Reddit mentions of Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook: Proven, Step-by-Step Techniques for Overcoming your Fear

Is this the book you're referring to?

Here's the deal.

I've seen your posts around the Wichita and depression subreddits. I remember because whenever I see you post you sound pretty similar to me. I've been depressed for several years, gotten down to just a couple friends, socially anxious, etc. Recently I've been taking really good care of these problems, though. I've started seeing a therapist, reading a few EXCELLENT books (take a look at this one and this one. They're life changers) and putting all this help to work in my life.

I didn't think I would, but I have noticed subtle changes happening in my life. It's taken a few months, but it feels like I'm finally on my way to being more or less "normal", or at least not having to worry about my depression or freaking out when I am in a social situation. In my classes and at work (I'm a sophomore at WSU) I have been starting to talk to more people and have been able to hold pleasant conversations for at least a few minutes. I've even gotten a couple people's numbers, which for me is a fucking milestone.

Ditch the negative attitude. How you live is fleshed out by how you're thinking about life in general. Seriously, give those two books a chance and read them cover to cover. They will help you out, I promise. Consider even seeing a therapist. PM me if you'd like the number of my guy, he's very nice and easy to talk to, has a great way of putting things into perspective and is introverted like me, which I'm guessing you are as well. It's not going to be easy, and is going to take some serious self-reflection, but the earlier you start the sooner you will be able to be happy with your life. Good luck.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, seeing a therapist should be first on your list of priorities. If you have the money, do it. Having someone there to help you (and a professional at what they do, at that) will help you much more than reading a book on your own could.

Sorry to hear about your rough times.
I have to agree with scrummaster that therapy could be really helpful. I have had clients with the same kind of problems and challenges you've described and I used cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help them. You seem to have good insight into what you don't like about your life, what you'd like to change, and what you would like your life to look like. These are great starting points for personal growth. If you can find a good therapist, they can help you figure out what is happening internally that is blocking you from getting to where you want to be. Also, maybe check in with your family doc to see if depression isn't a factor. It can be really hard to make changes if you are depressed. The energy you need to work on yourself may be sucked out of you by the depression. If that's the case, getting the depression treated could be really helpful.

If therapy is absolutely not an option, check out this workbook. It'll help you understand more about social anxiety and how it affects your life. There's also practical exercises you can do to deal with your social anxiety.

https://www.amazon.com/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook-Step/dp/1572245530

I know exactly how you feel. I love being around people but I have mild social anxiety so unless there's some liquid courage involved I tend to be uncharacteristically shy/reserved with strangers. I get very self conscious about this too, which only makes it worse and upsets me later on.

This book really helped me out. The exercises in it are based on cognitive behavioral therapy so if you don't have the money to shell out for psych appointments, it's an excellent self-help guide.

I used to think I could combat my anxiety little by little on my own but when I did that and experienced a setback it was hard to pick myself back up from it. The book was really helpful when it came to opening up to my friends and family about my problems, and it helps a ton just to know I have their support.

Before I never told anyone about my problems because it was too hard explain that even though I was so open and social with them, I couldn't behave that way around everyone. I felt stupid for having this problem, but the more I educated myself about social anxiety, the easier it became to talk about it and confront it.

Now that I'm more able to be myself around strangers I've been feeling a lot happier and more fulfilled. I still experience anxiety sometimes of course but I'm better at coping with it and not letting it hinder me. Feels awesome.

I hope you're able to overcome your fears as well. Good luck!

I have ADHD, general anxiety and major depression. Before med school, I worked as a crisis counselor, helping talk people through some of their most difficult and critical moments. While your own shit can be triggered by other people's shit, you have to have good boundaries in that line of work anyways, and good boundaries prevent that from happening. Plus, focusing on other people's shit can be a great way to not worry about your own shit for a while - counseling requires you to be wholly present, and that's a great way to set your own stuff to the side for a bit.


I highly recommend finding a talk therapist - rather, imo, it should be a requirement for someone going into psych. Psychiatry is a unique field and receiving psych care, whether good or bad, is much more useful than receiving the care of other specialties re: informing how to practice them.

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I don't know where you are, but in the US, one of the counseling fields is LCSWs or licensed clinical social workers, and I've found them to be the best in terms of receiving talk therapy. I've found that US psychiatrists are frequently full of themselves, and people with master's degrees in counseling are often focused too much on the psychology and not enough on the social context, and people with PhD's in the field are creepily into psychoanalysis (Freud has been outdated for decades) and I have never found one I trusted.


As a side note, I saw some of your other comments, CBT can help with social anxiety, but I preferred DBT for mine. I love this workbook (like all workbooks, it can be a little rudimentary, but you have to suspend your disbelief a bit and fit it to your specific situation): https://www.amazon.com/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook-Step/dp/1572245530

Have you tried anything to help your anxiety? Therapy would give you someone to talk to! If you don't want to go to therapy there's a ton of self help books like the Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook https://www.amazon.com/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook-Step/dp/1572245530

or The Anxiety & Worry Workbook https://www.amazon.com/Anxiety-Worry-Workbook-Cognitive-Behavioral/dp/160623918X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521328711&sr=1-4&keywords=anxiety+workbook

They can help you work on building skills to get more comfortable being around people!

Good luck!

You would be surprised to find out how much progress you can do by working hard towards your goals. You'll have your low moments, and this is definitely one of those: and guess what, sometimes it's not just perception, sometimes the low moments are just truly and carefully mirrored by reality. But this is part of the game, don't let this stop it.

I'll give you a couple of links I think could help most human beings:

google RSD Nation

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook-Step/dp/1572245530

noFAP

Not a memory scientist, but I can say that there are plenty of vitamins and supplements that improve an incredible array of problems. Just check out sites like greenmedinfo.com, which provides peer-reviewed abstracts for each substance in consideration, and there are hundreds and hundreds on the site. Just note that nootropics are often stimulative (caffeine is an example), and increasing stimulation usually means increasing stress hormones like norepinephrine, which is why one of the best things a person with anxiety can do is stop all stimulants.

Pharmaceuticals like benzodiazepines work like magic through increasing GABA receptor sensitivity but should be used sparingly, only for times when you're experiencing once or twice-weekly social anxiety or test anxiety, as the risk for dependence is high, and coming off them can be a real pain in the ass for a lot of people. SSRIs can be helpful, if for no other reason than because serotonin helps increase cognitive flexibility, which is why it can work well with anxiety, which works through preconsciously or consciously dreading a possible outcome or worst-case scenario, or depression of a ruminative type (i.e., can't stop thinking about stuff).

I am a therapist, though, and you can't combat the effects of social anxiety on memory, but you can work on social anxiety, which has its cognitive basis in the expectation of judgment from others and (most importantly perhaps) the belief that you can't handle this judgment. Social anxiety, as with any anxiety, is perpetuated by avoidance. People with social anxiety often avoid situations that evoke social anxiety, which prevents them from gaining a sense of mastery in social relations. This avoidance doesn't have to be external (e.g., you avoid certain situations), but can also be internal (e.g., you avoid eye contact).

I often have clients practice and master emotion regulation techniques (deep controlled breathing, mindfulness, progressive muscle relaxation, etc.) and then imagine a worst-case scenario that encapsulates their worst fears as to what could happen regarding social anxiety (anxiety is always about possibilities that you think you won't be able to control), and let them stay there for a few minutes at a time, then imagine responses they would give to judgmental people. This is where you access anger, which replaces anxiety. So for example, I had a client who imagined being in front of a class and people judging his clothing; I had him hold this image and then imagine talking back to those who he imagined were judging him. This caused an increase in anger toward people whom he feared, and the anger partly replaced his anxiety -- around 50% from a few sessions. Of course, you're going to have to look for a while to find a therapist who is into visualization in this Gestalt therapy way, and typically people find it most helpful when someone guides them through the imagined worst-case scenario.

You could create a systematic desensitization hierarchy, where you sort out instances of social anxiety from least to most anxious and rate each. After learning social skills training (which essentially means learning any skills you think might make you look socially inept, and often involves discounting cognitive distortions or thinking errors, a big one being that people are always paying attention to you, that anyone really gives a shit how you conduct yourself emotionally, that you can't handle the idea of people scrutinizing or judging you [when the reality is only assholes would do this]) you start out on engaging with the lower-ranking social anxiety-arousing situations, and keep doing it until your anxiety goes down a few points (e.g., a 3 out of 10 anxiety situation goes down to 1 or 2), then move up the hierarchy.

A good part of treatment is mindfulness and acceptance, as a good chunk of most if not all anxiety is anxiety about anxiety (meta-emotion), and this is especially the case with social anxiety given that the presupposition here is that if I feel anxious, people will notice. So through practicing mindfulness meditation in sitting, walking, body scan, etc. forms (the best book for anxiety and mindfulness is The Mindful Way Through Anxiety, and has excellent recordings) you generalize this to your daily life, meaning you accept your anxiety when it happens, which paradoxically cuts down on the anxiety given that the meta-emotive "anxiety about anxiety" part is lowered.

There are plenty of good books on social anxiety. This one looks very good. The key underlying point with social anxiety as with any anxiety is avoiding avoidance, i.e., exposing yourself to anxiety-arousing situations, provided they're within what psychologist John Briere calls a "therapeutic window", meaning around a 4-8 or so out of 10 in terms of anxiety (10 being highest).

Super cheap too!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1572245530/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1500502623&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=the+shyness+and+social+anxiety+workbook&dpPl=1&dpID=51uwEC3VifL&ref=plSrch

http://www.amazon.com/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook-Step-/dp/1572245530/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375907046&sr=8-1&keywords=the+social+anxiety+workbook

He's referring to this. My therapist suggested the same, and I found it very helpful as well. It's not expensive, and is definitely worth giving it a shot. As for the goals and challenges it asks you to set for yourself, if you have no one else feel free to PM me what you are tasking yourself to do and I'll check on you / keep you accountable.

I've liked mixing workbooks and counciling together (when I previously suffered depression). Here is one I found for you:

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https://www.amazon.ca/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook-Step/dp/1572245530

Goodluck :)

G

Oh no!! Lol. Well I recommend using a social anxiety workbook first, something like this:

Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook: Proven, Step-by-Step Techniques for Overcoming your Fear https://www.amazon.com/dp/1572245530/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_amxPAbX6N7JSK

After working through that you should feel more comfortable interacting with a variety of people. What really improves social skills is having a few close friends/family/and a significant other. Experience is the best teacher and you need to value quality of relationships more than quantity.

Thank you everyone for your kind words.

Suprisingly, writing that seems to have helped a lot. Last night I wrote that, then I skimmed through this book: http://www.amazon.com/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook-Step/dp/1572245530 which I had read before.

Then I went back to bed around 2, managed to fall asleep fairly quickly, and woke up a little after 7. So I managed to sleep for 5 hours. Definitely an improvement from the previous night. One thing I've heard suggested but never tried is keeping a worry journal. I think I will start doing that.

This sounds a lot like ACT therapy, something I did after doing CBT. It takes time, but it really does work. The way it was explained to me, that graded exposure was classified on a system of Subjective Units of Distress Scale, or SUDS. This link, from the Center for Clinical Interventions (Australian Gov Health Resource), is a pretty good representation of what I used. My psychologist used another resource that includes SUDS, but covers a lot more about anxiety, grounding techniques, processing your anxious thoughts and learning to become accepting of them. This is the book that I used while in therapy.

I liked using the workbook, though there is some kinda.. cheesy writing in some of the chapters.

You could always buy a book on the subject.

Like this or this

I'm currently doing this workbook and it has been really helpful, much more helpful than some of the CBT stuff I tried to use. I also found this online guide, it is free and from what I can tell, seems really helpful too - I'll probably start using that too. Hope that helps you, best of luck!! :)

My therapist recommended The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook. I think it's helped me a lot, although I still have a long way to go.

I wasn't always shy either. I was never loud and outgoing, but I wasn't shy until I...was.

Anyway, I've heard this book is helpful: http://www.amazon.com/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook-Step/dp/1572245530. If you can't afford that or don't want to buy it or whatever, here are some (hopefully) helpful subreddits: /r/socialanxiety and /r/socialskills.

And one thing that works for me is that whenever I have a negative social interaction (e.g. A conversation kind of dies out when I wanted it to go really well), instead of ruminating and going over it again and again and again in my mind, I do anything to distract myself from dwelling on it and beating myself up. Do homework, watch a TV show, go for a jog, etc. That way, you're leaving yourself some room to say dumb things and be awkward. Because that's probably gonna happen sooner or later.

Yeah, I'm going to focus on my strengths, not my weaknesses.

And I'm sorry your health care is garbage there :/ There are a lot of ways to start on your own! "Self-help" books (I say "self-help" because they aren't like shitty self-help books lol), online sites, worksheets, workshops.

You can try and see if there is a CBT work group in your area run by a therapist. They might be free or charge a slight fee. If you're not interested in that you can find tons of websites that are free.

[This site] (http://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/step1.htm) is great because it has a guided program type thing and it has a toooonnnn of worksheets for all sorts of problems. It might be a little overwhelming at first so I would suggest following the steps and taking it slow.

Also, not exactly CBT but [The Feeling Good Handbook] (https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-Handbook-David-Burns/dp/0452281326/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483808657&sr=8-1&keywords=the+feeling+good+handbook) has a lot of steps and helpful exercises to help with procrastination, depression, anxiety, anger, etc. You might also look at [something like this] (https://www.amazon.com/Shyness-Social-Anxiety-Workbook-Step/dp/1572245530/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1483808741&sr=8-3&keywords=cbt+for+social+anxiety) (though I've never read this exact book myself, it looks good).


I've also used the CBT for Dummies book, surprisingly a good introduction.

Definitely give it a try! CBT has helped me so much with my SA. If you have any other questions feel free to ask :)

(for what it's worth I'm going into therapy as a career so I've researched this shit a ton, beyond just my own interests lol)