10 Strategies for Social Anxiety Disorder

Social anxiety disorder was found to affect over 10 million Americans, but the Health day News. It is one of the mental disorders that causes people to stop living an emotionally healthy life. Due to this, many therapists have been trying to find ways to improve those suffering from this ailment. With more mental health awareness comes the need for people to take more control over their life situations. Aaron Beck, a psychotherapist who, observing his patients, developed a method of treatment to effectively deal with psychological problems.

Beck observed the profound interdependence between thoughts, emotions and behavior. That is, how the thoughts (or cognitions) are related to a specific event, impacts decisively on the emotions experienced, and influencing at the same time the reaction of the subject to that event. When people gradually change the patterns of thought, they reduce the grip negative emotions of social anxiety disorder and soon behavioral changes can happen.

1. Examine the Thoughts

By examining your thoughts, you can apply logic to many of your mental processes. For example, think of an employee who is afraid of losing his job. From morning to night he begins to obsess over the fact that his supervisors, his bosses or the management team claim that he does everything wrong or that his work lacks quality. Entering this circle of thoughts can provoke a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, by reason of thinking that he does anything wrong, sooner or later it will end up doing it really badly, because he has fallen into a very negative state of mind.

This is how the track of inadequacy begins and the roots of social anxiety start taking hold in the brain. So it’s best to examine the thoughts, question why you are thinking the way do? Has something actually happened to make you think this way or are you letting your mind place non-existent barrier in your way?