S1 EP42 – Healing Social Phobia

Transcript

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the inner bonding podcast. And today I want to talk about an issue that a lot of people struggle with, and that is social phobia. I want to talk about how to heal this challenging issue. So social phobia or social anxiety is the fear of interacting with others in various situations, such as groups or work or school or parties, or, or even on the phone or in a market or a store. And, and many other situations. People with social phobia experience, extreme anxiety and panic.

When they know they have to talk with or interact with others, they often find themselves isolating rather than risk the rejection or the ridicule or the intense, sweating, and shaking that they might experience that they are afraid of people with social phobia may be saying things to themselves, such as what if I make a fool of myself? What if I can’t think of anything to say, what if I say something stupid? What if people think I’m weird? What if no one wants to talk to me?

What if everyone Can see how nervous I am? What if I blush or I sh shake or I sweat social phobia comes from an extreme fear of being judged and rejected By others. The fear may turn to panic. When in the presence of an authority figure or peers who are important to you. So I want to talk about what causes social phobia. And then I’ll talk about how To heal it. Imagine that you have a small child whom you’re taking to a birthday party of peers.

Imagine that you tell the child before the party, you must make sure that you do everything right, so that the children and the parents at the party like you, because if they don’t like you, you are unlovable and Worthless. Don’t you think this would be Caused the child to be extremely anxious. You would probably Never say this to an actual child yet. This is what you’re basically saying to yourself, to the child within you. You’re feeling self you’re telling yourself that your worth is determined by others, liking you or rejecting you.

They like you. You’re okay. If they don’t, then you’re worthless. This is called self-abandonment. And it’s the root cause of social phobia. You’re abandoning yourself. When you refuse to define your own worth and lovability, and instead make others responsible for your sense of worth. You’re abandoning yourself. When you refuse to take responsibility for your own feelings and instead make others responsibility for your feelings of anxiety or Safety. Once You make others responsible, especially authority figures, or, or, or important others, whose whose acceptance you desperately want.

There’s no way you will not be anxious when you’re with them. Once you hand away to others, the responsibility for making you feel that you’re okay, then you have to try and control how they feel about you. By doing everything quote, right, trying to control how others feel about you will always cause anxiety. Your anxiety is letting you know that you’ve abandoned yourself and that you’re trying to control something that you actually cannot control, which is whether others like you or not, and accept you or reject you When you’re Not giving yourself the acceptance, the approval and the attention you need to feel lovable and worthy inside.

Then you’re invariably going to try and get approval, acceptance, and attention from others, which is what creates a lot of anxiety. So My client Meredith had suffered from anxiety. Most of her life as a child, she slept poorly and often had nightmares. She bit her nails and would chew on the skin around her nails until it was raw and bleeding. She had tried many forms of therapy and meditation medication. Before finally consulting with me. She had a strong belief in God and she prayed daily yet.

She was still anxious specially around people and could not understand the source of her anxiety. Yeah. Meredith grew up in a normal household with two parents who seemingly loved her yet. As we explored her, her childhood, it became apparent that while there was no overt abuse, the covert emotional abuse was constant. Her parents were highly critical of her and would get angry and withdraw. When she didn’t live up to their expectations, her mother was not affectionate. And her father’s affection was Tingy with sexual energy that frightened her Meredith Felt tense.

Much of the time in her home, her parents fought a lot and her mother would often end up crying hysterically while their father withdrew behind his newspaper and his Beer. What She did not receive in her household was healthy role modeling for taking personal responsibility for her own feelings. Her mother would blame her And would blame her father for her own Misery, her own unhappiness. While her father would blame her and her mother for his upsets. She always tried to be a good girl and be there for her parents, but no one was ever there for her.

It’s easy to see why Meredith was so anxious as a child, but what was causing her anxiety as an adult? The problem was that she had never learned how to be a loving parent to herself because her parents had not been loving to her or to themselves. She was kind and generous with others, but she tended to ignore her own feelings and needs just as her parents had her inner child felt alone and abandoned inside. Most of the time, In addition, She was also highly critical of herself just as her parents had been with her.

She was constantly telling herself that she just couldn’t do anything right. Meredith Was obviously treating herself just as his parent, just as her parents had treated her and themselves. She didn’t have a strong, loving, inner adult to attend to her feelings or speak up for herself with others. Instead she was neglectful or critical of herself due to abandoning herself and not giving herself love and approval. She was constantly seeking approval from others. As a result, Meredith felt anxious in most situations with others, with friends At work.

And Even with her husband and children, she was constantly trying to quote, perform, right? So that people would approve of her or not be mad At her. Mariella saw that much of her anxiety centered around wanting to control how others saw her and how they treated her. As I previously said, trying to control what you can’t control will always create anxiety and the anxiety that results from trying to control things that you can’t control is letting you know that you’re actually not operating in reality while we can sometimes influence people.

We can’t control how they feel about us or how they treat us. And we’re going to always feel anxious when we try to do something that’s just not possible for us to do. Meredith realized that she judged herself in the hopes of getting herself to do things right, believing that this would give her control over how others felt about her, because she was so critical of herself in order to control herself and others, she then constantly sought others’ approval. And she was in a vicious circle of self abandonment, and then trying to control what she couldn’t control.

No wonder she was so anxious and suffering from social phobia, Learning to be kind and compassionate with herself rather than judgmental was a challenge that took time and dedication. She was so used to judging herself that she would do it without even realizing it through her inner bonding work. Meredith became aware of the fact that most of the critical things she told herself about herself were not even true. They were false beliefs. She had absorbed from her parents, but they were not the reality of who she is.

As she paid attention to herself judgments, she noticed that her anxiety was directly related to her judgments, to her false beliefs and to her desire to control getting approval from others. As Meredith learned to be a loving, a loving adult, a loving in her parent, rather than a critical one, her anxiety gradually diminished. Anytime she felt anxious, she could now trace it back to something. She had told herself that was not only not true, but with self-critical, she discovered that she’d been using her spiritual connection as a way of avoiding responsibility for herself, rather than as guidance in what was loving to herself.

And she practiced in her bonding and open to learning about what was true and what was loving to herself. She gained more access to and more connection with her spiritual source of guidance. The more Meredith took loving care of herself. The more inner peace she felt and the more she was able to interact with others, with caring rather than with fear, Many Of my clients have experienced panic attacks just at the thought of going to a social event or the thoughts of reaching out to date. Someone panic attacks are very scary, your heart pounds, and you have palpitations and even chest pains, you might be sweating profusely, shaking uncontrollably, having trouble, getting a breath, and you might feel lightheaded and unsteady.

You might have a lump in your throat. It feels like you can’t swallow along with sensations of, of being smothered. And you might feel like you might throw up my think you’re having a heart attack, but if you’re a fairly young person and a physically healthy person, it’s not likely you’re having a heart attack. The physiological cause of a panic attack is that a small almond shaped Oregon in the limbic system of the brain called the amygdala gets activated and creates the extreme reaction in your body.

So what triggers the amygdala panic attacks are triggered by thoughts from the ego wounded self. The thoughts were about bad things that can happen. Thoughts that create fear and even thoughts about having a panic attack. Panic attacks are frightening because it feels like you might die. Even though people don’t die from them. For some people, the more panic attacks they have, the more they’re afraid of them. And the more they trigger them with the actual fear of the panic attack becomes a vicious circle.

Once extreme anxiety or a panic attack is triggered. It may be difficult to stop it. Most effective energy method I found that you can do for yourself is EFT. The emotional freedom technique. EFT is a system of tapping on the end points of acupuncture meridians. While thinking the thoughts that trigger the feelings and feeling the feelings of the anxiety or panic. I suggest that anyone who has anxiety or panic learns this method, we teach EFT in the self quest program and you can learn it at a wonderful site.

EFT universe.com, a friend of mine, Dawson church heads up this site. He’s just a wonderful man. Once you’ve been able to lower your anxiety level with EFT, then you need to start to tune into what you’re telling yourself. That’s causing the anxiety or panic attack, which means diligently, practicing, inner bonding, practicing in her bonding gives you the awareness of the lies from your wounded self that are causing the anxiety and the panic. And it develops your, your with the truth from your spiritual guidance.

The more You learn how to connect with your guidance and operate from the truth, the less anxious you’re going to feel. Anxiety and panic come from the lies of the wounded self. Generally come from the lies of the wound itself while inner peace and a sense of safety and worth come from being in truths about who you are in your beautiful, true self, your beautiful essence, The more you practice In her bonding and, and, and the more you’re able to stay connected with your guidance throughout the day, the more you’re going to be in charge of your thoughts, the practice of inner bonding gives you the ability to stop generating thoughts from your mind, and instead allow the truth to come through your mind from your higher guidance.

When you’re generating thoughts from your mind, you’re in your ego wound itself. When you’re using your mind as a receiver and allowing your higher guidance to come through, then the thoughts are coming through your mind. Healing. Social phobia is actually about learning to love yourself, to accept and value yourself and take responsibility for your own feelings. People who love themselves, go into social situations to share who they are with others, to share their caring, Their love.

When you, You feel good about yourself, you want to offer your smile, your interest, your attention, your kindness to others. You’re far more concerned with what you want to give to others than with what you want to get or with what you want to avoid. So If you want to heal your social phobia, then you need to do the inner bonding work necessary to stop judging yourself and start loving yourself because it’s loving yourself that actually heals the anxiety and panic of social phobia. If you were To ignore an actual crying baby or child that baby or child would feel alone, abandoned and anxious.

If you judge an actual child, the child will likely feel Anxious. When you ignore a judge, your own feelings, your inner child feels the same way. Anxiety, including social anxiety is often the way your inner child lets you know that you’re abandoning yourself rather than loving yourself. The anxiety is saying I’m scared. And I feel rejected when you’re not here for me. When you ignore me by staying in your head, rather than with me in your body, are you trying to, or you keep trying to numb my feelings with addictions or when you make someone else responsible for my feelings, I feel anxious and pressured when you judge me and you tell me that I’m not good enough and that I have to be perfect, loving herself emotionally means doing inner bonding whenever you feel anxious or whenever you feel anything less than peace and fullness within it also means getting professional help for anxiety stemming from childhood abuse or past trauma, avoiding healing, past abuse or trauma is a form of self-abandonment that can also contribute to social phobia.

As I’ve said, one of the most important aspects of learning to love yourself is learning to define your own worth. See if you can imagine being in a social environment environment or with an authority figure and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that you are a good person, that you are lovable and intrinsically worthy. What if you knew there was nothing essentially wrong with you and that you have special and unique gifts to offer to others. Being Able to define your own worth comes from practicing in her bonding and developing your spiritual connection.

When you can see your beautiful, true self through the loving eyes of your higher self, your higher guidance, then you can deeply know that you are a beautiful spark of divine love. This is when you stop worrying about what others think of you and stop trying to control what they think of you. This is when your social anxiety will heal. You’ll find yourself feeling peaceful and full rather than anxious. When you learn to love yourself rather than continue to abandon yourself. Anyone who wants to learn this can, it just depends on how important it is to you to learn, to love yourself and be able to share your love with others rather than trying to get love and approval or avoid rejection, which is the cause of social anxiety.

As you learn to see and value and love yourself, you’re going to find that eventually you no longer even think about what others think about. You imagine being with others, with no concern at all about how they feel about you or whether they’re going to like you or reject you. I know from personal experience because I used to worry so much about what others thought of me and through my inner bonding practice, learning to love and see and value myself. I don’t even think about it. I don’t, I don’t think I even know whether others are liking me or rejecting me because I’m much more concerned now with loving myself and sharing my love than with what other people think or do.

You’ll see that when you truly see and value yourself, these thoughts about what others think don’t even enter your mind. So I want to win courage. You all, to go to inner bonding.com. I encourage you to take my love yourself course. It’s a 30 day course that will help you learn to define your own worth. It’ll help you learn to stop abandoning yourself and start loving yourself. It’s an extremely powerful force in learning the inner bonding practice.

And there’s many other tools on the inner bonding website, free tools that are going to help you learn to love yourself. And of course, this is what I said will help you heal social phobia. I send you all my love and blessings for your health and your wellbeing.