Being in front of people makes you anxious. Sometimes so much so that you can’t speak your mind in social situations, and sometimes skip out on activities altogether. But that’s not the only way social anxiety is holding you back.

1. It’s Preventing You from Connecting with Others

When all you can think about is how fast your heart is beating, or how much you might look like an idiot if you say the wrong thing, it’s hard to focus on what’s going on during social interactions. Social anxiety makes it nearly impossible to reach out to others or interact with them in a meaningful way, for fear of making yourself look bad. After a while, you might begin to feel lonely because you aren’t able to interact with people without severe anxiety symptoms.

 

2. It’s Causing you Unnecessary Stress

Worrying about all of the things you might do wrong, or something you said years ago will cause a lot of stress to build up in your body. Most of the things you worry about when you have social anxiety are things other people don’t remember, or don’t think are a big deal.

 

3. It Can Cause Health Issues

All of that build up stress can start to take a toll on your body. If you’re stressed out enough, it can cause you to experience physical health issues that you have to address. Some of these problems include heart disease, headaches, gastrointestinal disease, and faster aging.

 

4. It’s Actively Stopping you From Living Your Life

How many times have you stayed home from a party or an event because you were too worried about what people would think of you? One of the most common regrets people experience in life is not going out and experiencing more when they were younger. You too might start to regret the things you don’t do after a while. 

 

5. It’s Making you Worry about How You’re Being Perceived in Social Situations

While there are some people who might think you’re a little odd, most of the time people don’t remember you outside of their interactions with you. Most people are so focused on themselves that they won’t notice, or won’t care, if you say something weird, or don’t respond in a certain way.

 

6. It’s Telling you Things That Aren’t True

When your anxiety gets really bad, it can start to tell you what other people think about you. “That person thinks you’re annoying” or “this person thinks you’re stupid”. There’s no way to tell what other people think, and in most cases, it’s hard to make someone think poorly of you.

 

7. It’s Stopping You From Pursuing Amazing Opportunities

Have you gone to an interview for your dream job, only to never hear back from the potential employer? Maybe you haven’t experienced exactly this situation, but there’s probably one thing or another that you’ve missed out on because your social anxiety prevented you from interacting in the best way possible.

 

8. It’s Pushing Your Friends Away From You

Good friends will try to be understanding of what you’re going through. But when you keep canceling on outings, or constantly tell your friends that you can’t make it, they start to think you don’t like them, or that you’re never going to show up. Many of them are busy, and don’t have the time to keep trying to get you to come along. And after a while, they might stop reaching out to you.

 

Social anxiety doesn’t have to hold you back in so many areas of your life. With AI Therapy’s program “Overcome Social Anxiety”, you can take advantage of years of research through lessons created to help you get control of your fears. Implementing some of these techniques will help you to get your life back, and start connecting with people in a meaningful and lasting way.

Arguably no other notable figure in history was so fantastically wrong about nearly every important thing he had to say.   – Todd Dufresne on Sigmund Freud in a 2004 LA Times Article

Freud was strange. On one hand, he’s the most famous therapist in history, and I have to admit I was excited to visit his former clinic on vacation in Vienna last year:

Fjola at Freud Museum

 

On the other hand, his theories are at best unsupported by evidence, sometimes completely ridiculous (I’m looking at you, penis envy), and at worst harmful.

Freud invented a form of psychological treatment called psychoanalysis. One of the cornerstones of psychoanalysis is that our personalities are strongly dependent on events in our early childhood. Obviously, this is true to some degree. We are all shaped by both our genetics and personal history, and childhood experiences can be influential. However, Freud and modern evidence-based psychology differ on how we should go about dealing with our past.

Dealing with the past is a controversial and complex topic. To begin with, there are different types of negative past events. For example, being bullied as a child is quite distinct from a difficult breakup. Therefore, the specific treatment will depend on the individual and their circumstances. I will not attempt a full literature review of this active research area, but I will make two general comments.

 

1. We can’t change the past, but we can change the way we think about the past.

It is important to acknowledge the negative events of our past, but unlike psychoanalysis, we must realise that they do not determine “who we are”. We are capable of living happy lives if we learn to think in a more rational, positive way. How can we accomplish this? If you’re a regular reader of my blog you will know what I’m about to say: cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT). CBT does NOT adhere to “just get over it” attitude. Rather, the goal of CBT treatment is to identify and target the unhelpful thinking patterns in the present that are maintaining the problem. Ultimately, the aim is to get to the point where these memories no longer upset us. In a sense, CBT therapy really isn’t about the past at all.

 

2. Dwelling too much on the past is not good for our mental health. However, if not the past, what should we be thinking about? When are we happiest?

“Live in the moment” is common advice, and in this case, it seems to be right! There is some interesting research that shows we are happiest when we are absorbed in what we’re doing, not letting our minds wander. CBT also has strategies to help people accomplish this! I try to do this as much as possible, while taking the occasional break to plan my future using my nerdy excel method.

These two points have something in common: the present. Since Freud’s time, it seems we’ve learned that living in the present is the key to dealing with the past.

 

 

fdh

 

Fjola  Helgadottir, PhD, MClinPsych, is a clinical psychologist, a senior research clinician at the University of Oxford, and is a co-creator of AI-Therapy.com, an online CBT treatment program for overcoming social anxiety

 

I have blogged before about my a love-hate relationship with Facebook. At its best, it is a great way to keep in touch with people and see what everyone is up to. However, the downside is that Facebook presents us with a biased and filtered view of the world. This is partly because we have a tendency to present ourselves the way we wish to be seen, rather than the way things are. Our friends are having non-stop fun, their babies never cry, they globe-trot to exotic locations, they bump into celebrities, they always have funny and insightful things to say, etc… This is why a good friend of mine calls it “Fakebook”.

It seems to me that in the early days of Facebook (way back in the mid to late 2000’s) people were more “real”. They were less concerned about their online image, and much more open. In fact, if you’ve had an account for more than a few years, it can be very interesting to use the timeline feature to see what sorts of things you were writing publicly on your friends’ walls a few years ago.

In general, spending too much time on Facebook is not great for your mental health. This blog is about how can we prevent Facebook from having a negative impact on our mental lives, and maybe even lead to increased happiness. I’ve included a few tips below, and would be happy to hear of any other ideas.

 

Tip 1. Moderation

The first tip is obvious but important: don’t spend too much time on Facebook. As with pretty much anything, excessive use leads to trouble. How much is too much? Well, that depends on the individual, I set myself daily limits, but I would say that you shouldn’t spend more than a few hours a week on the site. The tricky part is cutting back, because sometimes we head to the site as an unconscious reflex whenever we have a free minute. I’ve found the following helps limit my usage:

  • I’ve turned off all the notifications that are sent to email/my phone
  • I try not use it in social situations
  • I make a point of leaving my smartphone at home when I truly want to relax

If this is proving difficult, one way is to use the Chrome browser and install the StayFocused plugin.

 

Tip 2: Limit updates from certain people

Sometimes we have connections on Facebook with people who we are not that close to, and for one reason or another they do not have a positive impact on our happiness. It is important to make sure that updates from these people do not come up in your news feed (use the “unsubscribe” option).

 

Tip 3. Don’t rely on Facebook for updates from important people in your life

 

My sister is due to have her third baby around Christmas. Obviously, I want to know everything there is to know about how things are going for her. However, I miss lots of her Facebook updates because they don’t always appear in my feed. This is because an algorithm somewhere is deciding which posts to show me, and which ones to skip. Take a moment to think about this. Given that over a billion people use Facebook, this algorithm has incredible power and influence over the flow of information in the world. Always keep in mind that you may miss important updates, and that there is no replacements for old fashioned phone calls and catch-ups.

 

Tip 4. At the end of each year, use the timeline to find highlights from each month

My husband and I have a tradition that we’ve kept alive since we first met in 2006. Sometime between Christmas and New Years we create a calendar to use for the upcoming year. For each month of the new year we select a “happiness highlight” photo from the same month of the previous year. For example, here is the June 2009 photo, which we took when we went hiking in Greenland in June 2008:

Not all photos have to be from significant events; sometimes we can have very fond memories of normal day-to-day activities. Our only rule is to pick photos that make us happy.

What does this have to do with Facebook? Well, it used to be very long process for us to gather all the photos from the previous year and arrange them by date. However, Facebook’s Timeline feature now does this for us. Many photos end up on Facebook these days, and as I said earlier, there is already a bias towards highlights. Therefore, it is a perfect way to review the past year, and pick out some great photos. In fact, customized calendars, cups, mouse pads  or whatever are great Christmas presents.

My husband and I always get our calendar printed, and it serves as a great memory of each year. However, even if you don’t print a calendar, it is still a good idea to make the most of Facebook’s record of our lives. Think about the times when you were happiest. What do they have in common? Facebook allows us to take an empirical look at ourselves, and we can use this information to make positive changes. So, to answer the original question “can Facebook make you happy?”. I would say yes, if you use it wisely.

 

fdh

 

Fjola  Helgadottir, PhD, MClinPsych, is a clinical psychologist, a senior research clinician at the University of Oxford, and is a co-creator of AI-Therapy.com, an online CBT treatment program for overcoming social anxiety