What is Social Anxiety?
Social anxiety involves persistent fear, self-consciousness, or distress in situations where you may feel observed, evaluated, or judged by others.
For some, it may show up as avoiding parties, meetings, groups, public speaking, unfamiliar social situations, even dating.
For others, social anxiety can be less visible. You might attend social events while internally experiencing intense worry about saying the wrong thing, feeling rejected, disappointing someone, and/or shame spiraling after the fact.
Social anxiety can also overlap with people-pleasing and perfectionism. You may find yourself carefully monitoring other people’s reactions, trying to anticipate their needs, or feeling responsible for keeping everyone comfortable. Especially when anticipating others’ needs and considering the harmony in a group are both taught and valued in collectivist cultures, it may be hard for you to distinguish where you’re taking on more than aiming for social grace. Sometimes such habits lead to excluding yourself completely, masking in social settings, and not knowing how to show up authentically.
Over time, such patterns can become exhausting, leading to disconnection and feeling isolated.
Understanding social anxiety in the body
Social anxiety can affect much more than how you feel in social situations. It can influence the way you breathe, move, speak, connect with others, and experience yourself.
Anxiety isn’t only a mental experience. Your body often responds before you have consciously identified what you are afraid of.
Social anxiety can involve sensations such as:
- Racing heart
- Tightness in the chest
- Restricted or shallow breathing
- Sweating or feeling flushed
- Upset stomach, or digestive distress
- Feeling frozen, unable to think or speak
- Difficulties making eye contact, or staying present
- Muscle tension, especially in the shoulders, neck and jaw
- Strong urges to leave, hide or withdraw
You may know intellectually that you are safe, yet your body may respond as though something terrible is about to happen. Such responses can feel rather confusing, even embarrassing, particularly when you don’t understand why your body is having such strong reactions.
This is where somatic therapy can be helpful if you experience social anxiety. Rather than focusing exclusively on thoughts and behaviors, somatic therapy invites you to notice how anxiety is experienced in the body and develop greater awareness of your nervous system responses.
How can Somatic Therapy help with social anxiety?
Somatic therapy will draw your attention to physical sensations, emotions as they manifest in the body, movement, and nervous-system responses.
Although you may wish to eliminate an anxious feeling, somatic therapy uses mindfulness to help you notice what is happening in your body. Where do you feel tension? What happens to your breathing when you imagine being judged? Do you notice an impulse to withdraw, freeze, make yourself small, or become invisible?
Mindful awareness can help you learn to pause, recognize a triggering situation and take your time to respond wisely instead of acting from automatic reactions.
In somatic therapy, you may gradually learn to recognize anxious patterns and develop new ways of responding to stress. The goal isn’t to force yourself to feel calm or to eliminate every uncomfortable sensation. Instead, the process can involve becoming more connected to your body and developing greater choice in how you respond.
Somatic Therapy with Michele L. Kong will guide you to:
Shame is a social emotion. So merely being around other people can magnify shame you may already feel about yourself when alone.
In somatic therapy learning mindfulness of shame, and its related parts, will help you better understand internal conflicts and feelings contributing to social anxiety. Bodily sensations—such as not being able to think clearly, not finding the words, or freezing up like a deer in the headlights—can be explored in the present moment. Where you find your way out of such overwhelming feelings, to reconnect with yourself.
Instead of immediately believing every shame-based thought: “They think I’m awkward,” “I don’t have anything interesting to say,” or “Everyone is judging me.” You will practice noticing the effects of such thoughts in your body. You will learn to observe what is happening physically without immediately trying to suppress it, move on or anxiously react.
Learning how you externalize self-judgments, as well as self-critical or self-rejecting thoughts will also be part of the process. Eventually, you will grasp a more realistic picture of what’s happening and feel more sense of choice.
For many individuals I support, social anxiety is connected to earlier experiences of rejection, criticism, bullying, family dynamics, or other situations in which being seen or expressing yourself did not feel safe.
That doesn’t mean every experience of social anxiety is caused by trauma. However, exploring past incidents in somatic therapy can provide important context for present-day reactions.
Somatic therapy is a trauma-informed approach that can help you explore these patterns at a gentle pace that respects your sense of safety and autonomy.
Rather than thinking, “What’s wrong with me?” you may learn to ask, “What is my body trying to protect me from?”
Such a shift in inquiry can support a more compassionate way of understanding anxiety.
Social anxiety can sometimes take the form of constantly trying to get things “right.”
You might rehearse conversations before having them, replay interactions afterward, apologize excessively, avoid expressing disagreement, or worry intensely about disappointing someone.
Such patterns often overlap with people-pleasing and perfectionism.
Exploring the connection between anxiety and these protective strategies can help you understand why it may feel difficult to relax around other people or show up authentically.
