You may have social anxiety if…
- you are constantly second guessing what you will say.
- Worry that you will come off weird or uninteresting.
- Over analyze conversations or constantly replaying social interactions in your head.
- Opt to work on something by yourself instead of going to a social event when you know deep down inside that it would be good for you to go.
So what do you do?
This is a multi-step process. The first step is to be aware of your fears or what are called automatic thoughts. Automatic thoughts are brief, often subconscious thoughts that we have in response to an event. For example…
You are talking to a classmate and they are talking about a Tick Talk video. You say to your classmate “Oh, that’s cool.”. Then you think to yourself “Geez, I am so uninteresting. The only thing I could come up with was that!”.
If you are constantly telling yourself that you are weird or uninteresting, you are going to make the anxiety worse.
So the answer is simple. First be aware of the messages that you are telling yourself, then check to see if you are right (HINT you do not have to believe every thought that pops into your head), and then change it.
Read my blog post The 3C’s to Learn how to do this.