What Social Anxiety Feels Like
We all know what being nervous feels like. You mentally prepare yourself to meet a new group of people days before the event. You finally make it to the event and everyone is already speaking in tight groups. Your eyes dart to find a bathroom to take refuge, but you don’t know where it is and you can’t get yourself to ask anyone. You worry that you’re standing too awkwardly, but you don’t know where to go. Soon, you see someone approaching you and you don’t have an escape route. You feel your face turn red, you feel sweat on your brow, and your mind races to try to find somewhere to go.
Social Anxiety Or Nervousness
That situation wasn’t just the feeling of nervousness, but a social anxiety panic attack. Social anxiety disorder is fear based emotional behavior and it seems nearly impossible or is impossible to speak to other people in a social situation and becomes a social phobia. It’s stage fright times a million every time you have to socialize, the only difference being that social anxiety is physically painful. The cause of social anxiety could be events that were traumatic and anxiety-inducing triggering you to react both physically and emotionally. Social anxiety isolates you. However, humans need contact with other humans as laughter, intimacy, and communities are just as important as food, air, and water.
What Hypnotherapy Does
Hypnotherapy, combined with other treatment options, changes the way your unconscious mind reacts by accessing your subconscious mind. As a non-invasive therapy option, as opposed to medication, hypnosis gives you suggestions to calm your brain. Its goal is to separate your body’s reaction from the traumatizing experience. Although hypnotherapy effects on social anxiety have not been specifically studied, other studies have shown that hypnosis has had some effects on general anxiety and other mood disorders.
Before an actual hypnosis session, your therapist will interview you to understand your situation and medical history. During hypnosis, your therapist will lead you to an altered state of consciousness in which you are in a trance. In this trance, you may experience relaxation, lower blood pressure and heart rate, and changes in your brain waves like many other people do in this state. During this stage, your brain will be highly responsive to the suggestions your therapist made for you. Your therapist will give you a recording or suggestions for self-hypnosis at home. After a few sessions, your symptoms should be relieved.
How Hypnotherapy Helps
The only risk of participating in hypnotherapy for anxiety is that some psychological problems could worsen when remembering past traumatic events. However, this risk is very small and a trained and licensed therapist will know how to bring you out of an anxiety attack if need be. Stress and anxiety go hand in hand and to overcome your social anxiety, hypnotherapy usually enhances the effects of cognitive-based therapy that is prominently used to treat people with mood disorders. Just remember, hypnotherapy is not a cure-all method, overcome your social anxiety one step at a time.
