When You’re SAD About SAD: Navigating Social Anxiety Disorder
Do you or your child get debilitating anxiety in social situations?
Whether it’s giving a speech, going on a first date, or making a new friend—do you find that it feels practically impossible to work through the social jitters?
If so, you’re not alone. In fact, as many as 13% of Americans struggle with social anxiety, according to Yale Medicine.
Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is not the same thing as nervousness or shyness, though.
Social Anxiety Disorder is a diagnosable condition where the person finds it is causing distress and negatively impacting their life. With nervousness and shyness, it can be uncomfortable certainly, but it is not interfering with their ability to make friendships, perform well at work, or excel in the ways that they would like to.
SAD can cause such avoidance at times that the person feels disconnected from others, is unable to meet requirements at times (like giving a speech for a class), and they can become frustrated and disheartened by the intense level of distress that they feel when required to socialize or perform.
How does this play out day to day?
It’s helpful to start with differentiating between a general Social Anxiety Disorder diagnosis and social anxiety that is more performance based. So when it's a general presentation, the person feels intense anxiety any time there is a social situation. This can include meeting new people, going to a party, or even interacting with family and friends that they've known for awhile can provoke anxiety.
When it's performance based, they can get particularly triggered if they have to present in any way, like giving a speech, being evaluated in an interview, or being "on the spot" where several people may be watching them at once.
Our thoughts can perpetuate this process of anxiety, too.
We all have automatic thoughts and in frankly, many of them are negative. However, many people take their thoughts as absolute truths without realizing that the brain doles out these unhelpful thinking patterns outside of our control. When we take these thoughts as truth, we can quickly believe them. We buy into the idea that no one likes us, we look stupid, and we're better off not trying. This creates behavioral patterns, mostly of avoidance, if we let these thoughts get the better of us.
For those with SAD, this can mean they refrain from engaging in conversation with others, putting their hand up to ask that question, or challenging themselves to get up and speak because they have bought into the brain's running commentary that they're not good enough or worthy. Social media doesn’t help, either. For many with SAD, it's a game of comparisons and social media is rife with comparison traps. If people see others appearing more confident and social online, those with SAD can feel even more behind with how they show up online.
However, as a therapist, I see this as just one more opportunity where we can practice not avoiding and giving ourselves the permission to show up authentically as ourselves.
So how can we break out of the SAD cycle?
Making behavioral changes with SAD is key. We want to do the opposite of avoidance. We want to engage fully, or at least as much as we can. So this means that we challenge ourselves to ask our barista how their day is going and we go to that social gathering, if only for a little while. We practice making eye contact with others.
The more we can lean in, the stronger our social skills muscles become. That's worth our time and energy.
