat our condition like any other emotional malfunction when it is anything but. Social anxiety, nicknamed the ‘neglected anxiety disorder,‘ presents unique challenges through its cunning ability to make recovery approaches – productive for most disorders – woefully inefficient for those in our condition.

Although it was apparent to me early on that conventional treatment options for social anxiety were ineffective, the reasons were unclear. After much research and personal application, I embarked on a journey of comprehending how social anxiety sustains itself. I discovered that the mysteries of social anxiety, like the sacred Eleusinian sect of ancient Greece, only reveal themselves to the initiated.

In other words, only someone who has walked in our shoes and defeated the oppression of social anxiety can effectively guide you through recovery. Conventional recovery methods, while clinically sound and well-intentioned, are unreliable at best.

“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI – deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)   

What is Social Anxiety?

Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is a multifaceted and intricate health condition. In the forward to these posts, I emphasize that the distinction between social anxiety, and the DSM-identified social anxiety disorder is not just a matter of severity; it’s a complex interplay of various factors. As any expert will attest, there are subtle differences. However, the recovery process, sans medication, is individually focused and remains strikingly similar.

Social anxiety’s unique complexity underscores the need for expert guidance and understanding from someone who has experienced its symptoms.

SAD is a formidable opponent, a master of disguise that withholds its secrets from those who haven’t experienced its enigmatic and catastrophic nature. It is more mysterious than a hormonal teenager, and deciphering its enigmatic structure is challenging, but together we can methodically unravel its mysteries.

SAD steals our identity, making us feel unwelcome and exposed in social situations because we feel unworthy. The condition crushes our self-esteem, causing us to doubt our worth and abilities. It saps our motivation, causing us to avoid activities and personal connectivity. SAD does not want us to be happy because that takes away its power. It does not want us to know how it operates.  It does not want to release us from its insidious grasp. 

SAD is the fearful boogeyman who can only be excised by the bright, exposing light of rationality.

SAD makes us feel helpless and hopeless, trapped in a vicious cycle of fear and anxiety, and restricted from living a ‘normal’ life. Our fear of disapproval is so severe we avoid the life-affirming experiences that connect us with others and the world. We fear the unknown and unexplored. We endure anxiety for weeks before a situation, anticipating the worst. And we worry about how others perceive us and how we express ourselves. 

SAD is like one of those movies in which aliens invade our bodies. They feed off our misery and hopelessness, thriving off our fears and anxieties. The only thing that can kill them is identifying and overwhelming them with rational mindfulness. We starve them with positivity and self-awareness, causing them to wither and die.

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Two Keys to Understanding Social Anxiety

What is Sun Tzu telling us in this post’s opening quote? To effectively challenge our condition, we must know exactly what we are confronting and how it affects us individually. This knowledge empowers us to appreciate the caliber of its weaponry and fashion superior ones, putting us in control of our recovery.

Knowing the ‘Enemy’

Knowing how our social anxiety controls and manipulates us is one key to recovery. Recognizing the symptoms and characteristics of our condition provides the wherewithal to overwhelm and defeat them.

One of the biggest impediments to recovery is our unwillingness to accept or disclose our condition. Many of us deliberately choose to remain ignorant of SAD’s destructive capabilities or go to enormous lengths to remain oblivious to them, as if, by ignoring them, they do not exist or will somehow go away.

It’s astonishing how many clients, after enduring SAD for their entire lives, choose to remain clueless about the easily identifiable symptoms listed by every reputable mental health institute.

The Symptoms

So, let’s put an end to our ignorance once and for all by identifying the common characteristics of social anxiety disorder.

• We fear situations in which we may be judged negatively
• We worry about embarrassing or humiliating ourselves.
• We have an intense fear of interacting or talking with strangers.
• We fear that others will notice that we look anxious.
• We fear revealing physical symptoms that may cause us embarrassment, such as blushing, sweating, trembling, or a shaky voice.
• We avoid doing things or speaking to people out of fear of embarrassment.
• We avoid situations where we fear being the center of attention.
• We express anxiety in anticipation of a feared activity or event.
• We have intense fear or anxiety during social situations.
• We negatively analyze our performance and focus on our faulty interactions after a social situation.
• We expect or self-prophesize the worst possible consequences from a negative experience during a social situation.

So, no more excuses. We now have a basic understanding of the common symptoms of our condition. Social anxiety instills in us unsound fears and apprehensions that are disproportionate to the actual situation. Social anxiety steals our autonomy, hopes, and dreams. It crushes our expectations and possibilities, causing us to miss opportunities to connect with the world. We beat ourselves up for our perceived defects and inadequacies. SAD convinces us that we are undesirable and worthless.

Knowing Ourselves

The other equally important key to recovery is understanding how we are adversely affected by SAD. Because we are unique individuals with diverse experiences, environments, beliefs, needs, and aspirations, these challenges are highly subjective and differ with each individual.

While occasional anxiety is a normal part of life, those of us with SAD experience it in a different, more intense way. We tend to personalize and dramatize our anxiety. Often blowing it out of proportion and obsessing over its potential negative outcomes. This can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies where we inadvertently encourage our failures.

Living with SAD means dealing with persistent anxiety and fear in everyday situations.  Even simple tasks like eating in front of others, riding a bus, or using a public restroom can become unduly stressful.  We often find ourselves seeking invisibility, hoping to avoid any situation that might require us to participate.  As Matty S. shared in our workshop, ‘I spent high school trying to hide in every dark corner with a book in my face. I never once ate lunch in four years, and never once went to the bathroom in four years at my high school, for fear of having to interact with people.’

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Social Interaction

Living with SAD means navigating a paradoxical emotional landscape.  We often find ourselves craving companionship while shunning intimacy, fearing that we will be deemed unlikeable.  It’s not fear that destroys our lives, but the avoidance strategies we develop to cope with it.  At the peak of my anxiety, I would circle the block repeatedly before a social situation to bolster my courage.  Often, I ended up in the bar across the street rather than the event,  a clear example of how I anticipated and guaranteed my self-loathing through avoidance. 

Our social interactions are often clumsy, small talk inelegant, and attempts at humor embarrassing.  Our anticipation of repudiation motivates us to dismiss overtures to offset any possibility of rejection.  SAD is repressive and intractable, imposing self-destructive thoughts and behaviors.  It establishes its authority through defeatist measures produced by distorted and unsound interpretations of reality.

Sharing our experiences with social anxiety is like describing an alien disease – a solitary and fruitless endeavor, as others struggle to comprehend what is only understandable to the person afflicted. The comprehensible lack of empathy further isolates us as we face the challenges of our condition alone, highlighting the struggle and need for understanding our complex relationship with our condition.

The journey to self-discovery and overcoming anxiety is a gradual process that requires patience, introspection, and persistence. What makes us tick? What triggers our fears and apprehensions?  Where do we feel anxious or fearful? What activities are we engaged in, and what thoughts arise? How do we feel (physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually)? What specific concerns or worries do we have? What is the worst thing that could happen?  And what do we imagine might occur? Who, where, or what do we avoid due to these feelings? 

Once we have a healthy understanding of SAD and how it personally affects us, we will have met Sun Tzu’s criteria for fearlessness in facing the many battles that lie ahead.

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Committing to recovery is one of the hardest things you will ever do.
It takes enormous courage and the realization that you are of value,
consequential, and deserving of happiness.