Think you’re lazy? Here’s how to be more active to combat social anxiety disorder

[Photo courtesy of Ingorrr]

One of the (many) problems with social anxiety disorder is that it can affect your motivation to get out there and do things. The fear of negative evaluation by others might mean you prefer the safety of your bed, rather than face (usually misinterpreted) stares of disapproval.

However, human beings by nature need to be stimulated. And avoiding activities will simply make you feel worse rather than better. Being isolated can make you feel depressed. So the best antidote to changing the way you feel is to change the way you think and behave.

If you lie in bed all day waiting for the motivation/desire/energy to do something then you’ll be waiting a longtime. Instead you’ll find that doing literally anything other than nothing will raise your mood, boost your confidence and give you the drive to be more active.

Why am I so lazy?

First of all, don’t make the mistake of ‘labelling’ yourself ‘lazy’. As a human being you’re too complicated to define yourself by a single word or phrases. You might be lazy ‘sometimes’. But that doesn’t mean you have some sort of genetic imprint that prevents you from getting dressed and doing stuff.

Here are a few of the common excuses (particularly if you suffer from social anxiety disorder) that might pop into your head to avoid getting stuff done:

• ‘I don’t feel like it’ – it’s a myth to think that you have to wait to ‘feel’ like doing something before you can do it. It’s only after experiencing the rewards of achieving something that you’ll find the motivation to do more. Even little things, like cooking yourself dinner rather than eating dry toast, will improve your mood because of the beneficial outcome from your activity.

• ‘I’m too depressed’ – you feel the way that you think. So if you lie in bed all day staring at the ceiling tormenting yourself over your latest (perceived) social faux pas then you’re not going to feel like going on a 10k bike ride. The best way of fighting your depression is to change the way you think. Being active and pursuing fulfilling goals, whether it’s teaching yourself Spanish or learning to cook, is what will banish the black clouds in the long run.

• ‘I might fail’ – So what? Nobody is good at everything. And we all have our strengths and weaknesses in life. Thinking you shouldn’t play tennis or attend a job interview because you might not get the outcome you want is only going to be a self fulfilling prophesy. To get better at things you have to practice. And there are enough hobbies, sports and jobs out there for you to find one you get satisfaction from.

Remember that thinking you must win at something or must get the job is a rigid way of looking at things. You should give yourself some flexibility and have preferences for the outcomes you’d like rather than rigid success/failure demands.

So how do I get myself out of bed and combat social anxiety disorder?

A tried and tested method of beating the bedridden blues is taught by Dr David Burns in ‘Feeling Good’. He suggests writing out a time table for what you’d like to get done each day.

This can include the minor things, such as getting dressed and reading the paper, right up to shopping or attending a dinner party. At the end of the day you then rate out of five the satisfaction you found in the completion of each task. The easier tasks might only rate as a one, but the more demanding challenges could rate as a four or five.

What you should find is that the sense of accomplishment you get from scoring your activity each day will drive you to do more. Having a schedule also helps you to structure your time and keep yourself occupied.

Gradually, you should also find that you start pushing yourself to keep improving your score and pursuing ever more demanding tasks.

The list of things you could do is limitless. But here are a few ideas:

• Learn a new musical instrument


• Learn a new language


• Read a book (I’d highly recommend ‘Feeling Good’)


• Take up jogging (exercise is a great anxiety reliever)


• Start an eBay shop for some extra cash


• Decorate your bedroom to create a bright, warm atmosphere


• Learn to cook spicy Thai dishes


• Start writing a blog (doing something creative is always recommended for providing an outlet for expressing your social anxiety disorder)


• Practice meditating (also recommended for anxiety treatment)

So, if you’re currently lying in bed, feeling glum and reading this on your laptop – start writing a list of all the active things you could be doing.

Remember that you feel the way that you think. So start giving yourself a daily dose of uplifting brainwaves from pursuing fulfilling goals, and banish the bedridden blues for good.

[Photo courtesy of SqueakyMarmot]

Originally posted 2008-06-26 18:38:10. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Think you’re lazy? Here’s how to be more active to combat social anxiety disorder is a post from: How You Can Overcome Social Anxiety Disorder

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What Causes Social Anxiety Disorder, Panic and Fear of Strangers?

If you suffer from social anxiety then the fear of what people think can sometimes be overwhelming. Simple activities like walking into a crowded room or sitting near a group of strangers can be enough to set off your alarm bells and cause you to panic. Because you’re convinced people are judging you and talking about you. In the worst case scenario you might hear someone laugh, which of course you think is aimed at you.

If this sounds familiar then you’re not alone. Literally millions of people around the world suffer from social anxiety and panic in uncomfortable situations. It’s estimated that 10% will suffer social anxiety at some stage in their life.

Why do I suffer anxiety and fear of strangers?

There are believed to be a few reasons why you might have developed social anxiety and the fear of people you don’t know. The main causes are believed to be rooted in your childhood: growing up with anxious or overly critical parents; or bullied or neglected as a child.

The low self esteem these experiences can cause can mean that you’re always looking to win the approval of others. This in turn makes you feel anxious because you’re constantly worrying about what people think and whether they’ll reject you.

Can social anxiety be overcome?

Social anxiety is believed to be the third most common psychiatric disorder, after depression and alcoholism, and in recent years extensive studies have been conducted into its causes and effects. With a diagnosis comes treatment, and thousands of people have learned to overcome their anxiety and panic through a combination of:

• cognitive behavioural therapy (which teaches you how to replace your uncomfortable thoughts with more helpful ways of thinking)


• exercise


• relaxation techniques


• being more active


• medication (a magic bullet doesn’t exist for social anxiety. But a doctor can prescribe drugs that will take the edge off your sense of panic in social situations to help you change the way you think and behave and overcome your anxiety in the long term)

There’s an abundance of information to help you pacify your panic

When I’ve (finally) finished my Overcoming Social Anxiety eBook it will provide an overview of cognitive behavioural therapy and practical exercises you can use to gradually change the way you think and behave. And there’s already a wealth of information available in books and on the web to help you understand what social anxiety is and what strategies you can use to overcome its symptoms.

A particularly useful site (directed to by Ileana at the Beating Social Anxiety blog) is about.com’s Social Anxiety Disorder site. There’s plenty of informative articles on here to get you started in understanding your condition, and to help you realise that you’re not alone in experiencing panic in social situations.

Originally posted 2008-07-24 13:43:37. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Finding the Best Stress Management Courses

As more people understand how harmful stress is, the need for courses on dealing with stress management has multiplied greatly. No matter who you are, stress can reduce your productivity and even threaten your physical health. If you can learn to manage your stress through a course, whatever it costs in time and money, will end up being a wise investment.

We’ll be looking into the value of this approach more closely in this article.

Many stress management courses are primarily focused on teaching people to relax properly in order to deal more effectively with stress. Some of the most effective stress management courses include things like yoga simply for the improved breathing exercises taught. Cognitive behavior therapists admit that patients see fewer stress symptoms when they focus on proper relaxation methods. Most people don’t realize that relaxation can be achieved for most people by learning how to breathe more effectively. Shallow breathing is one of the signs of a person under stress, which can sometimes make symptoms seem more severe. Many therapists will recommend muscle relaxation exercises designed to help manage stress more effectively, too.

The first option to try is a good exercise program, but individuals can find excellent courses for managing their stress online or through the mail, or other options are through large companies. It can make a huge difference in reducing stress if you make exercise a regular part of your life, even though it isn’t emphasized much when dealing with stress. You may get talked into a stress management program, and you may need one, but don’t let anyone keep you from believing that the best tool for managing stress is a vigorous exercise program. It helps you feel better physically, gives you more energy and helps keep you in a more positive mood.

If you are considering a program for managing your stress, why not try an exercise program first.

Customer testimonials for the stress management course offered by The Freeman Institute are very impressive and clearly show that this program works. Handling stress, and other aspects of running a successful business, are covered by many of the products that this company provides. The focus of this course is on teaching employees better skills when it comes to dealing with issues such as conflict, productivity, working in teams and making the most out of ones own natural stress management style. Practical tips and techniques are offered in the course which will actually help you identify and deal with anything that causes you stress while at work or elsewhere. Definitely worth a few minutes of your time, you might want to give The Freeman Institute a try. Stress can be very debilitating, for you and your employees if you have some, which makes handling stress the right way a very beneficial skill to learn. If you are feeling less productive, or sick and weak most of the time, it may have to do with the stress you are experiencing, something you have to take care of as soon as possible. It is in the best interest of you, your employees, and your business, if you learn to handle your stress; get a stress management course today.

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How To Be Assertive When You Suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder

[photo courtesy of aurevoirkatie]

Being asked to do favours and to help people out is just a part of everyday life. Whilst being able to decline requests if they’re too inconvenient isn’t a problem for most, if you’re socially anxious then being able to say ‘No’ is fraught with hazards. The trick is knowing how to be fair to yourself in assessing whether to do the favour, and then being assertive in how you respond.

Being assertive is simply being able to voice your own opinions and feelings firmly so that they’re considered fairly by other people. If you suffer from social anxiety then this can be easier said then done because of the fear of displeasing people and being rejected if you don’t fulfil their demands.

Rather than risk being viewed negatively as selfish or unhelpful, you can feel forced into saying ‘Yes’ even when you think a request is an unreasonable drain on your time and energy.

Avoid the unhelpful extremes of passivity or aggression

The problem with being too passive and always fitting in with what others want is that some people will take advantage of your desire to ‘always be nice’ and will simply heap greater demands on you. This in turn will lead to you getting mad with yourself because you’ll feel that you’re constantly running around at other people’s beck and call.

The other extreme is to respond aggressively to unreasonable demands in the false notion that anger equates to strength. When you’re behaving aggressively you lose the ability to think or act rationally, making it even harder to express why you think the request is unfair.

Raising your voice and trying to be intimidating can also have the reverse effect of making other people become aggressive themselves, and the situation deteriorate into the sort of ugly confrontation you’d normally be desperate to avoid.

Relying on anger to protect yourself against unreasonable demands is not how to make friends or influence people.

Assertiveness is about being balanced

As with overcoming many of the problems associated with social anxiety, being assertive is all about being balanced in your thinking and behaviour, and staying away from the extremes of passivity or aggression.

Whether you’re asked to cover for someone at work, lend people money or run errands for them, when people make demands you need to objectively assess the fairness of the request being made. Your feelings, opinions and time are just as important as everybody else’s, so you need to consider whether the requests being made of you are fair. Would you feel comfortable asking someone else to do the same thing?

If after assessing the request and you think it’s unreasonable, because of a high personal cost in terms of time and energy, then in order to be fair to yourself you have to be able to say ‘No’. As long as you’re fair and objective, saying ‘No’ doesn’t mean your selfish or uncaring.

However, actually being able to say ‘No’ presents many challenges in itself. I’ll be offering advice on developing assertiveness skills so people accept your decision in my next article.

Being assertive isn’t about winning, but about getting your point across and ensuring your own opinions and feelings are considered fairly, because they’re just as important as everybody else’s.

Originally posted 2008-05-05 18:17:15. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Established Techniques to Handling Your Social Anxiety

Social anxiety is a thing that maybe everybody encounters at some time or another. The vast greater number face this in many ways each day of their lives in different settings. If you wonder about the signs, just stop for a moment and think about the fear reaction. It is straightforward to imagine all the different symptoms of this because you just have to think of your personal experiences. If that talks about you in certain social situations, then you know full well that it is irritating and no fun. If you want to do something concrete about your own social anxiety, then we have some fantastic tips you can discover.

Why you happen to be experiencing social anxiety is challenging to assess, and there are so many possible causes of it. However, sometimes our particular conditions in life can contribute to social anxiety being created. Often it is as simple as being isolated, and then you become very secure with being alone. Even so, if you have reduced self esteem and confidence, then obviously that will not help matters at all. You can start small and safe by getting yourself around people to some more comfortable extent. It is okay to take baby steps in the beginning, but you have to realize that you need to begin somewhere. Even so, contemplate what is achievable with this. You can come across community providers to become a part of, and they are not hard to find. Whenever you put yourself out there, you might find that it does get considerably better.

Seek to become more mindful of what you think every day. Maybe you have engaged in guessing what someone else may be imagining about you? In fact that is something that perhaps all folks have done at one time or another. The curious aspect to that mental game is there can be usually detrimental attributes to the guessing. All right – so that is something you must become more aware of right away. Just plan on doing something concerning that, and then know you must form new thought behavior. Look at that when you play this guessing game, you are believing to know what is going on in the minds of other people. Obviously that is basically impossible for most situations in daily everyday living.

Work toward creating the most positive perspective you can. There’s nothing stopping you, although we know it can be hard and even frustrating at times. What we’re really talking about is making changes in perspective in your daily life. These are changes in your habitual means of feeling, perceiving and wondering. If you give this a considerable effort, you can achieve this in less than a month. You are able to do this in under a month if you are devoted and committed to doing so. Plus when you achieve this, you will be considerably less inclined to play the destructive guessing game.

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There Are Important Things Needed For Your Mind And Emotions To Be Healthy

Mental health and emotional health are just as important as your physical health. Most people don’t believe this at all. When you are physically healthy, means that you will be healthy emotionally and mentally automatically, is what a lot of people think. Sometimes this is true-after all, it’s hard to feel down and gloomy when you’re physically fit. A lot of physical problems stem from emotions or the mind, and they need to be dealt with first. Becoming healthy mentally and emotionally will take some research and understanding and then putting a plan into action.

Make sure you get enough sleep each night. To keep your body and mind healthy, most people believe that eight hours is the magic number. Nine might be what you need, and then again six or seven might be right for you. Finding the magic number for you personally will take some experimentation, and maybe help from mental and physical health professionals. It might take you a while to figure out the right number, but then you really should try to get the much sleep every night from then on. Sleeping through the night and getting the right number of hours can change the way you feel emotionally and physically. Be around people you enjoy being with. If you will take some time each day to walk through a park or a garden, your serotonin levels will be raised up in your brain, and your blood pressure will become lower. Your emotions can be raised up to a high level by responding in a physical way. There are lots of ways that you can spend each day, admiring the living things around you that are beautiful, even in art or architecture. Your mood can be elevated by the inspiration of beauty. Everything and everyone has its own beauty, which you need to see. When someone enjoys a piece of art, or something else, it is okay not to have the same response. It is okay to like something different from others.

Take some time to have fun. Being lazy is not a good trait, and neglecting to do what you should be doing is bad for you, but still you need to take some time to have some fun, because your happiness levels depend on doing something you enjoy. You can easily run your emotions into the ground, when you are only working, even doing housework, because the work needs to get done. Doing something just because you think it is fun helps you feel happy. What you have to get done will be less tedious, when you spend some time being happy. The less tedious you feel your life is, the better your emotional and mental health will be. Working with a mental health professional is something you should be doing if your mental or emotional problems are severe. Starting with these few tips are a good place to make your life better by improving your mind and emotions. The truth is that our emotions are somewhat within our control. We can do things every day that help us feel happy, calm, stimulated, etc. This article has tips that are only the beginning, but they will help you improve your mental health. The information is out there to improve your mental health, but the responsibility will always be up to you to get the information and make the choices.

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