Social anxiety can feel overwhelming, especially when it keeps people from enjoying daily activities and connecting with others. While it’s common to feel nervous in social settings from time to time, social anxiety goes beyond shyness or nervousness.
It involves intense fear or worry about being judged, embarrassed, or rejected in social situations. The good news is that some gentle techniques and approaches can help people work through these feelings and begin overcoming social anxiety.
Understanding Social Anxiety
To begin managing social anxiety, it helps to understand what triggers it and how it affects the body and mind. At its core, social anxiety often stems from an overactive fear response in the brain.
People with social anxiety may feel like they’re on alert, fearing embarrassment, judgment, or negative evaluation in certain or most social settings. This can trigger what’s known as the “fight, flight, freeze, appease, dissociate or flop” response—survival mechanisms that are meant to protect us but can go overboard in everyday interactions.
Anxiety is essentially the brain’s (aka nervous system) way of trying to alert us that there’s danger that’s been detected. This is not always an accurate system and sometimes our brain gets it wrong- when this happens, it’s usually associations from past experiences that were stressful or traumatic.
Fortunately, there are approaches rooted in neuroscience that can help ease and even resolve this heightened state of alertness. For example, mindfulness and polyvagal theory are two powerful ways to calm the nervous system and support the process of overcoming social anxiety.
Practicing Mindfulness to Manage Social Anxiety
Mindfulness is a practice that involves paying attention to the present moment with curiosity and without judgment. It helps shift focus away from worries about the past or future and encourages a non-judgmental awareness of what is happening right now.
For people dealing with social anxiety, this can be a helpful tool to break the cycle of overthinking and self-criticism.
By tuning into the present moment, it becomes easier to notice the physical sensations and emotions tied to social anxiety without becoming overwhelmed by them. Practicing mindfulness might involve:
- Body scans: Taking a moment to scan the body from head to toe and noticing any tension or discomfort can help reduce stress and anxiety. By simply making contact with your awareness to your inner experience, this may help your anxiety to soften.
- Compassionate or non judgmental noticing: Instead of overthinking or overidentifying with the experience of social anxiety, inviting yourself to offer care and acceptance that this is a difficult experience.
- Mindful open awareness: By taking a few moments to allow then label inner and outer experiences (eg thinking to yourself “sound” when you hear a sound or “thinking” when you notice thoughts) and bringing attention to each inner experience may bring a sense of calm and help one overcome the anxious thoughts that tend to arise in social settings.
Mindfulness can take some practice, but even short moments of awareness can make a big difference in overcoming social anxiety. The goal isn’t to force the anxiety away but to create space for it without letting it take control.
Support for Social Anxiety Using Polyvagal Theory
Polyvagal theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, offers another important perspective on overcoming social anxiety. This theory explains how the vagus nerve—a key part of the body’s nervous system—plays a major role in how we react to stress and social interactions.
According to polyvagal theory, the vagus nerve helps regulate our body’s response to both safety and danger. When someone feels safe and socially connected, the “ventral vagal” pathway is active, leading to feelings of calm and security.
But when someone feels threatened or unsafe, the body can go into a “fight or flight” or “shutdown” response.
One of the most important aspects of overcoming social anxiety is learning how to activate the ventral vagal system which can more likely create a sense of safety and calm. Techniques that can help with this include:
- Social engagement in safe settings: Determining ahead of time that a social situation is more likely to be safer than dangerous and then assessing in the moment can be useful so as to identify degrees of safety or danger. This can help to discern whether the anxiety is a real or a false alarm.
- Using Vagal Anchors: Creating a set of repeatable tools that help to ground in the ventral state, or bring ventral energy into a survival state can make a big difference in finding resiliency in an anxious moment
- Noticing and Naming: By using a mindful noticing while naming the current nervous system state, this can help us orient and ground ourselveswhile connecting compassionately to our inner experience.
Polyvagal theory reminds us that social anxiety is not simply a mental issue but one that involves the body’s entire nervous system. Understanding this can help individuals be more compassionate toward themselves and patient in the process of overcoming social anxiety.
Gradual Exposure to Social Situations
Another key approach to overcoming social anxiety is gradual exposure. This involves slowly and gently facing the social situations that trigger anxiety in a controlled and supportive way.
It’s important to start small, perhaps with a situation that causes only mild anxiety, and work up to more challenging situations over time.
For example, someone might start by practicing small talk with a trusted friend before moving on to more challenging environments like group settings or public speaking.
The idea is to build confidence gradually while also using techniques like mindfulness and polyvagal strategies to stay grounded.
Shifting Self-Talk and Challenging Negative Thoughts
Social anxiety often involves negative self-talk, such as thoughts like “I’ll make a fool of myself” or “Everyone will think I’m awkward.”
These thoughts can make social interactions feel much more stressful. However, with practice, it’s possible to challenge and reframe these thoughts.
One technique is to ask, “Is this thought based on fact, or is it just a fear?” For instance, if someone thinks, “People will laugh at me if I speak up,” they can consider past experiences.
Has this really happened before? If so, was it as bad as feared? In many cases, these negative thoughts are more about fear than reality.
Learning to treat these thoughts with curiosity instead of believing them can be a powerful way to start overcoming social anxiety. By recognizing that anxious thoughts aren’t always accurate, it becomes easier to approach social situations with a bit more confidence and ease.
Building Self-Compassion and Understanding
One of the most helpful approaches in overcoming social anxiety is the practice of self-compassion.
Social anxiety can be difficult and isolating, but that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the person experiencing it.
Treating oneself with kindness and understanding that social anxiety is a response the body is having to perceived danger can make the journey much easier.
Self-compassion practices might include:
- Affirmations: Repeating kind, supportive phrases to oneself, such as “It’s okay to feel anxious; I’m still worthy of connection.”
- Journaling: Writing down thoughts and feelings without judgment can help you process them and gain clarity.
- Connecting with others who understand: Talking with a therapist or joining a support group can create a safe space for healing and growth.
Noticing Reinforcements
Usually when dealing with any type of anxiety, there are conscious or unconscious behaviors we do to try to bring relief to the anxious feeling that may actually reinforce our brain’s perception of danger.
For example, if I start to feel anxious in a setting with people I’m meeting for the first time who are genuinely treating me kindly and warmly, and I tend to stop talking and not engage or leave the situation quickly out of a feeling of anxiety, these behaviors are likely signaling to my brain that the danger cue it picked up on was a “real alarm” and will alert again in a future setting. By acting on the instinct to “flight” or “freeze” and going along with them, this is reinforcing a message to your brain that the behavior is needed and helpful.
By noticing the things you do in direct response to that feeling of anxiety and challenging them, not doing them or “doing the opposite” can start to send new signals to your brain that the danger signal isn’t helpful or needed. Your brain can then learn over time to stop sending the signal in connection with the perceived cues.
Conclusion
Overcoming social anxiety doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s not about reaching a state where anxiety is completely gone. It’s about learning to manage and work with anxiety in ways that allow for healthy risk taking that leads to connection and joy in life.
Techniques like mindfulness, practicing polyvagal tools, gradual exposure, shifting negative self-talk and noticing reinforcements can provide powerful support in the healing process.
As individuals work through the challenges of social anxiety, it’s helpful to remember that progress might be slow and uneven at times. Despite this, it is still possible to make lasting changes and find new ways to experience social situations with more and more ease and connection.
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