By being able to overcome social phobia you can then start to really enjoy life that bit more even if you will probably never be the life and soul of a party. However, slight improvements can mean the world to someone who suffers from this particular type of phobia and what follows are just some ways to start to overcome the problem.
How to Overcome Social Phobia
It may also be worth pointing out at the start that there is of course no guarantee of each approach working for everybody that suffers from it as recover is often quite a personal thing.
Using a therapist and cognitive-behavior therapy.
One of the most popular methods, if the person is able to actually do it, is to see a therapist as there are several options available when using a therapist. The main one is called cognitive-behavioral therapy and this is where the person with the phobia is gradually exposed more and more to it, but in a controlled manner, so they can see that they are indeed able to deal with various situations better than they initially believed. This can often reap fantastic results for a lot of people; however, there are other ways in which social phobia can be tackled.
The self-approach method and setting goals.
One of the best ways to actually overcome this particular phobia is by setting yourself small personal goals that will not cause you too much stress to achieve and do so on a regular basis. Look at writing down a list of different situations and how anxious they make you feel on a scale of one to ten and then start at one and work your way up. Once you achieve a goal it is important to then look at how you felt and compare it to the level of fear you felt beforehand as this will help to show you that you have actually done very well indeed and should be proud of your achievements as well as then taking some confidence from it.
Talk yourself out of the anxiety you feel.
In regard to social phobia it is often the case that so much of it is due to the mind creating a false impression of what is actually happening or is likely to happen in a situation. It can, therefore, be beneficial to think about various scenarios at the event you are concerned about and try to see how the chances of things going wrong are actually pretty slim. This preparation can then lower the chances of something happening due to your anxiety, but as with the goals method do look at starting off by focusing on smaller situations and build up to those including more people.
Learn a relaxation technique that works for you.
Spend time trying to find out what kind of things actually relax you and do them before you go to an event or situation that would normally make you feel anxious. People have been known to use things such as meditation or yoga whilst for others repeating certain phrases will help to focus their mind and just help to calm down the entire body as anxiety will increase your heartbeat, make you sweat and also affect your breathing. Due to learning how to prevent it from getting worse at the start you will be able to overcome social phobia itself over time.
Learn to look for positives and not just negatives.
Finally, a big problem with social phobia is that the person will often focus on negative aspects and forget about the positives. In a number of occasions they will also tend to even create the negative in their own mind as they expect it to happen, but by learning how to look for even small positives it will help them to start to overcome the phobia itself. With this particular method it really is a case of practice makes perfect and it will then become second nature. Those are ways in which you can start to overcome social phobia and then hopefully start to improve various aspects of your life. Whilst they are apparently relatively simple things it is important to state that for a sufferer it is a major step forward in just accepting that there is a problem and to even begin to tackle it so if this is indeed you, then by reading this blog you have started on the road to some form of recovery.
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