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Why Bashing Your Head Against a Wall Will Only Ever Produce More Bruising
1 Comment · Posted by Steve in Social Anxiety Treatment
One of my favourite ways to try and change my behaviours and beliefs when I was growing up was to bash my head against a wall repeatedly. I’m not speaking literally of course that sort of thing can give you brain damage for life, unless you’re lucky enough to have walls made of feather pillows.
I’ve noticed that I’m not the only one that has tried this technique. Those of you that suffer from social anxiety as I did know what it’s like to just try and put yourselves out there, after all that’s the advice you so often hear isn’t it? “Just go and speak to them” “Try, try and try again” “Practice makes perfect!”. Not only do family (and friends if you have any) offer this “gold” advice but you hear it from doctors, therapists, teachers and all manner of other people that simply just don’t understand what happens when you do try.
I remember one experience from many years ago. I managed to force myself out to a bar with a couple of people I knew. I saw the barmaid and decided I wanted to speak to her, after all, though I was socially phobic I still WANTED to be social I just couldn’t do it. For over an hour I sat in terrific fear utterly glued to my bar stool. 1 side of my brain was trying to force me to go up and say at the very least “hello”, the other side had me stuck to the stool fearing that she would tear down my life and rip me to shreds for having the audacity of wanting to hold a civilised conversation. For that whole hour or so I actually physically shook with the effort and I never budged an inch. So what happened? Well finally the people I was with decided they wanted to leave, it was at this loss of the possibility of even saying so much as a hello that I finally pushed myself through and got the courage to say this 1 word. I looked around…. she was gone….. I sank back into my world of misery once more.
At this point you may either be able to understand exactly what I’m talking about or else you’re in complete surprise that anyone could feel this way. After all it’s just other people! Well for those of you that are in the first group let me say this: “Stop bashing your head, it will do nothing but bruise”. Instead you need to find a different way of approaching the situation. The way that I found was through the use of the 3D Mind technique, this allowed me to remove the fear filters I had in place before I even thought about being social. Thanks to this work these days whenever someone mentions a social event I’m one of the first to be interested.
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Nescio · November 8, 2009 at 3:06 pm
I suffer from it, I am still a part of the first group..
that was very insightful, good enough to persuade me.. I’ll look more to this 3D Mind technique