All people have social anxiety. All.
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Everyone suffers from it, but most of people 1) never diagnosed themselves so they never detected it, and 2) they found methods, routines and directions in life to keep social anxiety issues under the control.
This is why their advice sucks:
when they tell us that we are over-sensitive,
that we are weak, that we should get over it,
that we are over-imagining it,
that it is not true what we are thinking,
that we should be "strong"
Don't listen to them. (I know, it is hard not to listen due to toxic shame and external locus mechanisms).
People "without social anxiety" do feel social anxiety, too. Perhaps even more than you do! However, their methods are totally different since they never medically examined their own emotions.
The curse of psychology is that you are put in laboratory environment, and you are made into "lunatic" for having emotions and feelings. This quickly turns into toxic shame, because your psyche explain this as:
I am defective and inept
other people do not have these medical traits, so they are super normal and superior to us.
The purpose of psychology and mental health is that we realize we have capacity to trust ourselves, that we are able to make decisions on our own, without seeking approval and validation from others and that we are ok with being mistaken, wrong and embarrassed. The purpose of psychology is not that it pathologizes our honest panic reactions to trauma and problems in life. If we are not violent, and if we are not unkind to others - we are perfectly normal and healthy and functional human being. There is nothing to fix in our soul. Problem are panic attacks and fears and anxiety - which are implanted by external factor. The abuse is issue, not our reactions and triggers to abuse. Our socially anxious panic reactions of dread and imminent danger are totally normal reaction to abnormal people, abnormal events and abnormal situations. Our cognitive distortions and immature ego defense mechanisms are learned reactions from our childhood, as kids we developed these in order to survive psychological abuse and being exposed to untreated mentally ill people around us, people who were incapable of love. Child brain cannot think like adult when being exposed to relentless criticism 24/7 and being exposed to adult hysteria. Child brain will protect itself by taking on the blame and guilt in order to sooth the aggression and assaults from abusive environment. Toxic shame is the wound, stemming out of this exposure to constant and relentless maltreatment and total absence of love (aka mental health).
From our anxious perspective, especially with panic, we get so ego-centric (tunnel vision, observing life from one angle) that our brain is hijacked into panic mode - that we are unable to see outside world clearly. It is as if transparent black veil is over our face or seeing everything through the gaze or in fog. We get so panicked that we do not notice other people - who may go through difficult moments and we are unable to offer them help. We will help, serve and obey angry and abusive people in order to calm them down. We will thus attract toxic people in our lives who love needy and afraid people willing to serve and obey their masters. Social anxiety will protect us from toxicity by avoiding people and through isolation and withdrawal. If Classical CBT succeeds to remove panic symptoms - we will become people pleasers and pushovers and fawn to others. In this way, Social anxiety will still be ever present, even when being social. While Classical CBT will conclude that you are "ok" now, since you are socializing. People pleasing and fawning is a form of avoiding. You are not truly present with others, you are still very much afraid of them.
When we combine purpose of psychology and this veil over our face mixed in together we get interesting results about all people - that they too have social anxiety. Social anxiety is being sensitive enough to care about other people and be aware of others, in order to perceive other people. It becomes disorder when we start feeling inhibitions and when it stops us from living and "being out there":
So, when others tell us:
when they tell us that we are over-sensitive: actually they are extremely oversensitive themselves. However in their childhood they learned to put on mask and to pretend to be tough. Thus people who say this are fake. They lie to us. And we believe them, we think they are superior and tough - and this is exactly the purpose of this "advice". You look up to them and they control your decisions now. This is how they resolved their social anxiety in childhood, by being narcissist and mocking others, being superior to others.
When they tell us:
that we are weak, that we should get over it: Again, they have this issue themselves, buried deep inside. It is narcissistic injury, and they learned in childhood if they label others as "weak" and that other people emotions are not valid, they notices that some people (who are kind, open, friendly) react to these words. So with this "advice" they have deep social anxiety wound inside and they cover it up by pretending to be strong and superior over you. You will try to please them and to be strong, but since all people are on par, and equal, this trial of ours to achieve their upper superior level will never happen.
When they tell us:
that we are over-imagining it: It only means that they solved their social anxiety by immature ego defense mechanisms, such as: Dissociation. temporary drastic change in behavior. . Denial. avoidance of awareness of some painful reality. Displacement. taking feelings out on a neutral 3rd party. Isolation of Affect: Avoiding the experience of an emotion associated with a person, idea, or situation. From our perspective, it will seem as if they are gods, since they have this fantastic magic cure against social anxiety and panic. And that is exact purpose of this "advice" - that they feel superior to you. You have no idea from being afraid and amygdala hijacking - that you are now trauma bonded with narcissist and manipulator. From your perspective this person is "helping you" and this person appears "kind" and "nice". However all they do is they deal with their own social anxiety, toxic shame by pontification and ignoring other people to evoke toxic shame in others. When they do this, they make you into slave, someone who is silent to their future criticism and unfair treatment, since you know that you only "imagine" their gaslighting and cheap advice that only serves them.
When we get advice such as:
that it is not true what we are thinking, This is actually gaslighting. Our hunches are correct. If we feel anxiety about someone, it is most probably correct. The trick is to prepare yourself for evil, for quick conflict and to doubt anything this person who emits aura of uncomfortable feelings. Again, person who denies others will extreme social anxiety all their lives, but they learned in their abusive childhood to deal with anxiety by hurting other people through telling lies and smear campaign. Since their narcissistic injury is not being able to accept themselves as fragile person, they project this onto others, too. Out of sight, out of mind. From our social anxiety perspective, these people who give such advice will appear as better, more competent, while in the same time - we are inept and unable to trust our own instinct and intuition and common sense. And this is exactly the purpose of this "helpful" advice - invalidation and negation of our inner self, so that toxic shame takes root. As I said many times - with toxic shame inside us, psyche will export our self worth into other people. And as learned in trauma years - we will serve and be subservient to other people. And this is the goal of this advice. That you obey and serve the messenger as some kind of god entity. If you doubt them, if you criticize them and inspect their actions or moods, they will deny it and blame you for being anxious and paranoid. We are dealing with person with social anxiety too, but this person willingly chosen to engage into Dark psychology of manipulation and exploitation of others in order to control their own social anxiety wounds.
And when someone "strong" and never socially anxious give us this "advice" for our own social anxiety;
that we should be "strong" It will appear as if this person is strong and incapable of having social anxiety. But this superiority complex is part of inferiority complex. They have deep social anxiety, however they learned very early on - to deal with social anxiety you put on a mask. You build a false persona, a character and you play it. These people are extremely fragile - and they will throw temper tantrums and become even dangerous when you judge and criticize them. As we all know, basic trait of social anxiety is inability to handle criticism - but from our anxiety perspective we will explain their inability to handle criticism as them being "strong". Their rudeness and arrogance will seem as socially accepted way of treating other people. Since they are not afraid of hurting others, they appear as not being afraid to express their narcissistic rage emotions, they will appear to us as "healthy" because they appear to express themselves and they do it in social situations without any inhibitions. In reality, they suffer from deep social anxiety - they simply choose to deal with it by pretending they don't have it.
And other people- all these people who appear as "extroverts" and socially engaging and open without putting other people down - you will say there is no way that they can feel social anxiety. They do.
In their childhood they never experienced abuse so they developed functional ways to deal with their perceptions of danger and their explanations what is threatening in social situations. They will get angry and misunderstood others. We will interpret this as them being strong and socially accepted angry, but this is actually only reaction to their social anxiety. They will appear as socially outgoing, looking like super model, taking instagram selfies - this is all socially anxious based, however they learned to deal with these feelings of social anxiety by play pretend and to gain other admiration, seeking approval from others. As we all know, this seeking validation from others is at the core of social anxiety.
As I said, with panic we become ego-centric and we never break through to the other side, to see what is life like when you let go of learned mechanisms, all methods and routines we learned in our abusive childhood how to deal with social anxiety. So even when we test being socially "confident" we will soon encounter some "advice" and due to toxic shame and external locus, we will see other people as gods. This is false mechanism we developed as kids to deal with social anxiety, and we will feel irrational guilt, enforced by chemicals and hormones that will affect our thinking process, we learned helplessness like Pavlovian dogs or circus animals - not because of our choice, but because it was implanted onto us by untreated mentally ill people in our toxic environment.
So I would try to look at social anxiety as something normal and accept ourselves, self validate our emotions and reactions. We simply have to find methods and routines that work better than the current ones we are passing on from year to year since our childhood. The best methods are the simplest one - and that is method of self acceptance and self validation.
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