To a person with social anxiety, going through daily public affairs is a torture. He knows that if someone initiates a talk with him in public, his voice and his hesitation would give away his fears. Going through job interviews could also be excessively painful because you know that one single wrong answer, caused by his irrational sensations of anxiety, would cause him his failure. He knows that he’ll spoil his chance to get the right job or to ask for a date, the minute he opens his mouth to speak. He knows that he would simply fail. The more he thinks about it, the more he becomes convinced that he is a “total loser”. He practices utter negativism.
This is not a case of an extremely pessimistic person though. This is a case of someone who is debilitated by his incapacity to function well in the society, someone who has social anxiety disorder. Most commonly, people with social anxiety disorder dread the prospect of speaking in public or the generalize anxiety on attending social gatherings. Rare cases of social anxiety disorder involve the fear of using public comfort rooms or of eating out.
Social anxiety disorder ranks third in the list of psychological problems not only in America but worldwide. But even with its extensive effect among people, it is still among the least understood disorders even by mental health professionals. In reality, misdiagnosis of social anxiety disorder occurs 90% of the time. Misdiagnosis, as we all know, lead to damaging experiences that might cause someone to be crippled for life.
Being labeled as schizophrenic, personality disordered or manic-depressive mainly because of certain shortcomings in the diagnosis of a person with social anxiety disorder could mean more trouble than what is originally present. Thus, it is but inevitable for someone to get hooked in severely aggravated feelings that might destroy his entire mental health. But maybe this is the worst part of all: unlike other psychological diseases, social anxiety disorder does not come and go. If you are socially anxious today, you might be sucked by the same condition for a lifetime.
The main symptoms of social anxiety disorder are as follows:
• Persistent fear of public scrutiny
• Panic attacks due to exposure to social situations that provoke anxiety
• Personal awareness on the lack of basis for the excessive or unreasonable fear when in social situations
• Distress, avoidance or anxious anticipation of the feared performance in public
• Persistence of these symptoms for about 6 months or more
However, like all other physical and psychological disorder, social anxiety disorder also has its share of secondary symptoms.
For example, a person with this disorder could not write in public due to the fear that people would be staring at her and thus, criticize her penmanship or the way her hand shakes. She might also be very anxious about eating or drinking in public that she would refuse to attend social gatherings because people might laugh at her when the glass or the spoon suddenly slips form her mouth. Also, she fears that a rather indistinct part of her body is odd looking that it could be the focus of other people’s attention. all of us may have felt this same fear once in a while but patients of social anxiety disorder experience it everyday.
While she may have these certain perceptions about herself and other people, she still understands that what she feels is irrational and has no concrete basis. She knows that people are not critically judging her. She also knows that not everyone wants to humiliate or embarrass her. At the back of her mind, she is also aware that she is exaggerating her feelings and her thoughts. But, in spite of the fact that she knows the irrationality of her behavior, she is still helpless in controlling them. In the end, like in most anxiety disorders, she is being controlled of her psychological incapacitation.
But there is help available for people suffering from this disorder. And while we have said that the symptoms are chronic, there are still various techniques that could help alleviate the person from the development more extreme states of social anxiety disorder.
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