Is Social Anxiety Learned ?

[doug123]

Hi everyone, this is my first post.

I think my social anxiety is getting stronger thru learned experiences with people over the years.

It seems that almost every time I go out in public (80% of the time) I encounter someone who chooses to take out their frustrations on me, by making sarcastic comments, cutting in front of me in the supermarket line or just being rude and disrespectul.

It seems that these people think there is no way there would be any consequences. This kind of confuses me sometimes because I am not that small, I am 5´11 and 210 pounds.

If I stand up for myself verbally, the common response is for the person to start laughing at me, as if it is a big game for them. So now, I usually do not say anything but end up mad at myself later and wishing I had found something to say to defend myself.

Rarely do the sarcastic comments or insults get to me. What does annoy me is the fact that these people I encounter seem to think they are beyond receiving consequences from me.

Has anyone else felt this way or have any insights to share ?

[IHatePanicAttacks]

I am not totally sure on this one but I believe that social phobia\social anxiety is a learned behavior. I know for me personally it was a learned behavior. I believe it can also be part hereditary (genetics) but for the most part I am pretty sure that social phobia is a learned behavior that you can break without the help of medicine.

With this said, there are a lot of people who take medicine like depression type medicine and I know that this helps a lot of people with their social phobias because it get their happy juices flowing up there in that brain of theirs - but this can be done without the help of medicine for those of us who just do not like taking medicines.

[Cissnei]

I think it is a combination of the two.

I think people can be predisposed to anxiety and depression i.e. be shy, quiet, introspective or sensitive people. And that the anxiety/depression can become a conditioned or learned behaviour.

I know I have always been shy and horribly sensitive and I would always store things inside. I think people sometimes do not recognise the dangers in these qualities. I think shy children are often coddled and people assume they will grow 'out of it.' As such people tend to either be TOO tough on you to force you out of it, or alternatively, do everything for you so that you never learn dependence and the anxiety and depression grows because you barely know how to do anything for yourself.

I think the more we live with these conditions we add experiences to the roster so every negative experience becomes a validation that we SHOULD be anxious or depressed. Its incredibly difficult to untangle ourselves from all of this.

[Social Anxiety Solutions]

Hi guys,

Social anxiety (disorder) is something we have "learned".

When we are born we are happy and full of joy. We only have two basic fears; the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. And even though we might be born with a naturally more shy personality, or with genes that have a higher susceptibility to social scrutiny, we are NOT born with a social anxiety disorder.

And even if you have these genes with a higher susceptibility, you can even influence those with your beliefs (for more info on this I highly recommend “The biology of belief by Bruce Lipton)…

So since we are not born with it, we have to conclude that we have “learned” our social anxiety somewhere in life.

And the good thing about that is that since it's something we learned we can "unlearn" it as well!

Hope that helps,
Sebastiaan

[bsmooth1]

Its my opinion that social phobia is not a learned behavior. I know and have seen several different examples where a person has hated to speak in front of a large group of people and would absolutely be terrified about it.

But after further research it was shown that this person may have had a very traumatic event happen to them when they were younger.

Like a school talent show or play and when it was there time to say there lines or perform they may have fallen or messed up and have had every body laugh at them.

No matter who you are nobody likes to be laughed at.

But it most definitely can be conquered :P

[Social Anxiety Solutions]

You are right, Bsmooth.

Those are exactly the 'traumatic experiences' where someone might "learn" their social anxiety.

According to Dr Scaer, a leader in the field of research on trauma, we experience trauma when we are faced with a threat to our well-being, our survival. And that doesn’t have to be trauma like rape, torture, kidnapping etc.

It can be like losing a job, getting ridiculed or bullied in school etc. It is a situation that you perceived to be traumatic combined with a state of
helplessness where you had no control over that event.

What happens is when we experience something that we perceive as being traumatic, we freeze. And we store the trauma in our brain.
Then every time something similar happens to us in the future -our brain generalizes- we get the same emotions back (high anxiety/shame/fear/embarrassment/humiliation)
that we felt during the traumatic experience.

So say that you for example get ridiculed in class about you having big ears and you feel humiliated. And for some reason (your upbringing, your beliefs about yourself/others/world around you, mental state) you perceive this as traumatic.

Then if for example in a future situation someone innocently asks you if you’ve ever had your ears pierced, you start to get that same feeling of humiliation back. This is because your brain generalizes and to your brain it is the same situation as the traumatic experience.

The negative feelings from the 'trauma' we had in the past get triggered by experiences in our current life. Every time a trauma gets triggered, we feel the same emotion as we experienced during that trauma.

Now one very effective thing you can do is to use EFT for these trauma's that you have experienced. Because with EFT you get the emotion out of the trauma. And once you do that, you get rid of one of the triggers!

Hope that helps,
Sebastiaan

P.S. This approach alone can make a significant change in your social anxiety. However, it's not the end all be all and will not solve your SA completely. To completely solve your social anxiety, have a look at my Social Confidence System. Here I guide you using articles, audios and videos using EFT from SA to social confidence in all social situations

[Oona]

Hi, this was a very good first post from you OP.

I do think that social anciety is learned. We encounter some kind of uncomfortable or hurtful experience, and when we come in contact with a similair situation we kind of get all those negative emotions back that we had back then.

After a long enough time of feeling these kinds of anxious emotions, we start to automatically think of ways that could lead to something going wrong -- we are so used to, or so reminded of, that certain discomfort or result that we feel it again.

For some reason, I started to always feel discomfort in one-on-one contact with people because of my anxiety. Now always when I'm at the check-out at a store, I get feelings of anxiety; I turn red, I feel nervous, I get a bit hot. The first time I had a similar kind of experience was so 'traumatizing' that I'm worried that I'll experience it again.

[timm]

This was an actual 5 point question on my 3rd year Personality mid-term exam. I can't remember what I wrote, but I got a 4. lol

Every school of thought has its own theories: Cognitive, Behavioral, Biological, etc. The safe answer is to always say it's a combination of factors. :)

[Social Anxiety Solutions]

Hi Timm,

That would be correct as you might be born with genes who carry a higher propensity to social scrutiny.

But there are tools and techniques these days (EFT/MTT being the most effective in my experience) that can change your beliefs in such a way that the inherited gene with the higher propensity to social scrutiny can be manipulated so that it no longer affects you...

Interesting stuff. Google "epigenetics" or read "the genie in your genes", if you are interested in the solid science that supports it.

I'm writing this because people need to realize that they indeed can change their social anxiety. There is a whole new way of 'healing' people out there called energy therapy.

Now I realize that I instantly come off as a 'woowoo' and 'out there' kinda person who probably believes in fairy tales and ghosts as well, but I guarantee you that this is the real deal.

Read for yourself and watch the videos:

My website/eft-therapy.html

And have a look at all the testimonials from respected PhD's and read the thousands of testimonials -well, don't read 'm all, just take action- and check out the videos on youtube and see all the websites out there.

As the founder 'Gary Craig' says "We're on the groundfloor of a healing high rise".

So using the "reason" that 'I'm born with it, it's in my genes, I can't change it and will have to live with it forever', does not hold up any longer.

There are solutions, it only takes the right action to solve it :-)

Good luck to all,
Sebastiaan

[nerolp]

Yes I believe social anxiety is a learned behavior. What's difficult (at least for me) is pinpointing exactly what triggers social anxiety (a specific event, a series of events, etc.).

When speaking with a therapist she told me that there are generally 2 types of people: introverts and extroverts. Although an introvert can extrovert themselves in certain situations, and vice versa, people fall into one of those categories. I am definitely an introvert and that probably makes having a social anxiety disorder that much more difficult.

I do understand your feelings about people in general. There are a lot of rude, condescending, selfish people out there - I also tend to encounter them every time I leave the house lol. I think it's just a part of life. But you can't let their actions dictate how you feel. Sometimes I think it's just me, that someone is being rude and it is being directed at me or only me, but usually they're just being plain rude! If it hadn't been you it would have been someone else. It's definitely not personal, and I guess we have to learn to pick our battles. Is it always worth it to say something to these people? No. But if you feel that you are personally being picked on for something, you should be able to stand up for yourself, or just walk away and ignore them.

[Robbed]

Another cause of social anxiety that seems to get little mention is the lack of social skills. Some of us just happen to never have learned how to interact with others. This is a particularly common situation when parents lack the very same skills - they cannot teach their children that which they do not know themselves. To make matters worse, social skills are neither simple, straightforward, nor easy to pick up on. Indeed, trying to improve one's social skills is complicated by the fact that social skills have a certain 'black magic' quality about them.

On the other hand, improving social skills would probably be of ALOT of help for people in this particular predicament. Unfortunately, since most professionals believe social anxiety is a medical issue, good help is not readily available here. And the fact that you are basically all on your own AND that improving social skills is a long and painful process makes it all the more daunting.

[Robbed]

Another cause of social anxiety that seems to get little mention is the lack of social skills. Some of us just happen to never have learned how to interact with others. This is a particularly common situation when parents lack the very same skills - they cannot teach their children that which they do not know themselves. To make matters worse, social skills are neither simple, straightforward, nor easy to pick up on. Indeed, trying to improve one's social skills is complicated by the fact that social skills have a certain 'black magic' quality about them.

On the other hand, improving social skills would probably be of ALOT of help for people in this particular predicament. Unfortunately, since most professionals believe social anxiety is a medical issue, good help is not readily available here. And the fact that you are basically all on your own AND that improving social skills is a long and painful process makes it all the more daunting.