Posts Tagged ‘Social Situation’

Use Hypnotherapy to Release the Hold of a Social Phobia

Social phobia is one of the most common anxiety disorders in which a person is scared of being in a social situation. An individual with social phobia experiences devastating anxiety that impacts all aspects of their life.  

People with social phobia are extremely self-conscious and concerned about what others may say or think about them. They are usually afraid of speaking up, out of fear that they will be judged or criticized. People with social anxiety tend to look down on themselves or suffer from low self-esteem. They are worried about being seen by others and find socializing to be very terrifying.

A person with social anxieties may seem “shy,” but in the case of a phobia, this is taken to extremes. For example, if you suffer from social phobia, you may be reluctant to make a crucial call because you’re nervous about talking on the telephone. You dial the number, but you’re so anxious that you “lock up” or forget why you called. Although it happens to everyone once in awhile, for someone with social phobia it may happen every single time, until they find it difficult to make any calls.

Perhaps it is the evening before an important meeting at work and you find yourself worried sick. You dread the thought of being in front of your boss and all your colleagues watching as you present a project or new idea. You can’t stop yourself from feeling extremely embarrassed and self-conscious. Even after the meeting ends, you can’t stop overanalyzing everything you said and did. You are afraid that you embarrassed yourself in front of your colleagues by stuttering or saying the wrong thing.

Or maybe you want to go to parties and make new friends, but you avoid socializing because you’re nervous about meeting someone new. You find crowded parties intimidating and the thought of meeting someone new frightens you. You worry about what you will say, or that you will get laughed at. You might stay at home a lot because you’re too worried about going out. These are only some of the ways social phobias can influence us.

Social phobias are overblown fears that can prevent you from achieving your career goals or fully enjoying life. But even people who realize their fears are irrational may not know how to rid themselves of their fears. People with social phobia would like to be more social and feel confident around others, but are too scared to do so. Despite their conscious desires and efforts, they cannot completely control their fears because all phobias are seated in the unconscious mind. Ericksonian hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques are the most successful phobia treatments because they work at this unconscious level.

It is often difficult for those afflicted with social anxiety to get cured because they are reluctant to visit a counselor or discuss their fear. This is why hypnosis therapy programs work well for them. The programs foster a tranquil and confidence-boosting mind frame in a privacy, without being overwhelming or intimidating.

The first part of a proper phobia program is stress relief. Hypnosis therapy is a powerful tool for eliminating your stress and anxiety. Once you are de-stressed, hypnosis techniques will form positive thoughts in your unconscious and end your fears. NLP techniques will relieve your fears by specifically targeting the thought process that causes a phobia.

In conventional hypnotherapy, specifically worded post-hypnotic suggestions are used to treat one unique phobia. Unfortunately, people have a tendency to ignore being directly told what to think or do, so conventional hypnotherapy doesn’t work very well. A deeply rooted phobia calls for a combination of NLP and Ericksonian Hypnotherapy.

Ericksonian hypnosis therapy techniques work better than conventional hypnotherapy because they use suggestions that aren’t apparent to your conscious mind, instead of direct suggestions. These suggestions are placed in discussion, in different stories and metaphors, to convince your unconscious to adopt a different line of thinking. For this reason, Ericksonian hypnosis therapy is far more sophisticated than conventional hypnotic therapy and much harder for the unconscious to reject.

A program that utilizes Ericksonian hypnosis therapy and NLP techniques can treat any phobia, in any individual. This is because multiple techniques are used together to maximize their effectiveness. People are often in awe of the seemingly miraculous changes they get through hypnotherapy. Ericksonian hypnotherapy and NLP are ideal tools to help you build confidence and overcome social anxiety so you can fully enjoy your life.

Understanding Social Phobia and How to Overcome It

Lucky are those who have a lot of friends and family surrounding them who accept and love them unconditionally. For this group of people, it may be difficult to imagine how a woman can be scared to stand in front of the line in a store for the simple fear that everyone behind is watching her. A young man, who fears rejection from the new people that he will potentially meet may not have the ability to go out and socialize. These two situations are symptoms of social phobia which is one of the most common fears that Americans face today.

Social phobia is also referred to as social anxiety where a person experiences fear when facing other people in a social situation or expresses unnecessary worry about what other people may think. Social phobia may come in the form of fear of public speaking, fear of joining a public or group gathering, extreme self-consciousness and worrying about what other people may think by expecting criticism and disapproval.

To learn more about social phobia, its effects and some of the ways to overcome social phobia, take a look at the following:

1. A person with social phobia will exhibit the following physical symptoms: stuttering or stammering, sweating, nervousness, heart palpitations, sweating, nausea, trembling and sometimes, even panic attacks. Sometimes, if a person exhibits extreme shyness in casual social situations, this may already be an early sign of social phobia.

If the quality of life is affected and a person does not have the ability to widen his or her social circle, these are the signs that a person has social phobia. Timidity, negative thinking, fear of humiliation, embarrassment and ridicule are additional characteristics that you need to look for in a person with social phobia.

2. Understand that there are several root causes for social phobia. A previous humiliating or embarrassing experience that was personally tragic for the person may lead to social phobia.

Genetic factors, a deep-seated shame or hatred of a family member or family background, psychological factors, low self-esteem and depression are some of the other causes which may lead to social phobia or social anxiety. By getting deep into the root of this psychological condition, you will be able to understand more the reason behind social phobia and take steps towards treating it.

3. Although there are neuro, medicinal and psychiatric treatments for social anxiety, prevention is still better than cure. If you are extremely shy and there is a tendency for you to develop social phobia, you could adapt a new way of thinking and do your best to overcome shyness and social phobia. Below are some tips:

-Get to the root of the problem for your shyness: low self-esteem. If you feel that your appearance is inadequate and you are extremely self-conscious when you go out, ask the help of a close friend to implement ways of enhancing your natural attributes. Even a new set of good clothes will give your self-confidence a boost so that you will feel more comfortable in social situations.

-If your social phobia stems from a bad experience in the past, or shame about your family background or a bad experience, get the help of a professional if you need to. Some people with bad experiences take comfort in anonymity which can lead to social phobia. You cannot move on to a brighter future if you are trapped in or haunted by the past.

-Always think positive. Developing a sense of pride about who you are and accepting the fact that every one of us is unique in his and her own way, then you will be able to adapt a more positive attitude and sort of ‘brighten’ up the way that you look at things. A positive overall perspective in life will attract more friends so that your social circle will widen and you will not have the tendency of melding into the background or even developing social phobia.

Social phobia is something that you need to get over if this fear does not give you a chance to develop healthy personal and professional relationships. No man is an island, and there is no better time to start than now if you want to cultivate a deeper relationship with other people, get rid of your social phobia and live a fuller and more meaningful life.