Everyone feels anxious sometimes, and most of us, at some point, have had a fear of being judged in a social setting. “What if I say the wrong thing?” “What if I forget my speech?” “Are my clothes all wrong for the occasion?” Experience and reasoning (or simply asking a friend if your jacket goes well with your shirt) usually quietens those niggling worries.
However, if you have social anxiety, you suffer from an overwhelming fear that can’t be reasoned away. Social anxiety, also known as social phobia, is when our fear of social situations becomes all-consuming and affects our daily lives. It’s a deeply distressing phobia that negatively impacts everything from work to personal relationships.
Like it can with other anxiety disorders, solution focused hypnotherapy (SFH) can help you overcome social phobia. We’ll take a look at how SFH for social anxiety works in practice.
What is social anxiety?
Someone with social anxiety has an intense and persistent fear of even the most everyday interactions. It can stem from those awfully self-conscious teenage years; however, gets worse rather than better with time.
However, most of us can be a bit shy, especially in new or daunting situations (the first day of a new job, for example). How do you know if you have social anxiety?
- You worry about everyday activities that could involve interaction (for example, seeing somebody you know at the supermarket)
- You worry that people are judging you, or thinking the worse of you
- You experience panic attacks and other symptoms of anxiety
- You’re anxious about doing something embarrassing (such as blushing, misspeaking, sweating, or getting stuck for words)
- You are extremely anxious before, during and after a social gathering, such as eating out
Why solution focused hypnotherapy works for social anxiety
Solution focused hypnotherapy is a combination of hypnosis and psychotherapy. It works by creating a state of focused attention, where your mind is relaxed and more open to beneficial suggestion. The therapist and client come up with a future goal together, along with the steps to reach that change, and use the relaxed trance state to increase your confidence and become less self conscious.
How does hypnotherapy help people with social anxiety? If you’re struggling with social phobia, you worry about an interaction before it happens. Solution focused hypnotherapy helps the client visualise an alternative scenario where this interaction is smooth and stress free. With this ideal in mind, the therapist and client can work together to make it a reality. The positive future outlook of this form of therapy makes it ideal for people with anxiety disorders.
What happens during hypnotherapy sessions
Because fear of the unknown (and a tendency to fill in any blanks with negative scenarios) is a big part of social phobia, I’ll explain a bit more about how hypnotherapy sessions work. I also offer remote sessions (therapy over Zoom cuts down on the social variables of a trip to consulting rooms), and the process is the same whether online or in-person.
The neuroscience of social anxiety
In our first session, we start by discussing social anxiety. Anxiety is actually embedded deeply in us, right back to the days of our ancient ancestors. When we’re anxious, the primitive side of our brains takes over, effectively blocking out rational thought. This was a useful function when we were running away from sabre-tooth tigers, but feels like a bit of a mental over-reaction for delivering a PowerPoint, or meeting up with a group for a night out.
A build-up of stressors makes our irrational fears worse. I often use the analogy of the “stress bucket” with my clients, where our ability to cope lessens as our “buckets” fill. Each stressor adds more water to our metaphorical bucket, until it eventually overflows.
This understanding of why we experience anxiety really helps. You’re not alone, your feelings are not weird or unusual, and yes, we can work together to make your anxiety levels manageable.
Planning goals together
Having explored the anxious brain, we can now start applying this knowledge to reprogramme these negative neural pathways and move towards a positive future goal. I ask solution focused questions, such as “scaling questions”, which ask you to rate things like your confidence. “Miracle questions” are another good way to get insights (“If you woke up in the morning and there had been a miracle overnight and your anxiety had vanished, what would be different?”).
From this, we can start to build on a positive future goal. With social anxiety, this could be something like “Go out for a meal with friends and actually enjoy it”, or “Contribute to a meeting”, or even something really specific like “Speak to a colleague without worrying that I’ll blush.” The underlying goal beneath this tangible target is to increase self-confidence, reduce self-consciousness and start to lose that fear of being judged.
The hypnotherapy trance state
Now we have established a goal, we can begin the hypnotherapy trance work. While you’re in this relaxed state of focused attention, you can begin to reshape unhelpful thoughts into positive changes for the future. In the trance state, both sides of our brain come together – it’s a bit like being in a daydream. Our rational and analytical intellectual brain can work with our primitive brain (that’s the anxious part that’s running away from tigers), turning negative thoughts into positive ones.
We might use “anchors”, which is an NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) technique that creates a positive trigger to summon good feelings. Another technique I use is called “reframing”, which encourages us to view something from a different perspective – this can be really helpful in cases of social anxiety, where the chances are that we’re really not being judged at all.
As we progress through our sessions, we might try another technique used in NLP, the “swish”. This is about holding two pictures in your mind: the negative trigger for your anxiety and the positive future goal. For example, the negative trigger might be an image of you at work, about to speak in a meeting and getting tongue-tied. The positive picture is of you speaking confidently. The “swish” is how we switch those images around in our minds so the positive one is the more dominant.
These are just some of the techniques I use alongside hypnotherapy; and because all my clients are different, our exact approach always differs a bit. However, I hope this has given you an idea of what to expect in a hypnotherapy for social anxiety programme.
Hypnotherapy for social anxiety with Great Minds Clinic
I have worked with a lot of people with social anxiety – it’s a lot more common than you might think. A successful social life may feel way beyond your grasp at the moment, but it really isn’t. We can work together, using the techniques I’ve outlined here, to make positive and lasting changes. Please contact me for an informal conversation about how I can help you.
