The wedding of Anna’s sister is approaching. She is the maid of honor but the thought of walking down the aisle all dressed up made her shiver. She wouldn’t even want to attend the rehearsal and mingle with the other members of the wedding entourage. She gets red all the time and her hands begin to shake whenever she is faced with people. Anna even walks with her head down whenever she sees people around.
Most often, people tend to be self-conscious or nervous on occasions where there are new faces or there is a crowd. They experience this whenever they are asked to give a speech or they will face an interviewer for a new job. This is what we call social phobia or social anxiety. However, this is not just about occasional nerves or shyness. When a person has social anxiety disorder, you have intense fear of getting embarrassed. The fear is so intense that you will find ways to avoid situations that will cause this feeling.
When the person has social phobia disorder he has the fear of being scrutinized, embarrassed or judged in public. He has this feeling that what he’ll be doing is at par with what others do or he thought that they are talking or thinking about him. The good news is no matter how intense the shyness may be or no matter how much effort the person tries to avoid such situations, the person can still recover from this situation and lead a normal life.
Doctors cannot really pinpoint the real causes of social phobia however; experts relate the causes to psychosocial factors which includes the environment that greatly influence when a person grows. When one of the parents has social anxiety problem, it is more likely that their child may develop the same disorder. Psychologists show signs of being socially anxious through learning. When a child forgets his lines in class, her classmates tend to laugh at him who will lead to teasing from his classmates or even bullying. Though not directly a trigger, the exposure to such environment causes social phobia maybe years later in his life. Even if a person did not suffer directly from a traumatic experience, the fact that he saw a traumatic situation will have an impact to him.
Children should be socially exposed as early in their life to overcome this kind of social situation. Same thing if the child suffers from rejection of their parents grows up with critical parents or overprotective parents. Negative commentaries you think about yourself will likewise continue to run on a person’s mind as he grows. These negatives thoughts about you cause a person to experience social anxiety disorder.
On a positive note, since this social disorder is not entirely dependent of the genes, it means that it has room to overcome the social disorder.