PBSI 107

Social anxiety is a condition where everyday interactions cause heavy anxiety and cause someone to be extremely self-critical and embarrassed due to the assumption that everybody else is secretly judging or scrutinizing an individual. This can lead to a major disruption in someone's life. Mayo Clinic said because these individuals can avoid relationships, daily routines, school and work and other activities.

Comfort levels and social relationships vary across different individuals. Everybody gets nervous in social situations at some point but nervousness is temporary and doesn't interfere with daily life. Social anxiety is chronic and also severe impacting individuals life deeply out of fear and avoidance of certain situations and accord according to this social anxiety also generates physical responses to the fear even to the extent of causing panic attacks.

Now I'll be passing them on to Brandon to talk about the symptoms. Some symptoms of social anxiety can include avoidance of situations where one has to either socialize or be the center of attention. An intense fear or anxiety of social situations.

a worry about being judged and humiliated in social settings as well as some physical symptoms such as nausea, dizziness, and even panic attacks. There's often a fear of experiencing physical symptoms due to being scrutinized. There's often analyzing overanalyzing every social interaction and being intensely self-critical.

And lastly, there's expecting the worst possible outcome in every single scenario. There are actually several different therapy techniques to help improve with social anxiety. The main three I would like to talk about are cognitive behavioral uh exposure therapy which gradually exposes individuals to social situations and there is acceptance and commitment therapy which helps individuals grow comfortable with their anxiety and to overcome it.

Using a mix of these three therapies we can help individuals overcome their anxiety. Treatments can also be be prescribed. SSRIs which are anti-depressants can be prescribed to help manage anxiety and beta blockers can be used to manage the physical symptoms.

In conclusion, we should really treat these individuals with social anxiety with respect and patience. We can use tactics like active listening to make them feel heard and to help them share their experiences much easier. And by doing so, you're also being a better friend.

So that's all the more reason to practice something like this. So basically social anxiety is a mix of um behavioral responses and biological responses. Your amydala is um a critical component of determining fear and basically uh like your fight or fight your fight orflight response uh gets triggered in your brain.

Um and people with social anxiety tend to have overactive amydalas and also they their amygdalas link fear to social like like to social situations. Um, additionally your hippocampus in your brain which is like for memory and learning um associates social environments with um like fear because negative experiences like trauma over critical environments and uh just negative social experiences in the past like rejection uh can like influence somebody's response to like social conditions now. So it's a mix of biological and like environmental processes.

Well, uh, I just got a new outfit. I'm kind of excited to show my friend. Hey Hannah, I really like your outfit.

Oh my gosh, I am never wearing this out in public again. I'm never talking to her again. She was only saying that to be nice to me.

She totally thought I look stupid. Everything in that interaction looked forced and I just humiliated myself. I'm never wearing these clothes out in public ever again.

I cannot believe I did that. Media portrayal of social anxiety is both helpful but also misleading. When social anxiety isn't done well in media, it can make characters appear shy or awkward instead of properly showing the condition.

Social media has been a useful tool for in for individuals with social anxiety as they can get interactions without having to be free face to face. However, it's a destructive cycle as being on one's phone too much can also lead to increased rates of anxiety. Additionally, older generations sometimes don't understand social anxiety along with many other mental health conditions due to how mental health was treated not too long ago.

Luckily, as more information and awareness is being spread, older generations are coming to terms with mental conditions like social anxiety and others.