Help for Social Phobia: by Dublin based hypnotherapist Ailish McGrath

Bumping into someone unexpectedly you feel unnerved and out of control with ‘nothing to say’.

When the centre of attention you feel ‘on the spot’ and wish the ground would open up.

You spend a lot of time worrying about what others think of you.

You expect others to judge, confront, attack or not to like you.

Does this interest you?

Social Ease…

How would you like to feel confident in yourself regardless of where you are or who is there?
Imagine meeting people out and having fun mixing socially.
Would you like to look forward to giving speeches and even enjoy them?
Interested?….then read on

The Effects of Social Phobia (Social Anxiety), and the Use of Hypnotherapy to Treat Social Anxiety.

This is the most common problem I deal with in my clinic in Dundrum. Social phobia (social anxiety, or social anxiety disorder) is one of the most common phobias around, and certainly one of the most responsive to hypnotherapy.

Social phobia revolves around a fear of how others might see you, what they think of you, and feeling that whatever you’re doing is getting noticed by others. It can be summed up as a ‘fear of being judged’. It gives rise to our many and varied avoidance tactics, excuses and lies – when the truth is that we feel threatened or intimidated by someone or some situation and simply don’t want to feel the fear of not being accepted by others (or more importantly we feel unaccepted by ourselves).

Conversely social phobia is often times what’s behind a person’s grandiose social mask, or what can appear like someone is ‘full of it’. It is a counter-phobic tactic – those who ‘feel the fear’ and do it anyway. It is a false self – not genuine confidence – and comes from an act of ‘I don’t care what people think of me’, when really they are terrified of judgement.

If you suffer from social phobia / social anxiety, this fear becomes your own worst enemy. Indeed, you may arrange your whole life to avoid situations where social interactions may occur.

The symptoms of social phobia (social anxiety).

The symptoms produced by this condition commonly include …

Physical symptoms: dry mouth, blushing , feeling sick, shaking, feeling weak, shy bladder (inability to urinate in public toilets), stammering, diarrhoea, stuttering, sweating, having palpitations.
General emotional states: feeling intimidated, inferior, superior (counter-phobic), threatened, unaccepted, ugly, embarrassed, ashamed, low-confidence.

Ultimately, it can cause a full-blown anxiety attack or panic attack. Social anxiety also shares many similar symptoms with general anxiety. Often, when a person has social anxiety, their self esteem is low, they are lacking in confidence, they are sometimes not even able to hold eye contact.

There is usually an intense dislike of being introduced to people, often anxiety over eating / drinking in public. Often relationships suffer because one partner has social phobia and a lot of rows can result.

Social situations

The fear of social phobia is based around social / public situations, and these can range from anything such as going to the pub, to going for a meal in public, dating, going to work, family events, entertainment situations, or even a complete inability to use public toilets (shy bladder), as well as many other situations where people come into some kind of contact with others.

A particular type of social phobia is a dreaded fear of public speaking. A person may function wonderfully well in normal social situations and can be quite sociable, but give them a platform, a mic and an audience and an uncontrollable fear can take hold. It again boils down to an internal fear of being judged or not accepted / liked by others.

Those with Social phobia hate confrontation and often times will let difficult or improper behaviour continue rather that speak up. There is often a general fear of authority and a person can act quite out of character around bosses, managers and those they perceive to be powerful.

Usually a person with social phobia will manage it by avoiding social situations. However, when that is unachievable many will resort to excessive drinking or drugs just so they can relax and ‘get through it’. This obviously can lead to other problems.

All in all it is a very demoralising and debilitating phobia and causes all sorts of suffering.

Social Phobia CAN Be Helped!

Why Hypnotherapy is so successful at treating social phobia:

In psychology language social anxiety is a ‘projection’ out into the minds of others what we fear is true about ourselves, that we don’t want to have exposed. The threat of being seen through creates the anxiety.

When a person Loves themselves, has good self esteem, an inner feeling of power, worth and control they do not have social anxiety.

This is because those people are projecting out a genuine feeling of self worth and respect and they tend to assume people will think well of them, because they think well of themselves.

The solution to social anxiety therefore is to build a good self image, this is done through the course I offer.