I know EXACTLY how you guys feel and I will try to explain to you how to get over it. Im a male and I used to have extreme social anxiety around confident assertive males, and when I would be around people that I labeled confident and assertive I would get so nervous where I would talk weird, my body would tense and it was insanely embarrassing. Now my nervousness around these same people is gone and has been for a year. I consciously figured out how to rewire my brain so I would no longer get anxiety triggered by assertive people. I am going to first explain how the anxiety is all in your head (so you know in fact that you do have hope for change!) and then I will explain how to do it, but very briefly.
1. imagine you are talking to someone who makes you very nervous, picture yourself in that situation, right now you are getting tense and you feel so awkward and nervous. Now imagine the same scenario, but one of your cooler friend is substituted for you in this situation and his interaction with this guy is light and playful and your cooler friend doesn’t seem to be nervous in the slightest, in fact hes enjoying this interaction with this guy. (by “cooler” then you, I just mean someone who is more comfortable around these people). Whats the difference?, why did you get nervous and your friend didn’t? That’s the question of the year right?! The point of this visualization is that its not the assertive people who are just always intimidating to everyone, because their not. it’s the associations in your brain that make them intimidating and scary. Make sense? Its all in your head. So does this mean you can rewire your brain so that these same people wont trigger your anxiety? Absolutely! And how long does that take? Not too long once you figure out what your main LIMITING BELIEF is.
That brings me to the role of beliefs. What is a belief? A thought that you hold to be so true and absolute, that even if its wrong to most people, its still right in your world, and you will use it to base what happens in your environment on. Some belifs are not true, and are limiting you and creating anxiety in you, but you hold them to be so true, you have never stopped to challenge them and realize the fact that they are untrue and are limiting you from getting the joy you want in relationships. So back on the topic of getting over your anxiety, whats the solution to stopping this nervousness? Its to change the associations and limiting beliefs in your head so that you stop having this knee-jerk nervous reaction to people who you find intimidating. So it’s all about changing your limiting beliefs to be more empowering beliefs so that in these situations your natural reaction is something else other than anxiety. Now if you follow what Im saying, then I hope you are getting more curious about what I am talking about and more eager to know the cure for it because I know it has made the world of difference in my life. Instead of dreading interacting with certain people, I conquered the main limiting belief I had that makes me feel comfortable talking to almost anyone! I will share with you what my limiting belief was
2. The reason I used to get nervous was because when I would talk to someone who was overly assertive with me, my main knee-jerk subconscious thought was that I had to be assertive back to them to counter it (god knows how I ever got this limiting belief in the first place.) So deep rooted inside me I thought I was suppose to fight it. The thing that got my emotions all messed up is that Naturally I was scared of fighting back verbally, because I knew I wasn’t very good at standing up for myself and I then would be scared that I would make myself look like a bigger idiot when they would fight me back. All these thoughts had me in an emotional anxiety attack when I would talk to someone who I considered assertive. Then one day I met someone who was very cool, the definition of cool, and he got along with everyone. Little did I know that he would eventually create such an impression on me that my limiting belief that I wasn’t even aware I had would come crumbling down. His name was Frank, and I would notice that nobody ever made him nervous, but whenever someone would challenge him or be assertive with him, he literally just wouldn’t fight and instead when someone raised their voice at him, he would just continue to talk calmly, and he wouldn’t even fight back. He would never challenge people, And people loved him for it! So that was when my belief that the correct way to handle these situations of fighting back and standing up for yourself was in fact my limiting belief, because there are so many other productive ways to handle it. So now when I talk to anyone I never have the urge to dispute or defend myself because watching him handle these situations inspired me to never even feel like you should defend yourself because now my belief is that doing that is socially dumb, but now that I don’t have the urge to, I naturally am much better at it when I do and I have curbed my anxiety. I hope your following my thinking?! =)
My point is that everyone has their own reasons for why someone makes you nervous, but you should try to discover what it is and why it is because their might be a belief that you are clinging to that is limiting you (a limiting Belief) that you have to completely tear down and belief the opposite to create more empowering and relaxing situations. If you still have trouble discovering what your limiting beliefs are feel free to contact me at
[email protected] and I would love to talk to you since one of my new favorite things is discovering other peoples limiting beliefs and switching them with empowering beleifs in order to get over social anxiety. Let me know if you have any other questions, and trust me, If I have been completely over my social anxiety for an entire year now, I guarantee you can too, Im nothing special, I just put in lots of work to figure it out, and I know you have too