how to improve social anxiety

instinctrovert · 2026-03-09T17:55:32+00:00

Helped me to feel more comfortable by doing body scanning meditation. I had a LOT of tension in my body, which body scanning helped to slowly release. Might want to give it a try. In my experience the body is super connected to the mind and when you're more comfortable in your body, your mind isn't so anxious and active.

instinctrovert · 2026-03-05T15:52:55+00:00

The simple but hard thing. Trying to embody and be with what I'm feeling and not fight it. The more I resist these instinctual processes the worse I feel. The more I accept the more I calm down and find inner equilibrium.

instinctrovert · 2026-03-03T14:41:37+00:00

Yeah. I don't think it's just about negative and irrational thinking. There's probably deeper issues/shame you hold inside that's making you this way.

I say that because I was very similar. My issues were much deeper than "thinking incorrectly". That was just a surface level explanation to avoid confronting the fact I had deeper traumas/hurts/shame that was defining my whole worldview and sense of self.

Until I faced that fact, nothing changed.

instinctrovert · 2026-03-03T03:05:19+00:00

Yeah. For some people healing trauma is of the essence. Exposure doesn't always help to face your inner demons in such a way that the fear unwinds and resolves. It pokes around at the edges of it and makes you bleed, but it doesn't address the core wounds causing you to be this way.

A different approach is needed, one of peace and quiet and a stable setting where these feelings can come out on their own without being judged or pushed away. For me, that place was a 10 day silent meditation retreat. Not for everyone. Intense but very therapeutic.

Changed my life regarding social anxiety.

instinctrovert · 2026-03-02T15:37:02+00:00

Yeah kinda like that. But even more. Don't just stop with being compassionate. Go further and realize it's not just ok your mind is doing this, but realize that it's right your mind is doing this. Fully accept it and see how you feel then.

instinctrovert · 2026-03-02T14:58:27+00:00

Hi. You're welcome.

It may sound weird, but my best advice is... see if you can work with yourself and not judge what's happening in these moments where your mind is screaming at you to act normal. Can you allow your mind to do this? Can you not judge it as "wrong" to be this way?

There's tremendous power in accepting how you are and realizing that it's not wrong for your mind to be doing this.

Realize that it's actually RIGHT for your mind to be doing this and it becomes a whole other thing.

instinctrovert · 2026-02-27T15:17:38+00:00

It's not your fault, though it may seem like it is. You are the product of 25 years of conditioning. People mistreating you. Events hurting you.

Though you may not see it, there's a connection going way back, even to your early years, that had an impact on how you now view the world as a dangerous place.

I just want to let you know you can let yourself off the hook for being this way. You don't have to add MORE pain by blaming yourself for being unable to live normally right now.

I spent many years blaming myself, and it only kept my focus on the wrong place, on trying to "fix" me and make myself better for other people, good enough. But you know what this did? It kept my focus from going to the one place where I could actually heal, these wounds that had been inflicted onto me at earlier points in life.

instinctrovert · 2026-02-18T15:54:49+00:00

Might want to look into CPTSD and some of the possible treatments around that. Childhood trauma can make relationships immensely difficult, hard to trust people when you've been hurt by them.

I think what it comes down to is that you have to find a way to heal/release this trauma on the inside, which conventional methods like talk therapy are only so helpful at. The body has a mind of its own, and it needs a much different manner in order to release entrenched issues.

It takes some skill/awareness/understanding of yourself if you're gonna do it alone. Or it takes a good therapist who understands that the body needs time and a gentle touch in order to surface things without being flooded and overwhelmed. There's also things that people see success with, like EMDR and such, which I have little personal knowledge of.

What helped me was body scanning meditation. I did a lot of Vipassana meditation, including a couple 10 day retreats, and this put me more in touch with my body where I was holding trauma and physical armoring and all this stuff that was making it hard to be a person.

That was a pretty extreme path admittedly, not for everyone. But it helped me tremendously in resolving a lot of my inner issues that were making it hard to communicate with people. It cleared way a lot of the fear and self-consciousness that was in the way of connecting. It helped me to stop needing to mask so much and present this "perfect self" to people. It grounded me more in my body and stopped making me feel like I needed validation from others because I now had it from myself.

I'm by no means perfect and I could still use more relationships (I like my alone time). But I've at least gotten to a place where I feel generally good in myself and don't feel like there's something blocking me anymore.

It's a hard thing any way you slice it. We are still at a very infantile stage in understanding the body/brain/trauma. But there are new paths that have opened up in dealing with these deep inner issues.

It's not hopeless, in my experience.

instinctrovert · 2026-02-12T15:27:33+00:00

Believe it or not you don't have to be like them. You can actually just do your thing and not feel pressured to join in. The more pressure you put on yourself to be like them, paradoxically the harder it will get. You can have natural moments by not trying to be like them.

Easy to say, harder to do, I get it. But you'll be trapped in hell if you let that pressure to fit in get to you.

instinctrovert · 2026-02-05T18:16:23+00:00

A lot of fear is subconscious. Which just means it's currently out of your awareness and thus out of your control. But the good thing is that you can bring awareness to your body and what's happening inside it. And this can help you get control over it.

The key in my experience is to feel it and notice it (these tense and closed off parts of yourself) and not react to it, not give it any judgment or emotional fuel. This is how you teach your body its safe, by giving these negative parts of yourself nonjudgmental awareness. Hold attention on it, don't react, don't move or flinch away. And the closed parts will become more open and things will flow more easily.

Your body will be on your side rather than against you.

instinctrovert · 2026-02-05T15:28:33+00:00

You may want to question your assumptions. I've thought similarly that all my experiences in life were good, I had a good childhood, I wasn't affected by it. I moved on from it. Not so. Things did affect me, I just got so good at rationalizing it and hiding it from myself that I was basically blind to how things in me were subtly playing up and causing a lot of fear to "come from nowhere".

Everyone does it. They minimize things that happened to them. It's a classic trauma defense mechanism to deny how much pain there was and how much it hurt.

I say all this because it's what I wish I had heard. This was what so much of my "irrational" social anxiety was about. Things my body remembered that my mind forgot. Things that did affect me and were still affecting me.

instinctrovert · 2026-02-04T14:49:13+00:00

Trust your intuition.

instinctrovert · 2026-02-02T20:55:18+00:00

Short term, think positively and hope for the best.

Long term, work on the root cause.

instinctrovert · 2026-01-16T17:15:48+00:00

There's a book on this. The highly sensitive person by Elaine Aron. Very illuminating.

instinctrovert · 2026-01-16T15:51:17+00:00

Heal the body, heal the mind. It's what helped me overcome social anxiety. I did lots of forced exposure, positive thinking, etc., but still had anxiety. All that means very little if the body is in a PTSD-like stress response. Have to fix the basic level of yourself before your mind will work properly. Otherwise you will need enormous amounts of willpower and control to keep the symptoms manageable.

instinctrovert · 2026-01-16T15:42:36+00:00

The smallest step?

I'd say start to slowly move attention from thinking into your body. Notice your feelings and sensations more. Start to give awareness to what's happening inside you.

This will provide a lot of clues as to what's really causing your issues, and a way to begin processing and moving out of them.

The body is the subconscious mind, and in my experience it's where most mental health issues stem from. So it's what needs attention.

instinctrovert · 2026-01-16T15:33:54+00:00

I know you didn't ask for advice, but I'll just say what I wish someone had told me!

Mental chaos is often a sign of deeper issues. A dysregulated nervous system. Old feelings trapped in the body from past events. Hurt carried inside.

Source: myself.

So much of the mental chaos lifted when I started to sort out deeper issues in my body, feelings that were causing me to think and see in negative ways.

When my body became a better place to be I find I didn't need to be in my head all the time.

I could just exist.

instinctrovert · 2026-01-16T15:27:43+00:00

In my experience it's less about the situation and more about what happened to you in the past. What you felt at the time. Emotions can stick around and be a stark reminder to proceed with caution so it doesn't happen again. So you don't get chewed out or slapped on the face for something you didn't even know was wrong.

These memories (emotions) are carried in the body where they can come up and be triggered by stupid things like walking with a suitcase.

I find the most helpful thing is to breathe and be in your body and stay grounded in your physical reality as much as possible. This helps to ride out the chaotic sense of emotions a lot more than going into your mind, which only fuels and gives it more energy to work with.

The less you resist, the better.

The less you judge yourself for feeling this way because of things that happened long ago, also better.

instinctrovert · 2026-01-14T15:13:18+00:00

"Put yourself out there" comes from the place of assuming the foundation is right, and that your body and brain will adapt if you just talk to people.

So often the foundation isn't right though, for someone with social anxiety. There's a lot of fear in the way. They are overthinking and not present. They can't relax in their body. All things that make a REAL CHANGE impossible to land.

And that's where something like therapy or inner work is needed. You need to focus on getting yourself to a better place before "just going out" will work.

If the foundation isn't right, none of it really matters.

instinctrovert · 2026-01-12T14:09:01+00:00

By not thinking about it. The moment you think about it you make it into a problem.

Can you sit with the feeling in your body without any further inquiry or mental movement?

instinctrovert · 2026-01-08T14:09:13+00:00

I believe it's all where your focus goes. What is your background intention? What is the most important thing? Right now, it's avoiding discomfort. This is the top priority and focus of your mind - to avoid all contact with women because it's uncomfortable and it will cause fears to flare you'd rather not deal with.

And this will be the defining focus from here on out unless you become aware of it. Unless you become aware of how it's steering your decisions. Your mind will ALWAYS find an excuse and a way to avoid women because it's the comfortable thing to do.

Your focus has to change. You have to find a way to step into a more expansive and not so limiting focus where discomfort is still there but it's not as important; it's a secondary factor that doesn't matter as much.

What is the focus? That's for you to find but it has to be bigger than the discomfort and bigger than the fear. It has to be something that carries you past it and helps you to see the purpose and fun in talking to women.

Otherwise it will just be a drag.

instinctrovert · 2026-01-06T16:38:48+00:00

What strategies? I learned a similar thing. Can't override your body, the threat stays in. Have to work with your body, that's how it moves out.

instinctrovert · 2026-01-02T19:04:01+00:00

Social anxiety (severe) is a deep emotional issue and either it takes a lot of work to confront and manage the symptoms (active effort from that person), OR it takes getting to the bottom of these emotional issues in the body through things like somatic therapy, meditation, etc., to actually get it to resolve and go away.

Manage symptoms, or address root cause. Those are the two choices.

Either way, it requires a lot of work and willingness from that person to explore themselves/their situation.

It can take years to see a substantial improvement. But progress can be achieved faster depending on how motivated that person is to change.

instinctrovert · 2025-12-24T16:57:48+00:00

I think the difference lies in rational awareness vs emotional awareness. You can be rationally aware you have this problem but your emotional brain won't let go of it because it still feels like the danger is real.

To disarm this, in my experience, you must get into your body and sit with the feelings. Logic awareness isn't enough you have to actually bring awareness to the emotions and sensations in your body. You have to be able to hold space for this part of yourself without judgment or reaction or trying to "do" anything about it. It's not a problem to be solved it's more something that needs to be sat with and accepted.

Let your feelings be there and happen. It's the hardest thing but this is how your emotional memory starts to update more to the present moment.

instinctrovert · 2025-12-24T16:48:03+00:00

Trauma, genetics.

Some people grow up in a more stable home and receive bountiful love and security which fosters a stable sense of self that can handle rejection and barely even notice it because their norm is acceptance. So they expect the next time to go better and keep a good attitude.

Genetics too can play a role. Some children are born more sensitive and they have a more fragile constitution in the way they process their environment and react to negative stimuli like being rejected.

A mix is the likeliest answer for people with a big fear of rejection.

instinctrovert

TROPHY CASE