Matthew Hussey: Overcome Social Anxiety in 3 Steps
“Have you ever found that when you’re picked on to answer a question in front of a group of people your heart rate immediately goes up? Or, when you walk into a party, you immediately feel that sense of nerves and trepidation? Or when someone tells you that you might have to give a speech or an announcement, you suddenly seize up with fear at the very idea of it? If this is the case with you, then you are someone with social anxiety... It also means that you are human being…. The problem with the culture that we live in is that we are so quick to put labels on people for what they are.”
Matthew Hussey faces up to the concept of social anxiety in this video, with insight and advice on a very human process that can occur within all of us. Rather than allowing for our moments of anxiousness to become all-consuming, Matthew argues that people need to tackle it and shift the way in which we identify to it. Often we can lose sight of the human element to feelings of anxiousness. It's easy to allow feelings of anxiety and fear in social situations to hold us back. Matthew presses further and argues that it becomes too easy to wear 'social anxiety' as a badge, suggesting using social anxiety as an excuse in social situations is in fact dangerous for us. There are extreme scenarios, of course, and we are certainly not underestimating the difficulty of stepping out of intense fears. When battling with feelings of social anxiety, however, we can't deny that it's often easy to forget that so many other people may also be experiencing these feelings too, and it's likely that other people in the same social environment as you will even be feeling nerves or feelings of fear. Indeed, it is easy to lose sight of the human element of social anxiety and, as Matthew suggests, the ways in which it connects all of us. Sometimes we'll feel anxious, and sometimes we'll feel comfortable - it all depends on how acclimatised you are to a certain situation, the familiarity of the scenario you face, and how confident you are feeling in its environment.
If you've ever felt attached to 'social anxiety' as a label, and may identify with feelings of worry in social situations, we would recommend a watch of Matthew's video below. Drawing on his own experiences, Matthew talks through 3 different ways on how to shift those feelings. Matthew's method is not fool-proof, certainly, and it is not guaranteed to work all the time... no one can predict when anxiety may spring up in unfamiliar territory... but it may just arm you with some useful ways to combat those feelings, and make sure you identify with being a normal human being, rather than an outsider who is experiencing something on their own.
