Many people suffer from social anxiety. For those that do, in order to avoid the emotional, mental, and spiritual pains that social anxiety brings, people often stay home, or stick to people and activities they know and trust. Not to mention they often use prescription drugs, or substances like alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco to deal with the symptoms of social anxiety.
I know what that's like, because I used to identify as someone with social anxiety. It sucks.
However, there were moments in my life where social anxiety seemed to disappear, and I was free to be whoever and however I was in the moment, without a single inkling of judgment to account for. After getting a taste of freedom from social anxiety, my goal was to get educated on what caused those moments of freedom to occur, and how I can be there more often than not.
I am happy to say that I've gotten to the point where I am more open and free to experience life fully than I am ridden by the experience of social anxiety. In fact, I don't identify with social anxiety at all anymore, it's a pretty dis-empowering label.
Now, if I do ever start experiencing old symptoms of "social anxiety" I recognize it as being identified with the mind (the ego). Then I do whatever I need to do to snap out of it.
In this post, I'll share with you my experience of transcending social anxiety, as well as a practical pathway to freedom, so that you can do it too if you so desire.
It is my sincere intention that this post be the one that frees you from the story and experience of "social anxiety" and allows you to BE and live a full life.
The Breakdown of This Post
- What Social Anxiety Was Like For Me: First, I'll share with you a brief description of what social anxiety was like for me, to see if you relate. That way you know that what I'm describing as social anxiety is in fact what you are also experiencing (and if it's not, hopefully the post brings you value anyways).
- The Root Cause of Social Anxiety: Second, we'll identify the two root causes of social anxiety, as discovered through my own self-study and experiences.
How to Transcend Social Anxiety: Lastly, we'll go over how to transcend social anxiety, which will be broken down into two parts.
BONUS: At the end of the post, there will be a number of resources where you can get educated on the mind and how to enter the present moment (the key to freedom!)
What Social Anxiety was like for me
My social anxiety went like this: "In the world, I must be something I'm not. By myself, I am free to be what I am."
What that looked like is staying home, by myself, where nobody's energy or expectations enter my space. Cause being in public, being with people, I'd have to be fake and put up an image, and hide who I am and what I do. With social anxiety, I can't open up to anyone. It's just too much.
Furthermore, the constriction in my chest and throat are what I live to avoid. That feeling of being suppressed and muzzled. The overwhelming feeling of being insecure and uncertain about myself and what other's think of me. NO THANKS. I'm staying home and smoking weed!!!
(Sound familiar?)
The Root CAuse of Social Anxiety
- being disconnected from the body
- being identified with the mind and its delusions
Other sources might say differently. Like it has to do with your chemical make, your genetics, or maybe even some past trauma. All are valid, all definitely correlated with social anxiety.
However, as someone who used to suffer from social anxiety, and is now free from it, I can tell you from experience that it is primarily the identification with your delusional mind, coupled with a total disconnection from your body and feelings, that fuels the experience known as social anxiety
How to Transcend Social Anxiety
I'll be honest, it took years of self discovery and inner work to disentangle the emotional, spiritual, and mental delusion known as Social Anxiety. I don't expect anyone to read this post and be immediately cured of their social anxiety. However, I do intend to create a pathway to your ultimate freedom with this post. It's the most important thing to me.
As we identified earlier, the two root causes of social anxiety are (1) being disconnected from the body, and (2) being identified with the mind and its delusions.
In order to transcend your social anxiety, those two things must be addressed and treated.
1. Reconnect with the body. FEEL!
(especially in those times when your social anxiety is triggered)
As people who dedicate themselves to NOT feel, especially feeling insecure and emotionally threatened, your first step to freedom is to FEEL that which you avoid.
For me, the worst social anxiety times are being in-line or waiting for something while other people wait in silence around me, and being around large crowds of people (like concerts or parties).
In the past, you might quickly turn to your phone, or even mentally check out whenever you HAD to put yourself in situations that your socially anxious self would rather avoid. Moving forward, as best you can, allow yourself to FEEL and BE in your BODY during those times you'd rather run away (figuratively...shoot...and literally as well).
How to Feel:
Close your eyes and put your attention on your body. Your limbs, fingers, chest, legs.
At first you might only feel the slightest of anything. Maybe you feel NOTHING at all. That's completely normal.
You've spent years being in your head, talking stories and stories of how scary things are and how you're not enough and how you need to do X, Y, Z, in order to finally be whole and complete. STAHP THAT.
Just feel. Put at least some attention on your body whilst you go about your day. Be willing to feel both the positive and negative emotions. People tend to avoid things like boredom, frustration, and uncertainty. Just feel it. Get back in your body.
That suppressed feeling socially anxious people have has to do with the fact that they will not let their feelings express.
You don't have to go about yelling and cussing like you have turrets, but the simple intention to feel what you feel is more than enough.
And no, you don't have to make connecting to people in line at the grocery store a part of this process. In fact, the next time you're at the grocery store, in line, dreading the whole experience, just FEEL. FEEL the awkwardness, feel the pain in the air, feel the disconnection. It's so real it's crazy.
2. Practice Presence - Get Out Of Your Head. (two parts)
Part 1 - Get Educated About Being In The Moment
Before you can practice presence, you must know what it is. To get a full understanding, I highly recommend reading "The Power of Now: The Pathway to Enlightenment" by Eckhart Tolle. That book will teach you everything you need to know about how the mind works to have you never feel and be enough, and how in order to be present you must transcend the identification with the mind.
It is through that book, as well as numerous other resources, that I am where I am today in terms of being free from social anxiety.
Part 2 - Make it a daily practice to enter the moment.
At first, your identification with the mind will be so strong and normal that your mind will turn getting present into some kind of mind thing. "We need to be present in order to be enough" is something that might come up. I promise you, that with the proper education, and the validation of others success by using that education to transcend the mind's ways, you'll slowly but surely be the master of your mind, not the prisoner.
There is no way to be a master of the mind and be confined by the experience of social anxiety. As you are more and more present than you are in the head, you'll notice the anxiety like symptoms others express all the time. In general, people are doing their best to avoid judgment, appear like they have it all together, and fill in awkward silences/interactions. Hell, you used to be one of them. By practicing presence, not only will your life be more full, but you then become a beacon of connected-ness and peace of mind for those around you.
Summary
The way the mind works is such that you need to become someone, do something, or get something in order to feel satisfied, whole, and complete with yourself and life. And as that is the mind's agenda, if you do not recognize this, your entire life will be about having to become someone, do something, or get something in order to feel satisfied.
And because this is the nature of the mind, to need something in the future to feel good now, you'll never feel good now because the key to unlock feeling good now has to do with something you have to be, do, or get in the future. To the mind, the FUTURE holds all the gold, yet the only time you'll get to experience anything is now.
So, unless you're dedicated to feeling whole and complete later, as a result of some 12 year long accomplishment or something, then I suggest you do whatever it is you need to do to become aware of the mind's delusions agenda, practice presence, and switch from being a slave to your mind to being its master.
