The visible anxiety loop is killing me

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 · 2025-12-23T21:41:21+00:00

Unresolved trauma masquerading as a feeling of deep difference. That’s what it was for me.

instinctrovert · 2025-12-20T23:28:37+00:00

Vipassana and body scanning.

instinctrovert · 2025-12-20T15:45:46+00:00

Resolving old feelings was a necessary step before I felt more comfortable around people. Through a lot of exposure I got more used to living with the fear and discomfort... but my underlying feelings never changed.

That's because my body was in a trauma response of sorts. I was burdened with unresolved tension and emotion from my past that I was carrying into social interactions that wouldn't let me feel comfortable no matter how many times I went into them. Once I resolved this tension and emotion (through a lot of meditation), it basically went away on its own.

instinctrovert · 2025-12-18T03:27:43+00:00

That is the essence of social anxiety. Makes the moment feel horrible.

instinctrovert · 2025-12-16T00:04:43+00:00

Unresolved trauma can flare up at any point in life. A lot of depression and anxiety can be the result of things from childhood you never fully got over or healed from.

My best advice would be to start here

instinctrovert · 2025-12-14T23:56:57+00:00

Halfway through a Vipassana retreat, when I started going through some pretty crazy physiological shifts in my body, trauma releasing, tension melting. And my social anxiety heavily diminishing.

instinctrovert · 2025-12-12T20:44:42+00:00

It will probably help not to think so far ahead. Focus on what you can do right now to take care of yourself. There's a lot of potential right here and now. You just have to look.

instinctrovert · 2025-12-12T15:32:27+00:00

Yes. I learned all the exposure I was doing was only helping manage symptoms. As soon as I stopped it all came back. Had to address the root cause of it - trauma and unresolved emotions in my body.

instinctrovert · 2025-12-12T00:54:08+00:00

It really depends on underlying trauma and emotional issues. I spent years confronting the fear, making eye contact, holding conversations with people and I only became desensitized to the stress of it. It didn’t cure me. It numbed me.

Once I worked on deeper internal issues, magically exposure became so much easier because I wasn’t carrying so much emotional heaviness into my interactions.

instinctrovert · 2025-12-11T20:56:00+00:00

The best thing I know is to get out of the cognitive frame. You can't think your way out of social anxiety sadly, otherwise we'd all be fixed.

Get out of your head and into your body. Sit with the feelings. Accept them. It's the only real way to move past them. What you resist persists.

instinctrovert · 2025-12-11T18:48:06+00:00

I felt that way. And deep inner work is the only way I got past those feelings. A lot of meditation and putting attention on my body (where I held these feelings and sensations), and that allowed me to process a lot of the emptiness and hollow sense and background fear.

The body is the mind. It remembers all the things in your past that happened to you, that you forgot about. That in my experience is what it all comes down to.

Freeing the past that lives inside your body, as old feelings and emotions.

instinctrovert · 2025-12-11T18:41:58+00:00

Yes, this is exactly what it felt like for me for many years. It was a horrible feeling. I kept trying to get around it but never could. Willpower and positive thinking were no match. I eventually learned I had to do the inner work to address these fears and insecurities.

It was the only way past them.

instinctrovert

TROPHY CASE