Recovery from Social Anxiety and Related Conditions
Robert F. Mullen, PhD
Director/ReChanneling
For each new subscriber, ReChanneling donates $25 for workshop scholarships.
Spring 2026
Healthy Resolutions for the New Year
In a recent post, we discussed the benefits of taking a break in our recovery. “Allowing yourself this time off enables your neural network to process and integrate the work you’ve done. Let your brain do the heavy lifting while you enjoy your break.” So, whether you are deep into recovery, just beginning, or even considering it, you are feeding your neural network positive information.
This is especially important during the holiday season. Our holiday schedules are filled with family reunions, gift shopping, and other activities that take precedence over recovery. That doesn’t mean we’re neglecting our new learning. It just means we’re taking a necessary break from it. The learning doesn’t stop. Our neural network continues to process information, and our recovery goes on.
Recovery from social anxiety takes hard work and dedication. It is not a quick fix. It’s a gradual process that begins immediately and grows incrementally and exponentially.
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)
Resolutions
In a couple of recovery groups, we briefly discussed traditional New Year’s resolutions. Most of us don’t take them seriously because it’s common knowledge that people rarely adhere to them. They’re short-term commitments that are forgotten by the second week of January.
Recovery is already filled with long-term resolutions and processes necessary for mitigating our symptoms and improving our emotional well-being and quality of life.
So, to start this new year, rather than trying to come up with easily neglected, pointless resolutions, let’s take credit for some of the long-term learning tools we already use in our recovery.
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For Information
It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will
continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life. – Nick P.
Recovery Resolutions
Avoid Perfectionism. We are imperfect in our humanness. The unreasonable pursuit of perfectionism to compensate for our adverse self-image aggravates our anxiety and depression. Chasing the unattainable distracts us from issues and concerns that require your immediate attention.
Choose Supportive Relationships. Spend Time with people who make you happy. Don’t waste time on people who don’t treat you well. Spending time with people who treat you poorly is foolish and irrational. While we can’t always choose our family or certain colleagues, we can choose our friends and romantic partners.
Cultivate Gratitude. Take time to acknowledge and appreciate the good people, things, and experiences in your lives. Expressing gratitude enhances your mental, emotional, and physical well-being, strengthening social connections and relationships.
Do Things You Enjoy. Start by making a list of things you like to do—things that make you happy. Try to do something from that list every day. Be mindful that you are valuable, consequential, and deserve to be happy.
Embrace Joy and Laughter. The endorphins and hormones released during joyful moments significantly enhance your psychological health. Laughter and joy invigorate your cardiovascular and muscular systems, elevate your energy, and bolster your immune defenses.
Smiling and laughing stimulate neurotransmitters that reduce fear and anxiety while promoting learning, concentration, and motivation. (Social anxiety does not thrive in a joyful environment.)
Embrace Your Humanness. To foster genuine self-esteem and support your recovery, it helps to accept your totality—the good, the bad, and the ugly. You are unique individuals, defined by a dynamic interplay of strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies. Understanding yourself is a key element of recovery.
Establish and Maintain Boundaries. Boundaries define which behaviors you find acceptable. They safeguard your space, feelings, limitations, and expectations. They enable you to assert your identity and shield you from manipulation and exploitation. Setting boundaries equips you to manage others’ influence on your life.
Evaluate Upsetting Thoughts. Treat negative, intrusive thoughts as signals to try new, healthy patterns. Ask yourself, “What can I think and do to make this feeling or perspective less stressful?”
Focus on the Positive. Think about the parts of your life that work well. Remember the skills you’ve used to cope with challenges. Recognize and utilize your character strengths, virtues, attributes, and achievements.
Forgive. Holding onto hostility and resentment is self-indulgent and emotionally enervating. Forgiving frees up valuable space in your neural network. It opens you to new possibilities, allowing you to move forward unencumbered by the past.
Forgive Yourself. Everyone makes mistakes. But mistakes aren’t permanent reflections of you as a person. They’re moments in time. Mistakes are evidence of our humanness.
Make Healthy Choices. It is crucial to follow guidelines for good health. This includes engaging in at least 30 minutes of exercise daily, maintaining a healthy, moderate diet, and ensuring restful, undistracted sleep.
Positive Personal Affirmations. A primary asset for neural restructuring, positive personal affirmations are also practical tools for managing triggers, associated fears, corresponding ANTs, and other stressful situations.
Practice Self-Compassion. You deserve to be happy. This means prioritizing self-care, engaging in activities that bring satisfaction and joy, and surrounding yourself with people who recognize your worth and uplift you.
Reframe Your Perspective. You control your emotional well-being. No one has that power. Your tendency to view the glass as half empty perpetuates anxiety and depression. Instead, create optimistic outcome scenarios and reframe potential problems as opportunities for growth and learning.
Change your perspective on social anxiety. Rather than viewing it as a monster, we should reframe it as a unique yet remediable experience that has made us stronger and more resilient in the face of adversity.
Reward Yourself. Self-reward is tangible appreciation of our effort and progress. When you reward yourself, your brain releases a chemical rush of dopamine that makes you feel good. This feeling strengthens the connection between your constructive behavior and the positive outcome, making you more likely to repeat the action in the future. Reward also releases endorphins for mood elevation, GABA and serotonin for relaxation, and oxytocin and endorphins that generate feelings of satisfaction and pleasure.
Set Realistic Expectations. Success comes from setting practical, attainable goals that help build your confidence in overcoming challenges. When you set reasonable expectations, you help ensure a positive outcome.
Silence Your Inner Critic. By refusing to listen to your SAD-induced inner critic, you break the cycle of self-sabotage. Learn to say “no” to your symptoms and negative self-appraisals. Distancing yourself from self-critical thoughts rebuilds your self-confidence and fosters a more favorable outlook on life.
Use Hopeful Statements. Social anxiety compels you to project unsatisfactory outcomes. Challenge that thinking by focusing on the positive. Remember, it is unhealthy and irrational to choose outcomes that are harmful and unproductive. Filter out negative projections.
Do not define yourself by your social anxiety. Define yourself by your character strengths, virtues, attributes, and achievements.
Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO NECESSARY?
ReChanneling develops and conducts programs to alleviate the symptoms of social anxiety and help individuals tap into their innate potential for extraordinary living. Our unique approach focuses on understanding personality through empathy and collaboration, integrating neuroscience and psychology. This includes proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to reclaim and rebuild self-esteem. Every contribution, no matter the size, supports individuals striving to make a positive change in their own lives and the lives of others. All donations go towards scholarships for groups and workshops.
INDIVIDUAL RECOVERY. The symptoms of social anxiety make it challenging for some to participate in a collective workshop. Dr. Mullen works one-on-one with a select group of individuals who are uneasy in group settings. ReChanneling offers scholarships to accommodate the costs. What is absent in group activities is provided in our monthly Graduate Recovery Group. In this supportive community, graduates interact with others who have completed the program. Contact ‘rmullenphd@gmail.com’.
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.