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> The WORST thing you can do for social anxiety (or any anxiety) is to avoid trigger it No point triggering for the sake of it. You need to bring the socially
by GDC7 5y ago
> The WORST thing you can do for social anxiety (or any anxiety) is to avoid trigger it
No point triggering for the sake of it.
You need to bring the socially anxious person in a very easy enviornment.
A scenario in which they can easily "win" the social setting.
Like a pre-season friendly game against a minor league team. You put 30 runs on them, and of course you'll start the season full of swagger.
It's called the "winner effect"
Social anxiety is essentially triggered by not being in control of social outcomes.
Repeated winning outcomes do lower the need to be in control and thus should reduce anxiety
- Domenic_S 5y ago> No point triggering for the sake of it. Actually there is, if it's contextualized correctly. It's called Exposure Therapy [0] and it's scientifically proven to help phobias/anxiety/fears. Avoiding the anxiety-provoking situations makes things worse. [0] https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/exposure-therapy https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/exp...
- GDC7 5y agoI don't think people would ever become accustomed to being losers. It might work for fear of flying or heights But being in a social setting and trying to penetrate into the "in crowd" and being rejected would only make things worse. You need a controlled environment to exogenously make the socially anxious person "in" so that they then have enough momentum and confidence to go out in the real world and go through an X amount of rejections on their way to thier first real win. If they lose confidence before achieving a real win because the X amount of rejections is too high , then you gotta go back to the controlled environment. It's basically like baseball with Major and Minor leagues. Minor league aces are way more confident than sluggish Major league players.
- Domenic_S 5y agowhy are you equating social anxiety with being a loser?
- GDC7 5y agoSocial anxiety spurs from not being popular or commanding a presence in a room, not being in the "in" crowd. In short it spurs from not being a winner. The socially anxious person maybe knows at the intellectual level that social wins can be achieved by working the numbers game, but they are too apathetic or nihlistic or scared that their first attempt is going to be a loss which will further depress them. When you immerse the socially anxious person in a controlled environment you make sure that his first attempt is a Win, and the second and the third and the fourth etc. And you make them win enough times that they maybe venture into hubris, so that they have a full tank to go into the real world and face the natural X amount of rejections and losses which comes before a win.
- tayo42 5y agoI don't get what a social win/loss is?
- GDC7 5y agoAgain success, dominating the room, being at the center of the attention at parties, people being receptive when you go talk to them, after the aforementioned positive reception also showing openess for a second encounter.
- raxxorrax 5y agoBut when you get caught in curating the environment that leads to a "win", it would probably hit strongly the other way. I disagree about the win/loss theory in general though. I think it is really a dissonance about what people expect and value in in or out groups. Someone afraid to speak up in certain groups might be quite outgoing in another. So there isn't really an absolute level of success. There are also very successful people that are anxious. Expectations towards yourself play a large role though.
- GDC7 5y ago> But when you get caught in curating the environment that leads to a "win", it would probably hit strongly the other way. Everybody curates their environment, people just do so unconsciously and without realizing it. An American movie star might dominate the room in Los Angeles...but they'd find a hard time even speaking to people in Iran, and if they are recognized people would be hostile towards them.
- watwut 5y agoExposure therapy is not the same as randomly triggering the person. It is not going into situations where you will fail either. It is quite deliberate process where you expose person to dose the the person can handle with some difficulty and then you give them break to recover.
- Domenic_S 5y agoThere are many strategies and pacing that exposure therapy can take (the link I provided has several examples); the slow, deliberate process you describe is one of them, as is what's being described upthread.
- watwut 5y agoIf you don't do it deliberately, it is not therapy tho. And there is effect of becoming oversensitive when encountering strong stressor randomly and often. I stead of getting less sensitive people can start reacting more aggressively at smaller threat.
- Domenic_S 5y agoSaying to yourself, "I will respond with 1 line of dialog to the next person who hits me up" is deliberate, although the event itself will come randomly. Your train of thought here reflects classic avoidant behavior -- it's not therapeutic unless I'm in control of all the variables. Certainly you're correct depending on the type of fear being extinguished -- dropping buckets of spiders randomly on someone afraid of spiders isn't likely to help things at all, nor is dropping someone with GAD in the middle of a crowded concert -- but for the particular phobia (social anxiety) and exposure (small talk with strangers in public) we're talking about in this thread, it's definitely the low-stakes kind of exposure exposure therapy aims to provide.