Hypnotherapy For
Social Anxiety Disorder
Mental Health Professional And Clinic
Hypnotherapy Helping Ordinary People
Lead An Ordinary Life
Treating Social Anxiety Disorders in Singapore!
While the internet and social media offer us great advantages, they all allow us to withdraw from having a personable life experience. There are now more people with mental health issues purely as a consequence of this ability to hide from life behind our devices. In some sense, our device has become our vice and it’s a pretty poor excuse for what could otherwise be a life worth living! My aim is to help people, thru hypnosis and therapy emerge from behind their screens or mask and live a truly fulfilling life. So, if you have social anxiety or any type of anxiety come to that, then I hope you find this article worth a read.
To start, let’s take a look at what anxiety is:
Everybody experiences some anxiety, it's perfectly normal to feel nervous in many situations, especially in some social situations. For example, you’re going for an interview or on a date, maybe giving a presentation etc. These types of situations can cause a flurry of feelings, maybe that feeling of butterflies in the pit of your stomach. However, for someone who has a social anxiety disorder (aka social phobia), these everyday events can cause significant, maybe even overwhelming, anxiety. This heightens one sense of self and the become extremely self-conscious and probably embarrassed too because you are terrified at the thought of being scrutinised, judged or seen negatively in the eyes of others.
Treating Social Anxiety with hypnotherapy is assessed on a person-by-person basis, simply because we are all different. However, the emotional and defensive systems in our brain that activate the fight or flight response are almost identical and not just for humans. That is why animal studies have given us so much insight into how anxiety develops. So, I start treatment with a view to lessening levels of anxiety that are not specifically related to social situations. You may feel that you do not have any anxiety that is not related to social situations but let me assure you, you do!
In order to begin your journey toward a life without unnecessary anxiety, you can book a Free 1hr Consultation Right Here
Symptoms of Social Anxiety
Emotional-behavioural symptoms
- Situations in which you fear being judged negatively
- Intense fear of interacting or talking with strangers
- An intense fear others will notice that you look anxious
- Overly concerned about embarrassing or humiliating yourself
- Fear of physical symptoms such as blushing, sweating, trembling or losing your voice
- Avoiding things or speaking to people thru fear of embarrassment
- Avoiding situations that make you the centre of attention
- The fearful anticipation of an activity or event
- An intense feeling of anxiety before or at social situations
- Enegatively exaggerating your performance, finding flaws in yourself others don't see
- Always expecting the worst possible experience during any social situation
Physical symptoms
Physical signs and symptoms of a social anxiety disorder may include:
- Fast heartbeat- Blushing
- Sweating
- Trembling
- Tight chest
- Stomach/digestive issues or nausea
- Breathlessness of trouble catching your breath
- Feeling dizzy, lightheaded of faint
- Feeling disaddociated or that your mind has gone blank
- Muscle tension or cramps
- Fatigue or excessively lethargic
Hypnotherapy Gets To The Source Of The Problem
Avoiding common social situations
- Meeting unfamiliar people or strangers
- Going parties or social events
- Attending meetings or going to work or school
- Beginning a normal conversation
- Making or maintaining eye contact
- Romantic liaisons, e.g. dating
- Entering a room where people are already seated
- Returning someintg you bought or a gift to a store
- Eating in public, especially if in front of other people
- Using a public toilet (urinal for men)
To a certain extent, overcoming anxiety, of any type, one has to face their demons. You will never overcome a fear of elevators by takinig the stairs! While you will get by on those lower levels, your destiny may be on the top floor. Hypnotherapy can be immensly helpful in helping people overcome all sorts of anxiety provoking situations but, eventually, you have to enter the elevator. That's when you know you've cracked it!
Likely Causes of Social Anxiety
Possible causes include:
- Inherited traits. Anxiety disorders often run in families. However, it's not at all clear how much of this is due to genetics and how much is due to epigenetice, i.e. learned behaviour.
- Brain structure. Structures in the brain called the amygdala and extended amygdala are known to play a role in the activation of fear responses. People with an overactive amygdala often have a heightened fear/startle response, which is also believed to increase anxiety in social situations.
- Environment. It is easy to grasp, that if we were born in a different place, at a different time, then we would be different. Consequently, social anxiety disorder is mostly a learned behavior, something that happens as inexpected or unwanted things happen to us.It is not abnormal to develop soem level of anxiety after we experience something unpleasant or embarrassing, especially it it's in a social situation. There can also be associations between social anxiety disorder and parents who display anxious behaviour or, perhaps, who have some other form of mental condition, e.g. Aspaergers, ADHD, Dissociative disorders. Or from parents who are overcontrolling and/or overprotective of their children, maybe as a consequnce of losing a child or nearly so.
A Problem Only exists In The Absence Of A Solution!
Definition of Fear and Anxiety
I define fear as a state that exists when we are in the presence of real or imagined danger. This is when the stress response, fight or flight, kicks in, it marshalls our defences and gets us ready to stand and fight our corner or, to rune like hell,
Anxiety, on the other hand, is defined as the anticipation of danger, i.e. something that could, would or should happen. Accordingly, the brain/body goes into its defensive stance of protection and/or survival.
The investigative component of Hypnotherapy (the conscious talking part), seeks out the likely causes of the problem and, from there, provides curative interventions that slowly reverse the causative elements of the activation of the stress response. This is best and most effecively a consequence of repetitive. prosesses over the course of several session. A process called habituation that initiates Long Term Depression (LTD). LTD has nothing to do with psychological depression, but, rather, it is the opposite of Long Term Potentiation (LTP), the process of learing, i.e. making memories. Studies show, that quick fix interventions have a likely hood of resurfacing as the same or an alternatiive issue. Essentially this is because, habituation of a potential life threatening situation, better occurs over longer periods, albiet that is in terms of weeks, with hypnotherapy, not months or years with other types of mental interventional discilpines.
Is Hypnotherapy A Solution?
How hypnosis and hypnotherapy could help you get your life back, somewhat depends on how you experience hypnosis. This is the very reason I provide a full 1-hour consultation, which includes a demonstration of clinical hypnosis so that you can make an informed decision as to whether my hynotherapy services will work for you?