Treat Social Anxiety with Thought Adjustment

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To get started, please simply repeat the following phrases out loud:

• With my new skills, I no longer need to avoid or run from social anxiety.

• When I feel social anxiety arising, I can now just listen to it and be with it.

• I now know that I can handle any feelings of social anxiety that arises in my body

Now, I'd like you to do the same thing again -- but this time repeat the phrases with the deep feeling that they are already true for you. Emphasize generation of the FEELING that matches the words, rather than just saying words:

• With my new skills, I no longer need to avoid or run from social anxiety.

• When I feel social anxiety arising, I can now just listen to it and be with it.

Generating the inner feeling that the statements are really true for you now is very important. Without creating the feeling, the words do not carry energy. That congruent energy is the power that will change your beliefs. Repeat the last statement with that in mind:

• I now know that I can handle any feelings of social anxiety that arises in my body

Worry can be a beneficial emotion, as it is worry that often guides us to take precautions in life. But the type of irrational worry that causes social anxiety usually provides little benefit, and can severely limit our ability to engage in normal interactions. Ask yourself, what are the realistic chances that your feared social blunder will actually happen? Is it worth coloring your experience with thoughts of such social catastrophe? Ironically, the theoretical catastrophe for many social anxiety sufferers is usually a physically harmless event -- often related to fear of rejection, failure, embarrassment, and so on. Anxiety about such irrational fears, if not dealt with, can actually be quite devastating since they may prevents us from achieving the type of life and relationships we desire. What we need in order to start moving beyond such self-limiting patterns are replacement beliefs that empower us with a sense of self-control in social situations.

There is one belief in particular, that when completely internalized, will free you to interact without severe social anxiety. This belief, and truth, is the realization that YOU CAN HANDLE IT. Whatever your social fears may be, realize now that YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT IF IT DID HAPPEN. No matter how bad you think it might seem, you have a strong mind that is able to cope. Think of how many similar situations you have made it through in the past. You will survive.

In the first exercise, you already began affirming your ability to handle the feelings in your body. That is where you began developing trust in your capacity to handle your feared possibilities. To reinforce your efforts, we've also made this the objective of our first thought adjustment session. To continue, please say following phrases out loud with the a deep and congruent feeling that they're true for you already:

• I now accept all feelings of social anxiety that come to me. I let them come.
• Fearing emotions or body sensations only gives them power. I fear no feeling.
• I am now willing and able to experience the full spectrum of human emotion.
• With my capacity to experience emotions, I am now able to live more fully.
• When I feel fear, I just feel it. I can tolerate and go through fear.
• I do not repress feelings of social anxiety. I fully feel them and go through them.
• When I sense social anxiety, I no longer run from it by seeking diversions.

Remember to say each phrase with the feeling that it is true already. Words by themselves don't matter all that much - they're just sounds - it's the feeling that matters. With repeated exposure, the energy of congruent feeling turns simple thoughts into beliefs. Try to ignore the intellect -- that little voice in your head which likes to argue with anything that does not conform to it's current belief system. By focusing your entire mind on saying your replacement thoughts with full belief and congruent feeling, the intellect will not have space to distract you. In this way, you bypass the critical intellect and speak directly to your subconscious mind. Speak your phrases with complete belief and congruent emotion. Feel the words coming from every cell of your body. Project whatever feeling you would expect to have if the belief were already part of your mindset. As you spend some time each day reading your new thoughts in this manner, the accumulated feelings will start to feel natural, and the new beliefs will eventually be the basis from which you generate all your thoughts and expectations.

NEXT PAGE: Treating Social Anxiety [continued]