Social anxiety can carry a lot of symptoms. Once you understand how social anxiety is created you will realise why there can be so many.
In the brain there are 2 areas that are important in understanding social anxiety. The first area is the creative/adaptive part of the brain. This is the area which is on the outside of the brain, it’s the “veiny” part that you see in a lot of brain photos and diagrams. This part of the brain deals with problem solving and thought processes. The other area of the brain is the primal part, this is one of the oldest parts of our brain, as long as we’ve been humans we’ve had the primal part. It deals with the 4 F responses, these are: Fight, Flight, Food, and Fornicate. The primal brain runs on dopamine (the feel good chemical that drug users chase) and the creative adaptive runs on serotonin.
In a normal functioning brain there will be an input through one or more of the human senses and this will trigger a switching mechanism between us doing something (the primal part is in use) and us thinking about something (the creative/adaptive part is in use). Both sections of the brain balance each other and cause us to learn and grow. In social anxiety there is a problem with the switch. There has been an event (or many) in our past that created a very strong link to the primal brain (doing something…..anxiety is a movement generating emotion) and this has also cut off our ability to connect to our creative brains thus why we have irrational fears. Because we are stuck in the primal brain we get overwhelmed by the anxiety that is generated.
When an emotion is generated in this way it creates a filter for how we look at life. We are literally looking at life through anxiety. This creates a skewed impresssion of what is really going on which leads to a great many symptoms being created.
Some of the ones that I went through are listed below.
Physical shaking.
Sweating too much.
Dread when thinking forward to places I might encounter people.
Lack of ability to think or talk.
Shaky voice.
Pounding heart.
Lots of muscular tension.
Hiding away whenever possible.
You may have these and you may have others. Hopefully by now understanding how social anxiety is created you will have a better idea of how to get over it. It is not about facing your fears, it is about reinstalling the switch that allows you to connect to the creative brain. If you have the ability to think you wont be scared.
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