Social Anxiety Support: Living with Social Anxiety Disorder

I’ve been doing well for a while and feel like my social anxiety disorder has been somewhat under control recently.  That is until this past week.  I had a big meeting to speak at for work with over 40 clients.  As they started to file into the room I could feel the tension rising.  I started having thoughts of fainting in front of them or not being able to get my words out in an intelligible manner.   As these thoughts swelled in my brain, I could feel the physical symptoms start to come on:  dizziness, sweaty palms and sweating in general.

Needless to say I was starting to get panicked that I was going to screw up the whole meeting and lose this client.  Finally, it was my time to get the meeting started and speak for about 10 minutes.  I stumbled a bit at first but forced myself to keep going.  One thing that helped me persevere was remembering that several friends have told me they can never tell when I’m feeling anxious.  Even though I feel like I’m going to burst inside, thankfully, it doesn’t appear that way to others.  However, I have had several people tell me I have sweaty palms alot.  (I try to avoid shaking hands as much as possible but it’s almost impossible to conduct business in our culture without hand shakes).

Fortunately, I made it through the rest of my presentation and was able to sit down and stay for the rest of the meeting.  However, it was very apparent to me that I need to keep working to manage this disease.  It’s probably never completely going to go away.  I can hope for that but shouldn’t expect it.  Meanwhile, this recent flare up reminded me that I need to continue to seek out social anxiety support via friends, counseling and especially working on my cognitive behavioral worksheets.   These CBT sheets may be helpful to you too, so I’ll post them for download shortly.

Hang in there–we can beat this!!!

One of the best things Social Anxiety Disorder sufferers can do is seek out a good therapist.  Studies have proven that medication alone is not enough when treating social anxiety disorder.  Psychotherapy or “talk therapy” guided by the help of a good counselor is often essential when dealing with with this disease.  However, not every mental health counselor is trained to give you proper social anxiety support.  So, it’s important to ask some questions before committing to a therapist.  Here are some good questions to ask a counselor you are considering:

1.  What percentage of people you treat have social anxiety disorder?

2.  Can you tell me the difference in symptoms between panic disorder and social anxiety disorder?

3.  Will you help me learn some techniques to change my thoughts or cognitions?  If so, what are those techniques?

As you wade into this dialogue you’ll be able to tell very quickly whether or not the therapist is equipped to help you with social anxiety disorder.  If they’re not, it does not mean they’re a bad counselor it just means you might need to keep looking until you find someone who specializes in this disorder.  Hope this helps!

Don’t Give Up!  We can beat this!