Social anxiety disorders affect over fifteen million people annually. Below are some of the chief features of social anxiety as listed by the Mayo Clinic include:

• Fear of situations in which you may be judged negatively
• Worry about embarrassing or humiliating yourself
• Intense fear of interacting or talking with strangers
• Fear that others will notice that you look anxious
• Fear of physical symptoms that may cause you embarrassment, such as blushing, sweating, trembling or having a shaky voice
• Avoidance of doing things or speaking to people out of fear of embarrassment
• Avoidance of situations where you might be the center of attention
• Anxiety in anticipation of a feared activity or event
• Intense fear or anxiety during social situations
• Analysis of your performance and identification of flaws in your interactions after a social situation
• Expectation of the worst possible consequences from a negative experience during a social situation

Now everyone has most likely experienced a degree of these symptoms at some point throughout their history. However, for those who suffer from social anxiety disorder these experiences are not a transitory state but are recurrent and often debilitating, leading to a limited relational life and a history of lost opportunities and potential. 

The Shame Feedback Loop

Furthermore, many individuals never receive the help and support they need due to shame and embarrassment associated with their condition. It then becomes a feedback loop of shame and avoidance: one fears social situations in which they could experience shame or rejection; they then isolate themselves to avoid this potentially painful experience; this leads to further feelings of shame and inadequacy that contributes to increased patterns of avoidance. 

Those who do seek assistance may be encouraged to attempt exposure therapy that entails exposing yourself to what you fear in the hope you will habituate to the situation and become desensitized to what you fear. There are also additional cognitive behavioral approaches, such as attempting to dispute your negative thoughts and self-talk. Moreover, you could try positive affirmations or reframing your attributions of the social setting. 

The Shortcomings of Traditional Approaches

Now if these approaches have been benefited you and helped you overcome a level of your social anxiety that’s great. I’m genuinely happy for you. But for those whose intensity level reaches the degree of social anxiety disorder, they will very likely be ineffective, leading you to feel more hopeless or negative towards yourself for your inability to achieve these therapeutic goals. In a moment, I will explain through both neuroscience and evolutionary psychology why these interventions don’t work at this level of impairment. 

The underlying cause of all your social anxiety is our old nemesis, SHAME. You may protest, “I’m not ashamed of anything.” But think about it for a moment; why do you fear judgment and rejection so much? The answer is simple – you will experience the core emotion of shame in your body, which is one of the most painful experiences we can have as a human being. Research, shows that up to 90% of physical pain is psychosomatic. And by psychosomatic I am not implying that it is in your head; it is in your body. Some studies have discovered we would rather feel physical pain than the felt experience of shame. 

A Threat to Survival

Another reason we dread shame so much is due to the fact that within shame is fear of death and annihilation. Now you may think that is a bit overdramatic, but let me explain from an evolutionary perspective. All of our core emotions evolved for specific survival or adaptive reasons. Now you may view shame with the same disregard you have for cockroaches. “What’s the point of either,” you may ask. Allow me to explain. For most of human history, you had to be part of a group to survive. There was no way to survive physically on this planet without being part of a community. 

Banishment was a death sentence. It would have been more kind to have undergone lethal injection rather than wander around until you died from starvation or attacked by a predator. Every core emotion if felt to completion will initiate an adaptive action. Historically, shame would either cause you to prostrate before the community begging them to take you back into their graces in order to survive. The alternative action shame would initiate would be to hide or conceal the action you engaged in that would place you at risk for expulsion. 

Why We Care So Much

This is what underlies our preoccupation with caring what others think of us. The survival aspect of being accepted by our community is still embedded deeply in our DNA. Each year the number one rated fear next to death comes in as fear of public speaking. From a rational perspective, the worst thing that could happen to you is embarrassment; from the neck down, your body says, “I will die!” As a result of these evolutionary origins, shame will trigger massive survival responses, such as fight, flight, or freeze states, which also frequently leads to avoidance of situations that could trigger shame, hence the social anxiety behavioral management strategies. 

Primitive Wins

Shame also disrupts our psychological sense of self. As a child or adolescent, we have little to no capacity to differentiate how we are treated from what we are worth. Moreover, shame is pretty much impossible for a child to regulate. As caregivers or peers engage in shaming behavior towards a child it activates the neurochemicals associated with shame, emotionally dysregulating the child, disrupting their experience of themselves, and causing dissociation. This is then frozen in our body and nervous system as an implicit memory, which is a felt sense in the body that has no images, linear time, or capacity to differentiate people, place or setting. It is an immensely painful state that often contributes to panic attacks, rage episodes, or compulsive behaviors, such as substance abuse, binge-eating, or self-harm. Avoidance of this agonizing state is another motivator for the behavioral strategies associated with social anxiety. 

Because shame is such a primitive emotion that exists in all primates and other members of the animal kingdom and is associated with trigger survival responses neurologically, it will override your cognitive brain pretty much every time. I have a saying that ‘Primitive Wins’. This is the chief reason the cognitive behavioral and rational approaches do not work with this level of shame. You cannot attempt to calm your body and sensations when it believes your life is in danger. Good luck with your affirmations. 

The Solution

Now that we are aware of the principal cause of social anxiety and the shortcomings of traditional approaches to resolving it, “What do we do about it,” you ask. The key is to access the neural networks, or parts of the personality structure, that are holding the chemical energy correlated with the feeling of shame, regulate and release the energy, and integrate the dissociated network to the other more adaptive networks. In laymen’s terms, activate the shame at a felt level in an emotionally safe relationship, feel it to completion, and then focus on the experience of feeling secure and cared for at a felt level. 

There are numerous ways to achieve this goal. Prior to explaining them, I want to emphasize that the outcome we want to attain is not learning how to manage your social anxiety, although this can be helpful in the short-term until you sufficiently process the shame, but full resolution of your social anxiety, which I assure you is possible. Now back to the solutions. There are five primary therapeutic modalities I utilize in my psychotherapy practice: Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, Brainspotting, Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing, and Somatic Experiencing. 

Resolution vs. Symptom Management

Each of these therapies is capable of accessing the neural networks containing the shame-based incidents, clearing the emotional energy contained in the implicit memory, and reconsolidating the memory in a more adaptive and integrated manner. Once this has been achieved, the fight or flight response to the social situation no longer becomes activated since the felt sense of shame has been previously released. Moreover, processing the shame increases the person’s capacity to regulate the emotion of shame and become more resilient to it in order to refrain from dissociating or defending against it, which then prevents it from becoming frozen in the nervous system to be activated at a later time. 

This is the path to true resolution of your social anxiety, rather than being left with symptom management strategies that continue to keep you in a level of anxiety and distress. You are no longer limited by avoidant strategies. You can know enjoy a more full and engaging life, make new and deeper connections with others, and express your authentic self to a greater degree. You have truly been released from the shame that binds you. A new sense of personal freedom and self-expression begins to be experienced. Don’t settle for a life that is less than you deserve. If you would like to learn more about this process or begin the steps necessary towards a life free from social anxiety, contact us today at www.hawkinscounsleingcenter.com