My way to fix social phobia

sup everybody. for the last couple of months i've been trying to develop good technique for getting rid off social anxiety or at least a way to control it. i've made huge progress and i think im walking the right way now. i'm at the point where i can go in 10 minutes from being extremely extroverted and leading a group of people, to not being able to speak in non-anxiety way with my best friend.
so heres basically what i discovered. first of all, it may be hard to understand the difference, because when you are in one state you cant imagine the other state well. i think that there are 2 state of consciousness. 2 states you control yourself. first one occurs most of the times in our lives. it's a state you should use most of the times, but social phobia triggers shift to the second state. lets call the states A and B - it'll be easier A is a state where we do everything automatically. you dont think, you just act. B is the one we want to get rid of, or learn how to switch it off. it is controlling your own body manually. so basically A is being yourself, being in a first person and B is about controlling yourself from kind of other perspective. in B in social situations you first think about saying something and than say it(or not). or you first think if it would be appropriate to do some action like standing up from a chair in crowded room
i will add now few characteristics of A opposed to those from B:

1.in State B in social situations you first think about saying something and than say it(or not). or you first think if it would be appropriate to do some action like standing up from a chair in crowded room or even scratch your nose, when youre talking to someone.
inState A: 1. With A state you do no think about things like that at all, you just do them the second you think about them . if you think about doing something (im talking minor things like I gave an example) then guess what- you’re in B state.
2. B:
controlling every move- you have this manual control when doing anything in social situations. That’s why some people with SA walk funny. They pay too much attention to control every step

A:
you do not control, you do not think about you doing something. You just act the second you think about doing something. Here’s another important thing: in A state you control your body from kind of different command center. you think to yourself scratch my head, and you can observe how your hand goes up to your head and scratches it automatically without you paying any attention of doing this move. When you want to say something in A, you think about more less what you want to say and the brain does the rest of the work for you, saying it. In B state however, scratching your head when other people are watching you, is manual. You pay like up to 100% attention to your hand going up and than you move fingers to scratch. When you want to say something, you pay great attention in chosing words, sentences where you think you will sound good resulting in opposite. That’s why many people think they are socially retarded(I used to think that too) but it’s just a badly directed attention


3.
B:
you think all the time what other people think of you and you kind of see and control yourself from their perspective.

A: 3. you don’t think from other peop-le perspective and you don’t care what they are thinking at all. (yesterday I helped my mom to clean dishes. Normally I would picture myself how good I am from her’s perspective but today I just did it because I wanted to. I sometimes get into a fights now because I want to, not to picture myself winning and being cool from the spectator’s point of view but I did it just because I got angry. When I got SA triggered I have problem looking at other’s people eyes, cos I picture myself in their skin feeling bad).


. I’ve read some an article about introversion and extroversion today. Carl gustav jung once said that extroversion is about not being self aware, and introversion about self aware. And that’s exactly what it is! State A is about focusing 100% on external world and B is focusing 100% on yourself and other people feelings about you. In A state you perceive all the things differently. It’s like you can see better, but all it is is allowing your attention to focus on outside world.



Here’s a bit about my worst enemy – self consciousness - Fighting social anxiety is hard especially because sometimes when you work on it you tend to check everytime if you are in the state A yet. Checking it can be very hard to resist and it brings you deeper in B state. I mean you can look at yourself and check it but you have to do this from a different perspective. You have to understand – when you are in A it can be hard to think about how it feels in the B state and vice-versa, co you can fall into this trap checking all the time if this is it. If you are in the state than you know it. Sort of like blinking. if you start blinking manually the more you think about stopping, the longer it gets to get rid off it. but when you focus your attention somewhere, your eylids go on autopilot again.
You can check if you are in state by moving your arm. you have to think “move your arm up” instead of manually doing it. If you moved arm and had 100% concentration on say what you see or on your left arm, it should move sort of automatically. That’s the way to control whole your body.



If you get this breakthrough from B to A once it easier to go in it again and again. Because you remember what the B state looked and you can manage it somehow, but for me I usually have to work on it every day because it goes automatically over night or when I participate in social event. I currently am trying to develop some good way to remember how to get from B to A. (maybe you can help me with that).




Notes that might help:
-If something, is stopping you from for emple from looking at someone’s eyes, or gives you second thoughts about doing something in company of others – its phobia. Try to switch it off. Do not fight it, just switch it off.
-if you are thinking about if you’re in social phobia than you are not. You feel this thing. You cant observe that state but from other perspective.
- steer yourself by thoughts, not manually. (sorry for using this manually word, cant think of anything better).

-free yourself to experience, to actually Be yourself. Go on autopilot. It’s funny cos I thing things differently when Im in A and B. I mean with my eyes. I remember more details about a bus I was in, and stuff like that, so it’s kind of funny cos it sharpens your senses.
-the word awkwardness doesn’t exist in A state. You just don’t notice things like this at all. You can look stranger in the eyes for 10 minutes straight and feel NOTHING. you know it’s a bit inappropriate, but only because logic tells you that, not because you have to look somewhere else.


-first perspective – looking at word from your eyes, feeling whole body, but not feeling it at the same time.
-be like robot programmed to do everything automatically. – without you paying attention to those things.
-focus on what you see. Heres a often mistake. In B state I often tend to do this: I think about thinking what I see and I keep fooling myself, because you need to focus on outside world, not focus on how you perceive world. Have you ever been on bus, and someone was looking at you and you looked at the window, but you haven’t really been looking with your eyes, you were adjusting, controlling your body to avoid awkwardness. This is pure SA. Focusing on external world in crucial. You can do this by focusing on what you see but it can be hard because of problem I describe earlier so you can try one of other methods. I encourage you to experiment with it and think about a good method of changing the states. Sorry for language – I’t kind of chaotic cos I was in a hurry, plus English isn’t my first language. Feel free to post any questions here on my private messages. yeah that was long but please let me know if you got any idea about this controlling manually and automatically stuff.

This makes sense- and this "manual" versus "autopilot" thing may be why I'm not a very observant person- of my surroundings, that is. I guess I'm so focused on how I'm coming across to other people, that details about them or the room I'm standing in just escape me. And this translates to other things, too- even when I'm not around people, like when I'm driving- I'm not very good with remembering landmarks and things like that.

exactly.
I can relate to everything.
especially how i can never seem to remember anything about the external world. i've always felt like a bit of a dreamer
but i feel that I'm never 100% A or 100% B. but a certain mixture of both, which depends on my mood, energy level, people i'm around with etc.

i've also started to try to fight SP lately. but I've taken a bit of a different approach from what u've described. instead of "turning it off", i confront situations, consciously forcing myself to say things i wanted to say in the back of my mind when i feel nervous, and reward myself for it. At the end of everyday I'd record how many times i've been able to face my fears .

For me personally, i find it impossible to switch from A to B or vice versa consciously.

anyway, good luck. I'd be interested to hear about your progress

A very good post simplejack. Thank you!

In my opinion the most important point of your post was when you said, "it’s just a badly directed attention." That is so true! The way you describe "State A" and "State B" is also very good.

I remember when I was working at a retail job, I was so focused internally, and self-aware, that I would often not know where certain items were even though I walked past them dozens and dozens of times. Self-consciousness is indeed a curse that impairs your ability to process and retain important external information.

Another very important thing you said was this: "the word awkwardness doesn’t exist in A state. You just don’t notice things like this at all. You can look stranger in the eyes for 10 minutes straight and feel NOTHING. you know it’s a bit inappropriate, but only because logic tells you that, not because you have to look somewhere else."

This comment touches on something that has been a long and painful thing for me to figure out. But it is 100% true. Fear and self-consciousness is the sole producer of awkwardness. We are our own enemies in this respect. Once fear is taken away, awkwardness simply does not exist.

Thanks for the post, I will re-read it again sometime as well.

youre right , that was a long post but interestin ,sometimes i feel like im movin from state A to B , is so weirdo. i know very well about 'explanations' i have a knew one everyday , so i tought maybe the problem is that im changin too much ... lol

Scrabbl said:

For me personally, i find it impossible to switch from A to B or vice versa consciously.

Click to expand...

it is possible but it's very hard, because its often the more you try the deeper self conscious you are. i sometimes can get from b to a in a second , and sometimes i cant do it at all for a long time. its extremely easy and extremely tough at the same time. it's kind of like letting go. god, its so hard to write about this stuff, almost impossible to describe certain things

ok guys, heres first exercise:

it's very important to distinguish the 2 states. most of the times when you're uncertain about where you are, than you are in B. you can however try to learn to observe yourself in A state. for best results try it at home (at the beginning) so there wont be other people that can trigger the B state. try to observe how you brush your teeth, without controlling your hand. or eat. it can be anything actually. i recommend that it will be some very automatic thing for you, that is hard or impossible to do in B state. like playing a guitar or typing on the keyboard. so, do something automatic and focus consciously on what you're seeing at the moment(common mistake is that you think about what you're looking at instead of really looking - sorry, you probably won't understand this sentence but its extremely hard to write about this) you can that sort of take a look and your hand brushing your teeth or etc without controlling it. see how every move is well coordinated and precise, while you hardly pay any attention to your hand! when you do the same thing in B state, your hand is more sloppy, and all you can think about is brushing your theeth. while in the A state you can think about school, walk and eat sandwich at the same time while not thinking about you doing it. dont worry if you can do that - try other time or with osmething else because there is this trap where harder you try, the deeper you are in B. and dont lie to yourself that you're in A state - you will most likely know you're in it. doing many things at once is also good idea, cos multi-tasking works only in A state - cant stay concious about many things. i often focus on what i see t the moment, and than i do something, like typing or tapping my foot. frankly it can be anything, but the more complicated the thing is, the better you can notice what state you're in. in B you sort of fake your moves, and when they get complicated you get lost. i recommend focusing on what you see+ doing something. works best for me.

it may look like this excresise is not connected to SA at all, but it's the way to show you how you can control A state. sorry for being unclear but it's sooo hard to explain this using words. if you dont understand, send me a message and i will try to put it in other words.

Yeah simplejack, maybe we can compare it to driving? When I drive while thinking about something else, my driving is automatically good, cause I am not overthinking every action I take. But when I focus intently on my driving, I became anxious and wondering if I am doing certain things correctly. The excessive focus on what we are doing is causing us our problems? But switching over between the different states of consciousness seems confusing on exactly how to do it? I'll keep trying though.

thats exactly what it is powerfulthoughts. you are doing most of stuff in your life the way you're driving, the problem starts when you give too much attention to things and keep overthinking them. i dont really know why do we develop this habit of going in B state as it is very bad for us. but i belive you can learn to control those states and therfore beat social phobia.

BTW any ideas how i can change my signature? that post is out of date and can be a bit confusing...