| Social Anxiety Disorder
(Social Phobia) |
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What Drives Social Anxiety?
We all have the fight or flight response which is designed to protect us
from harm. When the fight or flight response is activated, adrenaline is released which
produces a number of physical sensations, including rapid heart rate and breathing,
sweating, shaking, tense muscles and "butterflies" in the stomach. An urge to flee the
situation is often experienced.
This fight or flight response occurs whenever we judge a situation to be threatening.
In social anxiety this threat is a psychological one, as the fear is about not being
respected, approved of, or liked. Whilst we all desire to be liked by other people, in
social anxiety this need for approval is exaggerated and the detection of threat too
sensitive.
Imagine the following situation: you are at a dinner where you don't know many people
in the group. If you have social anxiety, you may already have been feeling anxious in
anticipation of the evening. So your fight or flight response is already activated.
Then, while in conversation with someone, you notice them glance away. You immediately
think to yourself: "They think I'm boring" or "They can see how anxious I am". By now
you can't concentrate on the conversation because you are so focused on how anxious you
are feeling and what you think the other person is thinking about you. You see yourself
through the other person's eyes. Your anxious thoughts then increase the anxious feelings
even further and so the cycle continues.
Thinking negatively about the situation after the event (the "post-mortem") triggers
further anxious feelings and tends to reinforce how badly you thought you "performed".
Negative thinking plays a major role in maintaining your anxiety response in these
situations.
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