What is Social Anxiety and Shyness?

Does social anxiety and shyness hold you back from fully living your life in the Bay Area? You might feel lonely as you watch other people having active social lives, traveling or creating meaningful relationships. You wish that you could be more assertive, be more confident speaking to people you find attractive, or wish that you could speak up more in work meetings. You may feel like you’re not living up to your full potential.

Social anxiety and shyness look different for everyone but in general, people who have these traits have a fear of interacting with other people to varying degrees. It may only be in group settings or it could be in one on one situations too, but letting yourself be seen and known by others as you are, scares you because you worry that you will be negatively evaluated, criticized or judged. In order to manage your social anxiety, you might force yourself to participate while feeling self-conscious, uncomfortable and anxious throughout or you might avoid the situation altogether. 

Shyness and social anxiety exist on a continuum and it may really limit your life or you just may not feel as confident as you’d like to be doing the things that are necessary for your life, such as going on a job interview or giving a presentation. You may only get anxious in situations that many people would typically get anxious doing such as giving a speech, talking to someone you like, or going to a party where you don’t know anyone. But you don’t want to avoid those types of opportunities and you wish you could feel more relaxed while doing them. 

You may find that when you’re invited to a social event, you will attend the event but are too shy to put yourself out there and strike up conversations. You might struggle to know what to say or how to continue the conversation once it gets started. You feel like everyone is silently judging what you’re saying and when you get home, you go over the conversation in your head and criticize what you’ve said.

It left unexamined, social anxiety and shyness can limit a person’s life affecting their career prospects, social connections, and intimate relationships. It can make you feel lonely, affect your self-esteem and your ability to maintain relationships because avoiding the anxiety provoking situations reinforces avoiding it the next time and the next time.

How Can Social Anxiety Therapy Help?

How can therapy help with social anxiety and shyness? In therapy, we’ll first explore how your social anxiety and shyness shows up since it looks different for everyone. Your social anxiety might look like having difficulty talking about yourself when meeting new people, on dates or even with people you have been friends with for years. In therapy you’ll be talking about yourself which is something you may not be used to. It’s a safe place to practice speaking about yourself because it doesn’t hold the same weight as other social interactions and it’s done in an accepting environment. Then we would explore what gets in the way of participating more in conversations outside of therapy and how to overcome those obstacles. 

You may struggle in social situations because you don’t know what to talk about because you have difficulty knowing yourself on a deeper level. You may not have a very developed sense of “self” which includes knowing what your interests, feelings, and aspirations are. These are things that could be explored and developed in therapy. In addition to delving into these parts of yourself in therapy, we’d also focus on practical tips and strategies of how to socialize. For example, here are some tips I wrote in a blog post about how to make friends as an adult.

Where does Social Anxiety and Shyness come from?

We would also explore where your fears and anxieties developed. Often times social anxiety and shyness developed from being bullied, rejected, ignored, criticized or shamed at a young age and this could be from peers or family members. Even if it happened at a young age, it still can have a significant impact into your adult years, especially because it happened when you were still developing.

Knowing the source of the anxiety can be helpful because understanding where your fear of the negative evaluation is actually coming from can put it into perspective. Often the thing you fear happening, the criticism, the embarrassment, the rejection has already happened. Somewhere in your past, you were criticized, rejected, or shamed for simply being yourself and so you learned very wisely, to hide yourself in order to protect yourself. But the thing that helped you survive when you were young and helpless, may not be serving you well as an adult. In fact, it may be inhibiting you from living up to your full potential. Understanding that, processing those experiences and learning in therapy how to take care of yourself in different ways can help you move forward with your life.

Finding a Social Anxiety Therapist in the Bay Area Shouldn’t be Hard

I’m a San Francisco therapist who helps people embrace their uniqueness and overcome their social anxiety and shyness. You might be a shy introvert, an anxious extrovert, a Highly Sensitive Person, or just someone who got too comfortable with not interacting with people during the pandemic and need to regain crucial social and dating skills. If you think social anxiety and shyness are inhibiting your ability to feel confident being yourself and connecting to others, contact me to see how I can help.