For some, the fear begins when they anticipate a social situation. Some people feel nauseated, shaky, sweaty, or have a panic attack when their anxiety is triggered.
This phobia is characterized by extreme and excessive worry and fear of social situations that affects your personal, academic, and professional life, and impairs your ability to perform day-to-day activities. However, since you mention that this problem is having a significant impact on your social life and has lasted for over one year, you may want to see a health care provider about the possibility that you are not simply shy, but have an anxiety disorder - specifically, social phobia. Has anything happened to you in the past year that made you feel very embarrassed in a social circumstance? Have you perhaps gained some new awareness of a characteristic of yours that is making you socially self-conscious? Have you been openly rejected by someone recently? Any of these types of occurrences might set off a physical reaction to the social discomfort you are currently experiencing. It might also be useful to see if you can pin this change in your social comfort level on a specific incident, a feeling triggered by an observation or realization, or a humiliating experience. Having those types of reactions are normal, and maybe knowing this might ease some concern. And some are better at either masking or mastering their insecurities. Some manifest their anxiety by blushing, sweating, feeling sick, talking too much, monopolizing the conversation, showing off, or by maintaining an ultra-cool demeanor.
Well, reaching out, as you have, is a great first step.Įveryone can feel shy focusing on discomfort or awkwardness in social situations can make a person even more self-conscious. What must I do?įor some reason, you seem to have become extremely self-conscious in social situations, which can feel awful, uncomfortable, and counterproductive. So what must I do to get by this? I figure, I'll just deal with it and it will go away, but it's been going on for too long. I used to be very social before and now I am not. I realize that I have nothing to prove to anyone, but this problem still persists. I also seem to notice long pauses in conversation which I interpret as moments of awkwardness. I put a lot of pressure on myself when it comes to maintaining eye contact and continuing a conversation, but this pressure seems to fluster me more. Worst of all, my mind seems to be blank all the time and I can't get past small talk (even with my friends).
I have a problem with eye contact and I become very hot and sometimes I turn red in the face. Whenever I get into a conversation with someone, either on the phone or in person, I become flustered. I figure I am changing and learning new things about myself, but this is getting ridiculous because it is affecting my social life drastically. Sure, I can make small talk about the weather and stuff like that, but I feel like I've lost my openness and humor with people. I feel like I have lost the ability to communicate with people. I've been "plagued" with this problem for at least a year now, and it seems to be getting progressively worse.