bluebell
12-18-2007, 11:18 PM
Experience gained from the complete recovery from 10+ years’ Social Phobia.
The treatment of Social Phobia includes 2 principles:
Principle 1
The correction of low self-esteem (inferiority complex), and the build-up of self-confidence, namely “total acceptance of yourself”, In Eastern Philosophy Therapy, it is called “Original Form” or “to do nothing”, it is the root-removing principle.
Principle 2
Behavioral Therapy, Exposure Therapy, Desensitization Therapy and NLP etc. A large amount of social practice can quickly remove the symptoms. It is symptom-removing principle.
The combination of principle 1 (root-removing principle) and principle 2 (symptom-removing principle) can lead to the complete recovery from Social Phobia.
If we only apply principle 1, some people are still be able to completely recover, theoretically all the social phobia sufferers can completely recover only by applying principle 1, but my years of treatment practice has proved that principle 2 can greatly shorten the treatment process and many of my clients have said it is a very important part.
Without principle 1, we can quickly remove the symptom, but the root is still there.
Like that we cut a tree down without eliminating its root. On the surface, maybe we can behave freely and normally, but from the bottom of our hearts, subconsciously, we still feel something is remaining there, we still feel we are not truly confident, the root is not eliminated, and it will thrive upon the warm and damp environment, namely “recurrence”.
Mentioned above is the comparison of eastern therapy and western therapy and their respective advantage and disadvantage in treating Social Phobia.
My name is Heixi, a psychological counselor from China, now I would like to share 10 years’ research findings and the experience gained from treatment practice with all the people throughout the world, I wish those self-help sufferers can learn something from my article, if my therapy can give you some enlightenment or help in overcoming Social Phobia, I think my long march towards my dream, “saving all the tortured souls from mental purgatory” , will have a good start.
On the other hand, I wish professional psychotherapists and counselors could study my therapy and exchange their views with mine, because I myself have tested this therapy for many years during the treatment practice and the practice has proved that it is a complete solution for Social Phobia rather than a hollow theory from any psychological textbooks and works. Please forgive my overconfidence, I just simply wish I can give those who are suffering in the hell of Social Phobia a hand, I also welcome any comment and criticism from any experienced professional therapist.
The concrete measures are listed as follows:
systematical and step-by-step desensitization, gradually expose yourself to the environment and situation you are scared of -- control yourself and behave normally within measure, try your best to get a success experience every time---this is the guideline.
Group training and exposure, namely speak, sing or perform talk show before a large audience until complete desensitized, usually this period is 3 months, I believe currently it is the most effective and quickest way to remove symptoms, for example, the Carnegie Sociality Training Class.
Treatment of low self-esteem and confidence, such as “feeling of shyness”, “feeling of inferiority to others”, “being afraid of seeing people eye to eye”. To deal with these inveterate negative thinking mode, we must apply the essence of eastern therapy such as “completely acceptance of yourself”, “let the symptoms be there and do nothing to consciously change it” , “go back to where you came from in your heart”, eastern therapy can completely eliminate the core and root of Social Phobia, and it will never recur.
Thus, with the combination of western therapy to remove the symptom and eastern therapy to remove the root, sufferers can completely free themselves from Social Phobia and never fall back into it.
Here I must point out that in the practical treatment, we should combine group therapy and individual therapy as well as customize our therapy according to detailed and different symptom on the basis of the guiding principle, all in all, the key word is “flexibility”.
Some people may suggest that we only apply eastern therapy since it can remove the root and completely solve the problem, there is no need to add western therapy such as desensitization therapy, CBT and Exposure Therapy.
At first, I also thought that way, it can be theoretically proved, in real life, some people only apply eastern therapy and quickly recover.
However, in practical clinical treatment, it is not as simple as that. If we only apply eastern therapy without western therapy, the curing effect is not satisfactory and the treatment process is too long.
Eastern therapy can also be called “Natural Therapy”, The difference between eastern therapy and western therapy is like the difference between Chinese medication and western medication, the merit of Chinese medication lies in the fact that it can improve the immunity and completely free people from the disease, but the tardy progress prevents it from being the quick solution of some acute disease such as massive haemorrhage, however western medicine can quickly remove the symptom such as sore throat, snuffle or snivel in cold, but it have difficulty to prevent people from contracting cold because the immune system has not been reinforced. So if we combine the eastern therapy and western therapy together, we can learn from each other's strong points and offset each other’s weakness.
In my view, OCD and the other neurosis have the same essence with Social Phobia.
Concrete step for your reference:
How to expose yourself and go through desensitization.
Suggestion 1: choose a job in which large amounts of communication is unavoidable, only intensive social practice can give you the social skill you are lacking in. For example, lecturer, trainer, salesman are some very good jobs for social phobia sufferers.
If you are a student, please try to avail yourself of any opportunities to communicate with people. If you are afraid of speaking before a large audience, try to frequently attend speech contest, debate contest, singing contest and so on. If you have difficulties in making friends or you tend to feel nervous when staying with people, try to attend any communication society. Please do it step by step from the easiest thing for you, be well prepared before each challenge, try your best to gain some experience of success every time.
The guiding principle is “try to get yourself involved in the situation you are afraid of”, but do it step by step to get systematical and gradual desensitization.
Suggestion 2: Apply some eastern philosophy methods together with intensive exposure, be prepared for any failure and unsatisfactory results, you will definitely encounter some failure experience at first, and you tend to feel depressed and frustrated, accept the feeling of depression and frustration. It is normal of you to feel frustrated, it is the normal response, please do not fight those negative feelings, if you didn’t feel frustrated when meeting failure, then it would be abnormal of you.
Please pay attention to the principle of “step by step”, if you suffered from a very severe failure at beginning, you may be scared of trying once more and avoid any similar situation. So if you want to make quick progress, you must do it under the guidance of an experienced psycho counselor.
Suggestion 3: Accept yourself. This is the basis of all the social practice and social exposure. Without this,even if you remove all the symptoms on the surface, you still tend to feel unconfident and inferior from the bottom of your heart. One famous local lecturer has once told even if he can behave decently before a large audience, he still feel he is lacking in confidence.
Therefore, we can completely recover from Social Phobia only when we eliminate not only apparent symptoms but also inner root with the combination of western therapy and eastern therapy.
The analysis of Social Phobia
Analysis 1 ----All the social phobia sufferers are all regarding themselves as inferior. That's the pathological diagnosis. You have difficulties in and you are unwilling to accept yourself. The inferiority complex is the key. You think you are inferior to others, there are various symptoms, and you feel you must change yourself, you behavior can be divided into 2 types, A(the symptoms) and B (your attitudes towards these symptoms ). A:[1] “I am a shy man” [2] “I dare not see people eye to eye” [3] “I tend to feel panic attack before people. [4]…… All the symptoms are so real and they come from years’ of personal experience. The personal experience is very stubborn. Pure cognition correction session has no way to change it.?? B: the strong desire to eliminate those symptoms, you feel that you must remove these feelings, you cannot live a normal life if they don’t disappear. You always find yourself an excuse when meeting social situation, “ I am a social phobia sufferer, I can attend those situation after I recover.” In this way, you avoid social life over and over again and forgive yourself every time.??
A and B are the strong foundation of low self-esteem believes.
Analysis 2 ---- Social Phobia sufferers are always thinking if they can free themselves from the symptoms, they can live a normal life. So next we will analyze these symptoms.
The normal people often feel shy, nervous or panic too, but they retain it within the normal standard. For example, water remains liquid state between 0-100 degrees centigrade. When the temperature is over 100 degrees centigrade, it turns into steam, so when the severity of symptoms go beyond 100 degrees centigrade, normal people become social phobia sufferers. So we can see that the essence of these symptoms are normal.
Analysis 3---- Then what is the essence of those symptoms. Physiologically, I think they are the pathological conditional reflex formed in the long-time immersion in the pathological living environment. It has the same feature as our character, habit and skill, we learned it, we repeatedly review it in our minds, and we keep it. In Pavlov’s experiment, the dog tend to drivel involuntarily upon hearing the bell-ring, like the dog, the social phobia sufferers tend to show various symptoms involuntarily upon see people or encounter certain social situation. Once such pathological conditional reflex is formed, it cannot be eliminated forcibly just like our habit, personality and learned skill, if we want to remove it, we must follow the law of nature.
Analysis 4---- If a social phobia sufferer subjectively wants to eliminate or suppress those symptoms forcibly, for example, some social phobia sufferers tend to wear a mask of a great man and try to imitate those talkative and decent men, they are unwilling to be themselves, they cannot accept themselves, they hate themselves and try to be others, they want to forcibly remove those symptoms, but what they are doing has actually added to the temperature of the water, if they stick this way, they may enter the malignant cycle of OCD.?
In my view, the physiological essence of all the neurosis such as phobia, OCD, Anxiety Disorder as well as psychogenic depression is the same, namely pathological conditional reflex, they have their own law of generation and fadeaway, we cannot eliminated them forcibly at pleasure.
We all know that there is only one truth in this world, and there is no exception in psychology field. Part of this truth can be found in all the eastern and western therapies, with the combination of eastern therapy and western therapy, we can touch the core of the truth. Practice is the only way to test the theory, we can only discover the truth which has already existed in the Nature for centuries rather than create a truth. Theory must fit in the existed truth.
There is only one law to all the neurosis such as Social Phobia, if we follow the law, we can cure it, if we go against the law, and we will never solve the problem, therefore, we must not blindly control it and forcibly suppress it.
I suggest those social phobia sufferers should study western therapies such as CBT, Desensitization therapy as well as eastern therapy such as Morita Therapy and Buddhism, Zen, meanwhile try to get involved in social life and accumulate the success experience, in this way, we can remove both the root and symptoms of social phobia and get completely recovered.
Mentioned above is a general description of my social phobia treatment principle, it is commonness rather than individuality, I would customize my treatment program according to everyone’s different symptom and different severity, please do not blindly apply it to different people.
How we get Social Phobia?
None of those who is suffering from Social Phobia is confident!
They are all timid, dependant, of low self-esteem, sensitive, weak, just to name a few.
when were you deprived of such strong initiative in dealing with the external environment even animals possess?
You now become so dependant and passive.
A healthy person should fully know how to control the surroundings and how to control himself or herself. To those people, everything is undercontrol.
But to you, nothing is controllable.
Where is the problem?
Now let’s sit down, calm down and look back.
In your childhood, there might be a strict and bad-tempered elder around you, he or she might from time to time suppress your wish to make decision yourself freely, he or she might from time to time say to you “No, you are wrong” only because he or she didn’t like your decision.
One inhibition followed by another, you gradually give up your efforts to take initiative because you know it will not work.
What’s more, unconsciously you gradually followed the requirement from that elder, only by which you may gain compliment and approval from him or her. You began to inhibit your own wish just in order to cater for that person. You adapted yourself by being passive and obedient. Therefore, living such a life this way for many years has formed your personality, an inhibited “you”, like that a growing sapling with a thick trunk over it will never become straight but bent. “bent”, “deformed”, “distorted” or “inhibited” is the best description of your current personality.
All in all, personality is formed by environment, good environment leads to good personality while bad environment leads to bad personality.
Of course, we cannot conclude that all those who are suffering from Social Phobia has grown up this way, there still may be some exceptions, but on the whole, what mentioned above is a prototype.
Please pay attention to these questions:
Do you remember the first time the gaze from other people made you feel panic?
Do you think other “normal” person will react the same way as you when they are gazed by other people for the first time? How would they deal with such panic? How have you dealt with the panic?
Then the following questions:
Do you remember the first time you blushed? The first time you were suffering from “heart attack” when speaking to the public? The first time you felt ill at ease? etc.
How do you think other “normal” person will deal with these bad feelings or bad reactions such as blush, heart attack? How have you dealt with these bad feelings?
Whatever your answer is,
Let me tell you an ultimate truth: “Low self-esteem and self-denial is the essence of Social phobia!” .
Look how you describe yourself:
I am a wretched worm!
I am so stupid!
I am so weak!
I am afraid of death!
I am not good at communicating with people!
I am so nervous when I meet people!
I often blush!
I am so shy!
I cannot make myself feel easy!
I am so panic!
I dare not disobey my mother!
I mush follow my father’s command because he will shout at me, which will make me tremble!
I almost never fight other people.
I always compromise whenever there is a dispute.
I am a good person to all those who know me.
I seldom refuse the requirement from other people, even if I usually do that reluctantly.
I am so passive, always putting myself in great inconvenience.
I am so dependant, lacking in initiative.
My feeling or life is almost controlled by others, not me myself.
No! No! No!
Can I live this way on! No!
I will transform myself! I will change myself!
How will I do, let’ see.
Articles about Success! Biography of great man! The Hero in the movie or fiction!
I will use all these to present a new look! Here comes the new me! I will try to imitate those I admire, imitate their talking style, imitate their smiling way. Oh! I have become talkative, I have got rid of all the panic.
I carefully prepare for every chance of talking to people and to the public. I feel full of strength.
I am “seemingly” strong! I seem just like the hero or decent guy in the movie, they are eloquent and never panic over anything!
But is this true? You have truly got rid of you phobia?
Attention:
Low self-esteem and self-denial is the essence of social phobia!
Here I will quote a remark of Buddism:
“You will never reach the target if you keep going forward, the only way to reach the target is to turn back.”
This the only way out:
Accept yourself, accept everything that belongs to yourself.
It is very difficult for you to fully and completely accept yourself, but if you don’t do that, you will suffer more and more in the rest of your life.
Turn back bravely, fully accept yourself rather than try to escape from it, it is the first step to recovery, and this is the step you must take if you really want to completely recover and never fall back into the trap of social phobia once more.
You always to want to become others, you are never willing to be yourself.
Oriental Buddhism once again tells us: “accept yourself, be yourself, there is no one is this world can escape from himself or herself and become others. “ This is the only way to success.
Be yourself, be the true yourself, only by doing that, Social phobia will gradually leave you.
Oriental philosophy Therapy
Many people want me to talk about my therapy. The essence of my oriental therapy is “counter-therapy” or “reverse therapy”. To most of my clients, I would apply customized NLP , Subconsiousness Theory , plus Intensified Contact Training (seemingly like traditional “desensitization therapy”, but actually not the same), Cognitive Therapy, Morita Therapy and Buddhism or Taoism. If everything is OK, to be honest, the curative effect is amazing!
To many sufferers, "Morita treatment" is not very effective, because its natural tendency is very slow. So to many people it has little efficacy. But Heixi's treatment has been proved again and again, the curative effect is amazing even miraculous.
Counter-therapy is the result of the combination of Buddhism and my own treatment experience. Its root is Oriental Philosophy. Old Chinese philosophy "Yijing" (Book of Changes) believes that the whole world (including all the things in this world) can be divided into two contradictory parts, like sun and moon, day and night, man and women, life and death……, “Taoism” believes that “if you want to get to your destination, you should countermarch”, for example, if you want to make money(get), you should invest first (pay). The whole world has been applying so many methods and tons of drugs to deal with all kinds of phobia, OCD, anxiety disorder, depression and so on. The methods include Cognitive Therapy, Behavior Therapy, Psychoanalysis, hypnogenesis and so on. Every method has its merit and do help a lot of people to alleviated their symptoms, but ask those people and even yourselves: have you really completely recovered? I mean “completely”, means you will never fall back into your nightmare once again and enjoy the life as freely as possible. If these methods can really help people to completely free from all the neurosis, why many people are still tortured by SA,why over 100 millions people are trapped in the nightmare of depression and some of them choose suicide as the solution? Why many people cannot jump out of the cycle of OCD? Where is the problem? Oriental Taoism has the answer.
There is a maxim in “Tao Te Ching”( book of morality): “the more efforts you make to approach your destination, the farther away you are from it”, why? Because we are going the wrong direction.
But the methods mentioned above is still very useful in removing the symptoms, for example, in social phobia treatment, behavior therapy will help the sufferer to remove the symptoms, but if we want to completely recover from it, oriental philosophy such as Buddhism and Taoism is a must.
Because “Counter Therapy" originates from dialectic oriental philosophy, it can be applied in many fields, such as “anxiety before important examination or interview”, “social phobia”, “anxiety disorder” “insomnia” “OCD” “Psychogenic Depression”. The fact shows that once it is used correctly and timely, the effect is miraculous.Sometimes, even I myself will marvel at it.
I will detail some therapy practice in my other articles, but different people have different condition and should be treated accordingly. I often adjust my measure according to the feedback from my clients to make them recover as soon as possible
The critical factor in the recovery of Social Phobia
1）All could never be eliminated.
Social phobia has the following symptoms: nervous , glance, shyness, blush face, bad expression, panic of space, stutter etc, compulsion, anxiety, insomnia, doubt, eating difficulty , all these symptoms……could not be eliminated, when you start to understand these and learn to adapt yourself to them, live with them, accept them from the bottom of your heart, and never try to repel them, it will fade away gradually. Now let me detail the reason.
In Buddhism there is a maxim: Trouble is Yourself i. Taoism also makes a metaphor : a jar of pure water ,It looks perfect, but virtually it is poisonous water , the shrimp and fish can not survive in it, it is just dead water. Now, you can throw a handful of earth and mud into the water. Superficially it’s dirty and no longer perfect, and also it looks bad, but there is nutrition from then on, it can breed shrimp and fish! It becomes vital water full of life. So , imperfection is the real perfection.
And all the symptoms of the neurosis are almost the same! Nervousness , glance, shyness, flush, uncomfortable expressions, space panic, stutter ect, compulsion, anxiety, panic, insomnia, doubt, eating disorder, concept and behavior, all of the symptoms……these are just like earth, mud, which make our water dirty and imperfect. Actually the core of them are normal, but they are distorted and strengthened by our continuous push and repel. Just because they normal mood , they are part of ourselves. So they could not be removed essentially. Without them, we would be really abnormal. Those normal persons are always the dirty water full of vitality, who have all these symptoms, but they never care about them, naturally they have never strengthen or enhance them.
But we are not like those “careless” persons, we are so sensitive about them. Can you remember when you came up with these symptoms for the first time They were rational to appear at that time actually, and most normal persons would come up with these symptoms as well, but they would forget them quickly because either their life is so busy or their character is so broad-minded. But we act in different way , maybe as we are too sensitive, and our self distrust and perfectionism mislead us . we are too careful, the environment we are living with render us such a over-sensitive personality. We care about them seriously, and we do think these ideas or reactions are abnormal, we want to get rid of them which are actually normal. Of course we can not get rid of them, we cannot defeat the normal part of ourselves. This is the essence of all the mental conflict: we want to defeat the normal part of ourselves, we want to escape from ourselves. After long-time repelling, concentrating, fighting with those normal mood or, to be more accurate, ourselves. We are getting more and more sensitive about these, and we are more preoccupied by those normal mood which has already been distorted by us. Therefore, they will gradually form a distorted and obstinate “excitement point” in our mind and occupy the our whole mental world.
Several years later, the normal person who once came across the same feelings as we has already forgotten the “bad experience”, the “excitement point” has been transferred to some healthy things such as job and life. But we, during these years, has formed a distorted and inveterate “excitement point” which is similar to cigaretholic and drugholic., who formed this “excitement point”, we ourselves! We repel it, so we strengthen it! The more we repel it, the more we strengthen it! We focus all our attention on it, these attention are nutrition to this “excitement point”, which makes it so powerful and beyond our control.
If we hadn’t supply nutrition to this “excitement point” through our efforts and attention for so many years, such excitement point would have already disappeared. So it’s we ourselves who lead to the formation and enhancement of this excitement point, and once the excitement point is strengthened ,they will affect our physiology, they will affect our behavior and action, then we will be more and more nervous, more and more panic beyond our control , and on the other side, the more nervous we are, the harder we will press and repel our normal mood, so the more attention and nutrition would be given to that excitement point, the more powerful and uncontrollable it will be .Therefore, with this vicious circulation, we will fall deeper and deeper into the abyss of Phobias. I call it Amplifier Principle. That is to say, the essence of these symptoms is normal, but we amplify them by using the amplifier, they may seem abnormally big, but they are essentially the same as normal mood, Buddhism call this phenomenon:” real dream”
So, you can see, we are wrong at the very beginning . It is said by Laozi (Taoism) : the farther you go, the less you know.( means: the more efforts you make to approach your target, the farther you are away from it ) we can explain this phenomenon by using this theory. Originally, all the things are normal . When we want to remove what is originally normal., we supply energy to it, we shift our attention to it, we concentrate to it, we provide nutrition to it, all of these make the normal thing bigger and bigger , more and more powerful and abnormal finally. As the old saying goes ”we are worrying about what we don’t need to.” Another philosophy remark also tells us: problem lies in the solution.( originally it’s not a problem, but you want to do something to it in order to solve it, then it becomes a problem.) so we can say that all of the neurosis are existing because of “treatment”. In the first place, it is not a neurosis at all, when we want to “treat” it, we ourselves make it evolve into neurosis..
Then all is clear. The so called symptoms are normal! So we should understand after so many years: all these can not be removed, give up all the efforts to treat it. No way is workable, do not repel it anymore. It is just your repelling that maintains these symptoms. So please try to understand it and apply yourself to it and accept them from the bottom of your heart, do not repel it anymore, then after some time , it will disappear. When you can understand these fully, your neurosis is recovered to some extent.
Actually all is normal, and there is no need to eliminate the normal things! Actually we have been thinking to get rid of it which leads to the maintenance of these symptoms! I think, this is the reason why great Mr. Morita (father of Morita Therapy) told us” let it be, do what you need to do”.
2)We must practise!
For some long-time social phobia suffers, only understanding that “all could never be eliminated” is not enough. Just like if we don’t go into the water, we will never learn how to swim even if we can understand and recite all the instruction materials on swimming.
First, we should not try to avoid any social situation like we used to do, we should force ourselves to rush into it, like a normal man, however nervous we are, however stupid we think we are, we should be brave, the result may not be as perfect as we expect, be brave and make the first step, but if you want to learn to swim, you have to jump into the water.
But for those extremely severe sufferers who are unable to do self-cure, it is quite necessary for them to participate in some group training class, among which the most famous one might be Carnegie Speech Training Class, for example, you can go to such group training class once to twice per week and persevere for 3 months to half a year, under the guidance of an experienced and professional therapist, you will change a lot. Such group therapist should give everyone sufficient time to make a presentation to all the other participants, the presentation should be customized according to every one’s personal condition, not limited to speech ( for example, singing, dancing, story-telling). Through such long-time training, those severe social phobia sufferers will be immersed in an artificial training environment with their low self-esteem personality changed little by little, confidence regained little by little, at last they will find that they have almost completely taken a new look. when they regain confidence, their once wrong cognitions will change themselves. Such change is made naturally.
What mentioned above can be categorized as some sort of CBT, it can be called Desensitization and Exposure Therapy, it can quickly remove the symptom, there are 2 principles we should stick to:
1, afraid of what, participate in what, if you are afraid of talking with opposite sex, try to communicate with the opposite sex; if you are afraid of making public speech, try your best to do it, only when you dive into the river, you will truly know how to swim.
2. More, more and more, more communication with people, more speech, more presentation, immerse yourself in the active environment.
However, all the actions above should be taken together with the essence of Buddhism, which touches the core of the problem. Without it, the fact shows the symptom can only be reduced for a short time, and it will come back again.
The treatment of Social Phobia includes 2 principles:
Principle 1
The correction of low self-esteem (inferiority complex), and the build-up of self-confidence, namely “total acceptance of yourself”, In Eastern Philosophy Therapy, it is called “Original Form” or “to do nothing”, it is the root-removing principle.
Principle 2
Behavioral Therapy, Exposure Therapy, Desensitization Therapy and NLP etc. A large amount of social practice can quickly remove the symptoms. It is symptom-removing principle.
The combination of principle 1 (root-removing principle) and principle 2 (symptom-removing principle) can lead to the complete recovery from Social Phobia.
If we only apply principle 1, some people are still be able to completely recover, theoretically all the social phobia sufferers can completely recover only by applying principle 1, but my years of treatment practice has proved that principle 2 can greatly shorten the treatment process and many of my clients have said it is a very important part.
Without principle 1, we can quickly remove the symptom, but the root is still there.
Like that we cut a tree down without eliminating its root. On the surface, maybe we can behave freely and normally, but from the bottom of our hearts, subconsciously, we still feel something is remaining there, we still feel we are not truly confident, the root is not eliminated, and it will thrive upon the warm and damp environment, namely “recurrence”.
Mentioned above is the comparison of eastern therapy and western therapy and their respective advantage and disadvantage in treating Social Phobia.
My name is Heixi, a psychological counselor from China, now I would like to share 10 years’ research findings and the experience gained from treatment practice with all the people throughout the world, I wish those self-help sufferers can learn something from my article, if my therapy can give you some enlightenment or help in overcoming Social Phobia, I think my long march towards my dream, “saving all the tortured souls from mental purgatory” , will have a good start.
On the other hand, I wish professional psychotherapists and counselors could study my therapy and exchange their views with mine, because I myself have tested this therapy for many years during the treatment practice and the practice has proved that it is a complete solution for Social Phobia rather than a hollow theory from any psychological textbooks and works. Please forgive my overconfidence, I just simply wish I can give those who are suffering in the hell of Social Phobia a hand, I also welcome any comment and criticism from any experienced professional therapist.
The concrete measures are listed as follows:
systematical and step-by-step desensitization, gradually expose yourself to the environment and situation you are scared of -- control yourself and behave normally within measure, try your best to get a success experience every time---this is the guideline.
Group training and exposure, namely speak, sing or perform talk show before a large audience until complete desensitized, usually this period is 3 months, I believe currently it is the most effective and quickest way to remove symptoms, for example, the Carnegie Sociality Training Class.
Treatment of low self-esteem and confidence, such as “feeling of shyness”, “feeling of inferiority to others”, “being afraid of seeing people eye to eye”. To deal with these inveterate negative thinking mode, we must apply the essence of eastern therapy such as “completely acceptance of yourself”, “let the symptoms be there and do nothing to consciously change it” , “go back to where you came from in your heart”, eastern therapy can completely eliminate the core and root of Social Phobia, and it will never recur.
Thus, with the combination of western therapy to remove the symptom and eastern therapy to remove the root, sufferers can completely free themselves from Social Phobia and never fall back into it.
Here I must point out that in the practical treatment, we should combine group therapy and individual therapy as well as customize our therapy according to detailed and different symptom on the basis of the guiding principle, all in all, the key word is “flexibility”.
Some people may suggest that we only apply eastern therapy since it can remove the root and completely solve the problem, there is no need to add western therapy such as desensitization therapy, CBT and Exposure Therapy.
At first, I also thought that way, it can be theoretically proved, in real life, some people only apply eastern therapy and quickly recover.
However, in practical clinical treatment, it is not as simple as that. If we only apply eastern therapy without western therapy, the curing effect is not satisfactory and the treatment process is too long.
Eastern therapy can also be called “Natural Therapy”, The difference between eastern therapy and western therapy is like the difference between Chinese medication and western medication, the merit of Chinese medication lies in the fact that it can improve the immunity and completely free people from the disease, but the tardy progress prevents it from being the quick solution of some acute disease such as massive haemorrhage, however western medicine can quickly remove the symptom such as sore throat, snuffle or snivel in cold, but it have difficulty to prevent people from contracting cold because the immune system has not been reinforced. So if we combine the eastern therapy and western therapy together, we can learn from each other's strong points and offset each other’s weakness.
In my view, OCD and the other neurosis have the same essence with Social Phobia.
Concrete step for your reference:
How to expose yourself and go through desensitization.
Suggestion 1: choose a job in which large amounts of communication is unavoidable, only intensive social practice can give you the social skill you are lacking in. For example, lecturer, trainer, salesman are some very good jobs for social phobia sufferers.
If you are a student, please try to avail yourself of any opportunities to communicate with people. If you are afraid of speaking before a large audience, try to frequently attend speech contest, debate contest, singing contest and so on. If you have difficulties in making friends or you tend to feel nervous when staying with people, try to attend any communication society. Please do it step by step from the easiest thing for you, be well prepared before each challenge, try your best to gain some experience of success every time.
The guiding principle is “try to get yourself involved in the situation you are afraid of”, but do it step by step to get systematical and gradual desensitization.
Suggestion 2: Apply some eastern philosophy methods together with intensive exposure, be prepared for any failure and unsatisfactory results, you will definitely encounter some failure experience at first, and you tend to feel depressed and frustrated, accept the feeling of depression and frustration. It is normal of you to feel frustrated, it is the normal response, please do not fight those negative feelings, if you didn’t feel frustrated when meeting failure, then it would be abnormal of you.
Please pay attention to the principle of “step by step”, if you suffered from a very severe failure at beginning, you may be scared of trying once more and avoid any similar situation. So if you want to make quick progress, you must do it under the guidance of an experienced psycho counselor.
Suggestion 3: Accept yourself. This is the basis of all the social practice and social exposure. Without this,even if you remove all the symptoms on the surface, you still tend to feel unconfident and inferior from the bottom of your heart. One famous local lecturer has once told even if he can behave decently before a large audience, he still feel he is lacking in confidence.
Therefore, we can completely recover from Social Phobia only when we eliminate not only apparent symptoms but also inner root with the combination of western therapy and eastern therapy.
The analysis of Social Phobia
Analysis 1 ----All the social phobia sufferers are all regarding themselves as inferior. That's the pathological diagnosis. You have difficulties in and you are unwilling to accept yourself. The inferiority complex is the key. You think you are inferior to others, there are various symptoms, and you feel you must change yourself, you behavior can be divided into 2 types, A(the symptoms) and B (your attitudes towards these symptoms ). A:[1] “I am a shy man” [2] “I dare not see people eye to eye” [3] “I tend to feel panic attack before people. [4]…… All the symptoms are so real and they come from years’ of personal experience. The personal experience is very stubborn. Pure cognition correction session has no way to change it.?? B: the strong desire to eliminate those symptoms, you feel that you must remove these feelings, you cannot live a normal life if they don’t disappear. You always find yourself an excuse when meeting social situation, “ I am a social phobia sufferer, I can attend those situation after I recover.” In this way, you avoid social life over and over again and forgive yourself every time.??
A and B are the strong foundation of low self-esteem believes.
Analysis 2 ---- Social Phobia sufferers are always thinking if they can free themselves from the symptoms, they can live a normal life. So next we will analyze these symptoms.
The normal people often feel shy, nervous or panic too, but they retain it within the normal standard. For example, water remains liquid state between 0-100 degrees centigrade. When the temperature is over 100 degrees centigrade, it turns into steam, so when the severity of symptoms go beyond 100 degrees centigrade, normal people become social phobia sufferers. So we can see that the essence of these symptoms are normal.
Analysis 3---- Then what is the essence of those symptoms. Physiologically, I think they are the pathological conditional reflex formed in the long-time immersion in the pathological living environment. It has the same feature as our character, habit and skill, we learned it, we repeatedly review it in our minds, and we keep it. In Pavlov’s experiment, the dog tend to drivel involuntarily upon hearing the bell-ring, like the dog, the social phobia sufferers tend to show various symptoms involuntarily upon see people or encounter certain social situation. Once such pathological conditional reflex is formed, it cannot be eliminated forcibly just like our habit, personality and learned skill, if we want to remove it, we must follow the law of nature.
Analysis 4---- If a social phobia sufferer subjectively wants to eliminate or suppress those symptoms forcibly, for example, some social phobia sufferers tend to wear a mask of a great man and try to imitate those talkative and decent men, they are unwilling to be themselves, they cannot accept themselves, they hate themselves and try to be others, they want to forcibly remove those symptoms, but what they are doing has actually added to the temperature of the water, if they stick this way, they may enter the malignant cycle of OCD.?
In my view, the physiological essence of all the neurosis such as phobia, OCD, Anxiety Disorder as well as psychogenic depression is the same, namely pathological conditional reflex, they have their own law of generation and fadeaway, we cannot eliminated them forcibly at pleasure.
We all know that there is only one truth in this world, and there is no exception in psychology field. Part of this truth can be found in all the eastern and western therapies, with the combination of eastern therapy and western therapy, we can touch the core of the truth. Practice is the only way to test the theory, we can only discover the truth which has already existed in the Nature for centuries rather than create a truth. Theory must fit in the existed truth.
There is only one law to all the neurosis such as Social Phobia, if we follow the law, we can cure it, if we go against the law, and we will never solve the problem, therefore, we must not blindly control it and forcibly suppress it.
I suggest those social phobia sufferers should study western therapies such as CBT, Desensitization therapy as well as eastern therapy such as Morita Therapy and Buddhism, Zen, meanwhile try to get involved in social life and accumulate the success experience, in this way, we can remove both the root and symptoms of social phobia and get completely recovered.
Mentioned above is a general description of my social phobia treatment principle, it is commonness rather than individuality, I would customize my treatment program according to everyone’s different symptom and different severity, please do not blindly apply it to different people.
How we get Social Phobia?
None of those who is suffering from Social Phobia is confident!
They are all timid, dependant, of low self-esteem, sensitive, weak, just to name a few.
when were you deprived of such strong initiative in dealing with the external environment even animals possess?
You now become so dependant and passive.
A healthy person should fully know how to control the surroundings and how to control himself or herself. To those people, everything is undercontrol.
But to you, nothing is controllable.
Where is the problem?
Now let’s sit down, calm down and look back.
In your childhood, there might be a strict and bad-tempered elder around you, he or she might from time to time suppress your wish to make decision yourself freely, he or she might from time to time say to you “No, you are wrong” only because he or she didn’t like your decision.
One inhibition followed by another, you gradually give up your efforts to take initiative because you know it will not work.
What’s more, unconsciously you gradually followed the requirement from that elder, only by which you may gain compliment and approval from him or her. You began to inhibit your own wish just in order to cater for that person. You adapted yourself by being passive and obedient. Therefore, living such a life this way for many years has formed your personality, an inhibited “you”, like that a growing sapling with a thick trunk over it will never become straight but bent. “bent”, “deformed”, “distorted” or “inhibited” is the best description of your current personality.
All in all, personality is formed by environment, good environment leads to good personality while bad environment leads to bad personality.
Of course, we cannot conclude that all those who are suffering from Social Phobia has grown up this way, there still may be some exceptions, but on the whole, what mentioned above is a prototype.
Please pay attention to these questions:
Do you remember the first time the gaze from other people made you feel panic?
Do you think other “normal” person will react the same way as you when they are gazed by other people for the first time? How would they deal with such panic? How have you dealt with the panic?
Then the following questions:
Do you remember the first time you blushed? The first time you were suffering from “heart attack” when speaking to the public? The first time you felt ill at ease? etc.
How do you think other “normal” person will deal with these bad feelings or bad reactions such as blush, heart attack? How have you dealt with these bad feelings?
Whatever your answer is,
Let me tell you an ultimate truth: “Low self-esteem and self-denial is the essence of Social phobia!” .
Look how you describe yourself:
I am a wretched worm!
I am so stupid!
I am so weak!
I am afraid of death!
I am not good at communicating with people!
I am so nervous when I meet people!
I often blush!
I am so shy!
I cannot make myself feel easy!
I am so panic!
I dare not disobey my mother!
I mush follow my father’s command because he will shout at me, which will make me tremble!
I almost never fight other people.
I always compromise whenever there is a dispute.
I am a good person to all those who know me.
I seldom refuse the requirement from other people, even if I usually do that reluctantly.
I am so passive, always putting myself in great inconvenience.
I am so dependant, lacking in initiative.
My feeling or life is almost controlled by others, not me myself.
No! No! No!
Can I live this way on! No!
I will transform myself! I will change myself!
How will I do, let’ see.
Articles about Success! Biography of great man! The Hero in the movie or fiction!
I will use all these to present a new look! Here comes the new me! I will try to imitate those I admire, imitate their talking style, imitate their smiling way. Oh! I have become talkative, I have got rid of all the panic.
I carefully prepare for every chance of talking to people and to the public. I feel full of strength.
I am “seemingly” strong! I seem just like the hero or decent guy in the movie, they are eloquent and never panic over anything!
But is this true? You have truly got rid of you phobia?
Attention:
Low self-esteem and self-denial is the essence of social phobia!
Here I will quote a remark of Buddism:
“You will never reach the target if you keep going forward, the only way to reach the target is to turn back.”
This the only way out:
Accept yourself, accept everything that belongs to yourself.
It is very difficult for you to fully and completely accept yourself, but if you don’t do that, you will suffer more and more in the rest of your life.
Turn back bravely, fully accept yourself rather than try to escape from it, it is the first step to recovery, and this is the step you must take if you really want to completely recover and never fall back into the trap of social phobia once more.
You always to want to become others, you are never willing to be yourself.
Oriental Buddhism once again tells us: “accept yourself, be yourself, there is no one is this world can escape from himself or herself and become others. “ This is the only way to success.
Be yourself, be the true yourself, only by doing that, Social phobia will gradually leave you.
Oriental philosophy Therapy
Many people want me to talk about my therapy. The essence of my oriental therapy is “counter-therapy” or “reverse therapy”. To most of my clients, I would apply customized NLP , Subconsiousness Theory , plus Intensified Contact Training (seemingly like traditional “desensitization therapy”, but actually not the same), Cognitive Therapy, Morita Therapy and Buddhism or Taoism. If everything is OK, to be honest, the curative effect is amazing!
To many sufferers, "Morita treatment" is not very effective, because its natural tendency is very slow. So to many people it has little efficacy. But Heixi's treatment has been proved again and again, the curative effect is amazing even miraculous.
Counter-therapy is the result of the combination of Buddhism and my own treatment experience. Its root is Oriental Philosophy. Old Chinese philosophy "Yijing" (Book of Changes) believes that the whole world (including all the things in this world) can be divided into two contradictory parts, like sun and moon, day and night, man and women, life and death……, “Taoism” believes that “if you want to get to your destination, you should countermarch”, for example, if you want to make money(get), you should invest first (pay). The whole world has been applying so many methods and tons of drugs to deal with all kinds of phobia, OCD, anxiety disorder, depression and so on. The methods include Cognitive Therapy, Behavior Therapy, Psychoanalysis, hypnogenesis and so on. Every method has its merit and do help a lot of people to alleviated their symptoms, but ask those people and even yourselves: have you really completely recovered? I mean “completely”, means you will never fall back into your nightmare once again and enjoy the life as freely as possible. If these methods can really help people to completely free from all the neurosis, why many people are still tortured by SA,why over 100 millions people are trapped in the nightmare of depression and some of them choose suicide as the solution? Why many people cannot jump out of the cycle of OCD? Where is the problem? Oriental Taoism has the answer.
There is a maxim in “Tao Te Ching”( book of morality): “the more efforts you make to approach your destination, the farther away you are from it”, why? Because we are going the wrong direction.
But the methods mentioned above is still very useful in removing the symptoms, for example, in social phobia treatment, behavior therapy will help the sufferer to remove the symptoms, but if we want to completely recover from it, oriental philosophy such as Buddhism and Taoism is a must.
Because “Counter Therapy" originates from dialectic oriental philosophy, it can be applied in many fields, such as “anxiety before important examination or interview”, “social phobia”, “anxiety disorder” “insomnia” “OCD” “Psychogenic Depression”. The fact shows that once it is used correctly and timely, the effect is miraculous.Sometimes, even I myself will marvel at it.
I will detail some therapy practice in my other articles, but different people have different condition and should be treated accordingly. I often adjust my measure according to the feedback from my clients to make them recover as soon as possible
The critical factor in the recovery of Social Phobia
1）All could never be eliminated.
Social phobia has the following symptoms: nervous , glance, shyness, blush face, bad expression, panic of space, stutter etc, compulsion, anxiety, insomnia, doubt, eating difficulty , all these symptoms……could not be eliminated, when you start to understand these and learn to adapt yourself to them, live with them, accept them from the bottom of your heart, and never try to repel them, it will fade away gradually. Now let me detail the reason.
In Buddhism there is a maxim: Trouble is Yourself i. Taoism also makes a metaphor : a jar of pure water ,It looks perfect, but virtually it is poisonous water , the shrimp and fish can not survive in it, it is just dead water. Now, you can throw a handful of earth and mud into the water. Superficially it’s dirty and no longer perfect, and also it looks bad, but there is nutrition from then on, it can breed shrimp and fish! It becomes vital water full of life. So , imperfection is the real perfection.
And all the symptoms of the neurosis are almost the same! Nervousness , glance, shyness, flush, uncomfortable expressions, space panic, stutter ect, compulsion, anxiety, panic, insomnia, doubt, eating disorder, concept and behavior, all of the symptoms……these are just like earth, mud, which make our water dirty and imperfect. Actually the core of them are normal, but they are distorted and strengthened by our continuous push and repel. Just because they normal mood , they are part of ourselves. So they could not be removed essentially. Without them, we would be really abnormal. Those normal persons are always the dirty water full of vitality, who have all these symptoms, but they never care about them, naturally they have never strengthen or enhance them.
But we are not like those “careless” persons, we are so sensitive about them. Can you remember when you came up with these symptoms for the first time They were rational to appear at that time actually, and most normal persons would come up with these symptoms as well, but they would forget them quickly because either their life is so busy or their character is so broad-minded. But we act in different way , maybe as we are too sensitive, and our self distrust and perfectionism mislead us . we are too careful, the environment we are living with render us such a over-sensitive personality. We care about them seriously, and we do think these ideas or reactions are abnormal, we want to get rid of them which are actually normal. Of course we can not get rid of them, we cannot defeat the normal part of ourselves. This is the essence of all the mental conflict: we want to defeat the normal part of ourselves, we want to escape from ourselves. After long-time repelling, concentrating, fighting with those normal mood or, to be more accurate, ourselves. We are getting more and more sensitive about these, and we are more preoccupied by those normal mood which has already been distorted by us. Therefore, they will gradually form a distorted and obstinate “excitement point” in our mind and occupy the our whole mental world.
Several years later, the normal person who once came across the same feelings as we has already forgotten the “bad experience”, the “excitement point” has been transferred to some healthy things such as job and life. But we, during these years, has formed a distorted and inveterate “excitement point” which is similar to cigaretholic and drugholic., who formed this “excitement point”, we ourselves! We repel it, so we strengthen it! The more we repel it, the more we strengthen it! We focus all our attention on it, these attention are nutrition to this “excitement point”, which makes it so powerful and beyond our control.
If we hadn’t supply nutrition to this “excitement point” through our efforts and attention for so many years, such excitement point would have already disappeared. So it’s we ourselves who lead to the formation and enhancement of this excitement point, and once the excitement point is strengthened ,they will affect our physiology, they will affect our behavior and action, then we will be more and more nervous, more and more panic beyond our control , and on the other side, the more nervous we are, the harder we will press and repel our normal mood, so the more attention and nutrition would be given to that excitement point, the more powerful and uncontrollable it will be .Therefore, with this vicious circulation, we will fall deeper and deeper into the abyss of Phobias. I call it Amplifier Principle. That is to say, the essence of these symptoms is normal, but we amplify them by using the amplifier, they may seem abnormally big, but they are essentially the same as normal mood, Buddhism call this phenomenon:” real dream”
So, you can see, we are wrong at the very beginning . It is said by Laozi (Taoism) : the farther you go, the less you know.( means: the more efforts you make to approach your target, the farther you are away from it ) we can explain this phenomenon by using this theory. Originally, all the things are normal . When we want to remove what is originally normal., we supply energy to it, we shift our attention to it, we concentrate to it, we provide nutrition to it, all of these make the normal thing bigger and bigger , more and more powerful and abnormal finally. As the old saying goes ”we are worrying about what we don’t need to.” Another philosophy remark also tells us: problem lies in the solution.( originally it’s not a problem, but you want to do something to it in order to solve it, then it becomes a problem.) so we can say that all of the neurosis are existing because of “treatment”. In the first place, it is not a neurosis at all, when we want to “treat” it, we ourselves make it evolve into neurosis..
Then all is clear. The so called symptoms are normal! So we should understand after so many years: all these can not be removed, give up all the efforts to treat it. No way is workable, do not repel it anymore. It is just your repelling that maintains these symptoms. So please try to understand it and apply yourself to it and accept them from the bottom of your heart, do not repel it anymore, then after some time , it will disappear. When you can understand these fully, your neurosis is recovered to some extent.
Actually all is normal, and there is no need to eliminate the normal things! Actually we have been thinking to get rid of it which leads to the maintenance of these symptoms! I think, this is the reason why great Mr. Morita (father of Morita Therapy) told us” let it be, do what you need to do”.
2)We must practise!
For some long-time social phobia suffers, only understanding that “all could never be eliminated” is not enough. Just like if we don’t go into the water, we will never learn how to swim even if we can understand and recite all the instruction materials on swimming.
First, we should not try to avoid any social situation like we used to do, we should force ourselves to rush into it, like a normal man, however nervous we are, however stupid we think we are, we should be brave, the result may not be as perfect as we expect, be brave and make the first step, but if you want to learn to swim, you have to jump into the water.
But for those extremely severe sufferers who are unable to do self-cure, it is quite necessary for them to participate in some group training class, among which the most famous one might be Carnegie Speech Training Class, for example, you can go to such group training class once to twice per week and persevere for 3 months to half a year, under the guidance of an experienced and professional therapist, you will change a lot. Such group therapist should give everyone sufficient time to make a presentation to all the other participants, the presentation should be customized according to every one’s personal condition, not limited to speech ( for example, singing, dancing, story-telling). Through such long-time training, those severe social phobia sufferers will be immersed in an artificial training environment with their low self-esteem personality changed little by little, confidence regained little by little, at last they will find that they have almost completely taken a new look. when they regain confidence, their once wrong cognitions will change themselves. Such change is made naturally.
What mentioned above can be categorized as some sort of CBT, it can be called Desensitization and Exposure Therapy, it can quickly remove the symptom, there are 2 principles we should stick to:
1, afraid of what, participate in what, if you are afraid of talking with opposite sex, try to communicate with the opposite sex; if you are afraid of making public speech, try your best to do it, only when you dive into the river, you will truly know how to swim.
2. More, more and more, more communication with people, more speech, more presentation, immerse yourself in the active environment.
However, all the actions above should be taken together with the essence of Buddhism, which touches the core of the problem. Without it, the fact shows the symptom can only be reduced for a short time, and it will come back again.