First, let’s talk about what causes social anxiety. Secondly, let’s think about what is happening in your brain that not only causes but also makes social anxiety worse and keeps it going. And, of course, number three are your four tips or strategies to reduce and eliminate social anxiety.
What causes social anxiety?
We know from science that anxiety is a brain-based challenge. That means when we feel anxious our brain is using excessive fast, high energy. It’s called high beta, and it is the electrical energy that’s going very fast in your brain. When your brain feels calm and focused It’s using slower medium speed energy that makes it so that you can feel calm and engaged and not nervous or anxious. As the energy increases and goes faster, then you will suffer from anxiety. If you struggle with anxiety in general, it means that your baseline, the level of high beta that your brain is using, is higher than someone who doesn’t struggle with anxiety. If you struggle with social anxiety, it means that that level shoots up very quickly in certain social situations. Obviously, the cause and what’s happening in the brain are intermingled here.
We know what’s happening in your brain, but the cause can be a trigger. The triggers are different social situations that make the high fast energy go from zero to sixty. It amps up your brain to this very, very fast speed and makes you feel overwhelmed and anxious.
The first step is to think about what those triggers might be. National Institute of Health states that for many people, social skills are underdeveloped. When you go into these social situations and you don’t know how to deal with them, it gives you more anxiety. And again, that goes hand in hand, too, because we know when social skills are underdeveloped, it can lead to a brain that’s using that faster high energy because the skill set to deal with socialization isn’t there. The cause is this higher baseline of anxiety and faster spikes of anxiety in certain situations.
4 Brain Tip Strategies to Reduce Social Anxiety
1. Make a plan
I know it sounds strange, but honestly, I make a plan any time I go out socially. I want to know who’s there. I kind of plan the things that I’m going to talk about. If I’m going into certain situations, I have a skill set that I have developed to be able to handle those situations. If you’ve heard me talk before, you may know that I don’t really enjoy socializing.
I know you think it’s weird because I make a lot of videos. I love teaching and I love talking to people on camera. Now, socializing with them? Not so much. So, having a plan helps me. This is what I encourage you to do so that you have a plan.
First of all, figure out which situations are the most stressful for you. For example, if it’s going to the grocery store, if it’s going to parties or to gatherings, make a list of the situations that are the most anxiety provoking for you.
This is strategy number one, making your plan. Then, when you figure out what those specific situations are, make a plan to develop the social skills to become better at those situations. I’m going to give you an example in a minute.
Just having the plan can’t take you from where you are struggling with social anxiety to being a master of that situation. We need to scaffold you there. That is a therapeutic technique which takes you from where you are and baby steps you into feeling like a master of that domain.
If you struggle socializing with people in general here is an example. Maybe when you go to the grocery store, you’ve got your head down and you go to the self-checkout. Perhaps the next time you go, you make a plan to get into the line and to chat with the cashier. That’s a safe environment, safe-ish for someone with social anxiety. The great thing about this exercise is the amount of things that you will talk about is reduced to a very minimum amount of things.
I was at the grocery store yesterday.
The person said to me, “How’s your day going so far?”
That was very nice of that person to start socializing with me because I didn’t start socializing with them.
I said, “My day is going great. How about yours?”
And then that person told me about their day. And then, they made a comment about something I was buying. I was like, “Yeah, that’s for my kids. I thought they would enjoy that snack.”
It’s a safe place that you can have a limited pool of things that you’re going to talk about, and you can prepare them ahead of time. They’re the safe things like the weather, something that you’re buying, something that you’re doing later, or just ask that person and have them tell you. Come up with a set of three questions.
How was your day today? And actually, I did ask the cashier, “How long are you here today?”
It was at like 4:00pm. He said he’s there till 10:00 p.m. And I said, “Well, you still have a long time ahead of you. Will it slow down as the night goes on?”
Obviously, it will, right? But it gave him the opportunity to say, “Yeah, it usually slows down after six and then I’ll do this, that and the other thing.” It’s a limited pool of things to talk about.
2. Box Breathing
When you control your breath, it slows down your heart rate and it slows down that fast, high energy in your brain. If you can feel it rising in those situations, you can bring it back down through box breathing.
Now, box breathing goes like this. You can do it at three or four seconds is usually the best way.
- Inhale for three seconds
- Hold for three seconds
- Exhale for three seconds
- Hold for three seconds
You can do it for three or four seconds. Whatever is most comfortable for you. The longer you do it and the slower that it is, the more the likelihood that it’s going to reset your brain from that rising energy and to bring it down. It’s especially helpful in those moments.
You get up to the cashier and you take a nice box breath. Try not to make it strange because then it’ll add to the anxiety. You can just do it internally.
Social gatherings tend to be very anxiety-provoking for many people. When I’m in a social situation. I will enter a room and say hello to every single person and I will have to gain the strength to be able to go introduce myself. I always ask people, So how do you spend your time. They can answer it with work? They can answer it with social activities, they can answer it any way they want. I say, “Hi, I’m Trish. Nice to meet you. What do you do to spend your time?” Super easy introduction. I work the entire room with that line.
And then I’m off the hook to go do what I want, which is hang out in a corner with my friends. That is my strategy. Another strategy can be have your own gathering. Have a gathering with a safe, small number of people that you feel good with and invite one new person so you can try these social skills.
Those two skills can really help you in social gatherings.
3. R.A.K.E. Random Acts of Kindness Everywhere
Not only will it help you in social situations, it improves that baseline high data energy. We know when we give and when we do things for other people, it can reset that energy baseline.
Random acts of kindness everywhere means you take the opportunities to do kind things for people. It can be in a social way, or it can be in a nonverbal way. But it starts to teach your brain to interact with other people in a positive way. You can hold the door for someone. And yes, they’ll probably thank you. Then you will tell them, “you’re welcome.” But that’s the extent of the interaction. The more you do that, you get used to engaging with other people, and it can really help you out.
4. Brain Training
I would be totally remiss if I didn’t mention brain training. Brain training is the number one thing that you can do to lower that baseline overall, and it will help improve your anxiety, social situations, and will always help you to feel calm and focused.
We know that social anxiety is linked to spikes in cortisol in the afternoon. So, if you use brain training either in the morning or in the afternoon, it will help to reset those cortisol spikes.
Cortisol is the hormone of stress that’s associated with that high fast energy. Brain taining will reset it on a daily basis or every other day, lowering your baseline. The next time you go into a social situation after you’ve done brain training it’s not going to be as anxiety provoking as it was before you started doing brain training.
Now, brain training is very easy and simple these days. At home, you use the Muse headband. You see videos about it on my YouTube channel. You can purchase it with this link and save 15%. It’s an amazing deal.
It’s an investment because it’s typically $249 in the United States. They do have an international store that you can purchase it worldwide and it converts the currency. It’s easy peasy using the link above. And right now, at the publishing of this blog post, it’s on sale for $80 off. It’s just $170 for a limited time.
I encourage you to get one. The way that you use it is you wear it on your head. It has five sensors that go across the frontal lobe two in the temporal lobe, and you listen to a soundscape
I just did one. You can look on my Instagram @DrTrishLeigh. I’ve done a few of them lately. I posted them to show examples of the graphs that the brain training headband produces. What you can see in mind is that my brain was able to come down, down, down from being on overdrive. I was working. So, it wasn’t exactly anxiety for me, but it was a rise in high, fast energy because of all the thinking that I was doing. I was able to bring that down within five minutes.
There’s another session there that’s almost eleven minutes, and you can see how it comes down. I leave the session in a more focused and definitely a calmer state. You can see that on the graph. The way that it works as you put the headband on all those sensors feeds you back auditory information on how your brain is performing and the choppier the sounds are the more active or anxious your brain is. The calmer the sounds are. It means the calmer and more focused your brain is. By listening to the sounds, your brain recalibrates that electrical energy it teaches your brain.
It doesn’t put anything in, and it’s all natural, and completely holistic. It’s the number one thing that you can do to ward off social anxiety, so I encourage you to go for it. OK. Hope that helps out. The link is here grab that headband.
If you’re interested in learning how to use it. I have a program called Brain Training 101. It’s only $49. It’s super affordable, and it’s an easy way for you to learn how to use that headband. OK? Until next time, control your brain. Or it’ll control you.
