Social Anxiety Video
In this ‘Overcoming Social Anxiety’ video, Mark Tyrrell discusses how the problem develops and reveals his first experience of social anxiety at the age of 9. Mark talks about how hypnosis can be used to build social confidence, whether at work, with friends or in other situations.
Transcript of Social Anxiety video
When I was nine years old (a couple of years ago), I remember being the new kid in school; I’d moved from one school, going to another. The teacher introduced me to the whole class, and it was the first time in my life that I’d ever really experienced being socially shy. I even remember shaking and finding it difficult to look at the other pupils in my class. I’ve always remembered that experience, and I’ve never really been plagued with that level of social anxiety since. But certainly as a teenager, talking to the opposite sex, I found it difficult to establish relationships in the beginning and make eye contact and have a proper conversation with this ‘alien species’ known as womankind.
Generally, as you move into adulthood, you leave all that sort of shyness behind you. But some people carry shyness, social awkwardness, even social phobia, into adulthood with them. And what this does, of course, is prevent them meeting their basic emotional needs for connectivity with other human beings, for perhaps forming relationships, and even work opportunities can be missed because a person has social anxiety. Now, the way social anxiety manifests is often not feeling as if you can talk when you’re around new people or people you feel you want to impress and so forth; perhaps blushing, as well. People can be socially confident and extrovert and still blush, but oftentimes blushing is symptomatic of social anxiety. The horrible feeling that the spotlight in the room might suddenly come on to you, everyone might suddenly focus on to you, and that sort of anticipatory anxiety: “Oh my god, what happens if suddenly I get asked a question; everyone’s now looking at me.”
Dealing with these issues can transform a person’s life. If someone used to blush or used to fear blushing or used to not be able to speak their mind in public or used to not be able to speak up in meetings at work and so forth, and suddenly they can or they begin to be able to do that, then they have a kind of new level of power - personal power in their life - to be productive, effective, and gain satisfaction and enjoyment.
There’s another element here, as well. If someone’s been shy all their life - socially phobic - then they may have failed to develop social skills. People often say, “Well, I don’t know what to say! I’m worried about what we’ll talk about.” Socially confident people don’t really have an issue, because they don’t even mind if you don’t talk about stuff, being comfortable with silence sometimes or knowing how to ask people about themselves, so you let them do the talking initially, and so forth.
There are lots of techniques and skills to develop to make people more socially aware, more socially skilled, in their day-to-day lives. I love using hypnosis, specifically, to maximize confidence when people are socializing. Because it can be a revelation to people to realize they can go out and meet someone new and feel relaxed about that. That can feel like an epiphany for some people, to have that experience.
So the articles under this section are really focused on different aspects of social confidence; whether it’s confidence in your primary relationship or confidence at work or confidence with friends or new people. It doesn’t matter; the tips and techniques are applicable to all these areas of social confidence.
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