The Truth about SOCIAL ANXIETY

SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Underground Confidence with Shelly Treacher. Today I'm going to be talking about social anxiety and how that's relative to COVID. But first I have a request. I've been asked to comment on affecting loved ones and asking for support. Both of these are big subjects, so I might talk about asking for support separately in its own podcast. But affecting loved ones is right on cue for today's subject. Not having any more details, I can only guess how this person feels affecting their loved ones. So that would be my first inquiry actually. How do you feel your comfort eating does affect someone else? And is that actually accurate, first of all? Do you hear that they are worried about you? Or the deeper side of this, are you experiencing that they might be hurt by your avoidance of intimacy or feeling critical of you? These things come back to needing to understand yourself, so that there can be honest communication and assertiveness if need be. If they are worried about you, you could work through it together. If they are feeling neglected, much needs to be understood and worked through to the point of being ill to work on it together. And if you are feeling criticized, there's a lot to understand about your self-worth and how you might criticize yourself. And then how you might stand up for yourself. Which neatly brings us to the part about asking for support. This is difficult for the emotional ether. I've partly talked about this in all of my podcasts about relationship in the last few weeks, but the turning point comes when you're able to acknowledge how you feel and can express it. First, you may need to find a way to feel worthy of receiving support, which is something that may take a while to work through. You may have a belief that you don't, or that other people can't, or that you shouldn't need it. All of these may be things you learnt to believe in from your history. It's going to be hard to receive or ask for support if you believe you can't have it. So first you have to open up to it being possible for you, and even your right to expect it. Remember I said that secure people expect to get their needs met? That's where you have to get to. Which may involve uncovering your blocks to asking for support or being worthy of support. As usual, and because I'm human just like you, I have an example of this in my own life this week. Recently my partner went on holiday, and he was absorbed in something that he really loves doing, and that was extremely physically exhausting. I didn't really know that. I wasn't aware of how absorbed he was, and so I didn't really understand why he wasn't responding to me. And I realized on reflection when we talked about this afterwards, that a part of me thought that he just didn't care about me. And this goes back to, well maybe I'm not worth caring for. That script that so many of us have. The turning point came for us when he it dawned on him first, actually. He said, So do you really think that I don't care about you and that I'm on holiday thinking, oh I wish you wouldn't contact me because I'm just not interested? And I realized in that moment that yeah, that is actually what I'd been thinking, which now we've talked about it seems insane. But of course it's not insane, it's the triggering of childhood abandonment, this irrational response and impulse that comes up so often when your child turns up and runs the show. We're often thinking this, that someone doesn't care about us when we really need support. And it's often not true. So the way through is to understand that you deserve support and to ask for it from someone who wants to give it. As I've said, I will talk more about this again soon. But now let's turn to social anxiety and COVID. I have a little bit of help with my admin and social media now that I've got way too much for me to handle on my own, from a lovely lady in the Philippines. One day she told me that there were 19,000 cases of COVID being reported every day where she was, and that only one designated person in each household was allowed out, and this was for about a month or a few weeks. This is a really stark and challenging existence. We've been challenged like never before in being alone or with the same people every day. As I've said before, we need other people in order to co-regulate or to heal. So during COVID we may have become very self-reliant, and we may have shut down to some extent to cope. It would be natural to be struggling and awkward with social contact right now, so don't feel like you're strange if that's what you're feeling. It's easily possible that many of us have developed social anxiety, having been isolated from others for so long. As such, we might have a natural inclination to stay indoors. I had a client recently who said that it felt unreal when she met with her friends. And I've experienced that too. I went dancing the first time I went, it all felt so surreal. It was like these people weren't real in front of me, and I had to keep telling myself that this was real. And I remember also feeling the same when we were first allowed out of lockdown. That first hug was so moving and important, but also it felt really awkward. And we were all really awkward with each other, actually, after so little social contact with the outside world, we didn't really remember how to talk to each other, and so we blurted out ridiculous things. It was kind of fun actually in these lovely relationships that I have with my friends. Um but it was also awkward, and so we might all be experiencing something like that at the moment as we uncomfortably come out of social isolation. When we first started to lift the restrictions in England, a lot of my clients felt a mix of pleasure at being able to socialize and a deep-seated fear of it. Now people seem to be slowly moving into socializing more, but there is still this background of uncertainty and the assessment of risk, and some social readjustment and awkwardness going on. During lockdown, after the initial shock, we adjusted. Many of us found that lockdown provided us with the opportunity to focus on what really matters to us and what comforts us. We had only our needs to focus on. This came as a relief to some. Being out of practice socially, this social awkwardness, may be the fear of being judged or criticized, and ultimately rejected. Out in the world, there are plenty of opportunities to be triggered into a fear of rejection. We could also be afraid of not getting our needs met in company or being overwhelmed. We haven't had to worry too much about fitting in in the last year and a half. But in normal circumstances, this is a primal survival need. As I've spoken about before, ancestrally we needed to be accepted by the community in order to survive. With the releasing of lockdowns, we may fear being judged by the much larger community. As I might have said before, when I posted my TikTok Therapy Cat video about being nervous of coming out of the first lockdown, there were lots of likes and comments for this sentiment. People said things like, Thank you Therapy Cat, I'm starting to get anxious about being around lots of people, going back to the office and having to use public transport. So this was quite a general consensus. For some of us, mistrust of the government and fear of our physical safety is the issue. But on deeper exploration, many of us have other fears about going back into society too. Many of us may fear coming out of our comfort zones to face the world again. We may wonder whether it's safe enough to open up and connect on a psychological as well as a physical level. Much of the reason we're nervous is that we're dreading the idea of losing the peace, the freedom from social triggering, and the relative lack of demands. We imagine life will be full and overwhelming again, and we won't know how to stop it. Lockdown gave us the opportunity to stop responding to so many people's demands. What most of my clients are struggling with is a fear of having to take on more than they've had to in lockdown, especially in relationship. A dread of being overwhelmed again, conflict or having to say no. I am going to talk about saying no next time. We've been in our comfort zone bubbles for so long with less drama, it makes absolute sense that we'd be scared of being overwhelmed by other people right now. Many of us discovered, allowed, and enjoyed our introversion. We focused on our needs and what we wanted to do. It was a relief to only have to cope with ourselves for a change. In British polite culture, many of us find it so hard to say no. We don't like conflicts and we don't know how to handle it very well. So we often pretend to be fine when we're actually tired or grumpy. So in lockdown, we got to say no without actually having to say it. Much of the reason we might now be scared of coming out of lockdowns is because we're nervous of losing that ease and freedom. We may also have a dread of working too hard. Most people want to please, so they may feel pressure to perform beyond what they can normally do. I talked about trauma last time, but it's worth mentioning that here as well. Some of the feelings you may have experienced during COVID may include loneliness, having been stuck in a rut doing everything online or alone, coping with things alone, like a relationship breakup, and many people will have had suicidal thoughts. And now we may fear meeting people after having gone through so much without other people. As you know, I'm asked to contribute to the media every now and again, and one of the articles I made comment on in the Huff post was about fear of dining out. While this is very specific, it was representative of a common fear amongst us. As I explained in the article, one reason we may feel this way is because our physiological systems have got used to being on guard. As I was saying last week, it may take us a while to come out of the body's threat cycle response to calm down and to get back to normal because we've been vigilant and insular for so long. Social anxiety is the fear of being judged critically. Many of the self-criticisms we feel belong to societal and cultural norms. For example, I'm scared of what others think of me when I cross dress in public, speak out about my depression, walk down the street looking like this. In my line of business, this means you're already judging yourself really harshly in company. So this may need some understanding. Do you put yourself down? What unkind things do you say to yourself in social situations? Likewise, with a fear of rejection, it leads back to self-rejection. But could you be kinder to yourself? Everyone's been in their own worlds, so we may have less empathy, and people may not feel heard. As I said last time, this may echo your childhood experience, so you may be more triggerable or sensitive than you normally would. You may feel more alone and more defensive. To that end, when we finally emerge, there is no way whatever we find would make up for it. So we might be disappointed. This is all about connection, so maybe a good question to ask is who or what makes you actually feel connected at this time when you're going back into social life. What I'm seeing in my groups at this time is such relief at being able to talk with others who understand how they feel. In fact, I've adjusted the way I'm working to accommodate this much more. It's something that we may not realize that we need to heal from this period. As many of my clients are reporting, it is possible that you may quickly revert to normal with some close people and your family members. Some of that will be wonderful and much needed, and some old patterns of behaviour in relationships may be unwelcome in their return. The way we've coped in the last year leads me to wonder and to hope that we might now more care for our own mental health. As I've said before, ultimately, you deserve to feel proud of your difference and good about who you really are, whether alone or in company. There's nothing wrong with you. We are creatures who want to connect and find community. We also want to go back to co-regulation with each other. But we need to do it in our own way at this special time. Be gentle with yourself. And if I can help you to do that, check out my latest programmes on undergroundconfidence.com. Thank you once again for listening to me today. I would still love to hear from you. I'd love to respond to your requests and your questions, and to receive your comments. So please do send them to me. I will respond personally to everybody who sends me a message. I want to leave you with a quote from one of my clients. He says, somehow the thought that it happens automatically in my system gives me the seconds or the minutes I need to reassess what I really want. By becoming more mindful with what I need and being more honest with myself about what's going on inside me. This is Shelly Treacher from Underground Confidence. I'll see you next Wednesday.