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The Pros and Cons of a Social Anxiety Support Network
No comments · Posted by Steve in Social Anxiety Treatment
I’ve been meaning to write this article for some time now and just recently decided to get down and do it. First off I wanted to give some examples of some social anxiety support networks out there. Here are just a few:
I want to make this clear. I’m not advocating these sites I’m simply providing examples of what I mean in this post.
The Pros…
In the title of this post I said “pros and cons”. I’m not completely against social support networks, but I do believe that they are good for only a small number of people and a small number of issues.
Who can they help?
Social support networks can help those kind of people who are desperately searching for someone to talk to. Sometimes you need someone who understands what you’re going through and you can benefit from this. The Samaritans for example run a suicide line 24 hours and they are constantly talking people out of taking that one last final step that ends it all. Often on these forums you will find people who really should consider a career in counseling or something similar because they are so experienced in getting people out of danger zones.
What they could be used for
I think one of the major benefits of these forums is that they are a great place to review treatments. I find a lot of this going on already but I will come back to this later. If for example someone finds something that works really well they can let everyone know about it so that they can try it too.
All humans need contact
Humans are a social animal. We have been evolving around each other for millions of years now, bottom line is that on some level we NEED each other. That is sometimes hard to believe with all the killing, violence, and crime going on but it’s true. We all need to interact on some level. For those with social anxiety sometimes the only way they are able to interact is text on a computer screen.
The Cons…
Despite the good things about social anxiety support networks I still don’t think they are an especially good idea in my experience. During the time when I was overcoming my own social anxiety I didn’t once need to use one of these forums. When it comes to personal change you have to get focused on improving yourself to the point that you become happy. Often these forums can skew your perceptions and you aim to achieve a level of happiness that other people want, not that YOU want.
100% of people on social anxiety support forums are stuck
In my experience of hundreds of hours looking through posts on these networks, I have yet to find anyone that is posting about how got over social anxiety or social phobia and are now living a happy contented life. What I do see is people with thousands upon thousands of posts to their names and years after realising they have these conditions they are still no closer to finding a way out. They have been through drugs, counselling, cbt, hypnosis and all the other myriad of techniques that don’t work. It is also my experience that these people have become so ingrained to their way of being that they don’t actually want to change anymore, they have found ways to avoid their problems that leaves them believing they are happy when one look at their posts say otherwise.
New ideas are shot down
The number of techniques out there to get over social anxiety is scary. You could spend a lifetime (and about 100 lifetimes worth of cash) and still not cover everything. When someone goes through a number of non-working techniques they often come to the opinion that nothing is ever going to work. Sadly when you put a number of these people together all ability to become creative in any way is immediately destroyed. I am someone who got over their social anxiety and I know what it takes to get there. On many occasions I have posted my views on these networks and every time I have been met with hostility and flame. For someone just joining they are dooming themselves to failure if they accept the advice given because it is clouded in someone else’s perception that nothing will ever really work.
I leave it to you to decide…
I have come to realise in the field of personal change that you can never force someone to change, you can provide them with a map and a path but they have to walk down it. If you suffer from social anxiety I offer you the opportunity to try out these forums, if you do I will see you in a few years still stuck in exactly the same (or worse) position than you’re in now. If however you wish to follow the no bullshit advice of someone who actually took the steps to get rid of his social phobia then get yourself a copy of the 3D Mind and start changing TODAY!
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