Social Anxiety
Alright Steemit!
This isn't a motivating or spiritual piece, it's something that happened to me in work today, I don't know why it happened, but I think I found out what anxiety feels like.
It all began last week, I was asked to take minutes in our organisations' leadership meeting today. It was an all day meeting, 35 pages of minutes...zzz. I normally work in a technical role, so crap like today just doesn't happen in my work - I felt out of my comfort zone.
I also learned rather late, that I had to chair the last agenda item at the meeting, it was just a 15 minute slot, going over the main points from the meeting. No problem...I thought.
As agenda point 16 approached, my foot started to tap on the ground... my left foot. Quicker and quicker whilst I was writing up the minutes - It wasn't a conscious decision to tap my foot, what the fuck was I doing? I could feel my body start to tighten up, my shoulders were up to my ears, so I relaxed them, I stopped my foot tapping... but my heart was still racing, my body temperature still rising, there is only so much I could control.
As it got to my bit, I felt my brow break into sweat. As I spoke, as I regurgitated the points, I could feel my face heat up, I couldn't control my voice, I stumbled over words, my voice shook, I had to repeat some lines. I had some sort of fear of being "center of attention." I made a couple of jokes, to try and calm myself down, my voice went back to normal, briefly, after each one. But then as the audience fell silent, as I continued, my voice started to shake again. I don't know what happened. I still can't make sense of it. I even went to the bathroom immediately after and I had stage-fright! There was no one else there!!!
I've been frantically googling all evening, and social anxiety seems the best fit. I feel emotionally drained. I normally go to the gym after work, I went home and got into bed!
I hope you don't ever have to feel this, but would be interested to hear other opinions or solutions about what the hell happened!
Hey Stevo, have you ever thought of hypnotherapy? I treat people with your symptoms often and I would urge you to look into it, so you never have to experience that again.
I'll definitely look into it, been looking at material on everything all night!
Thanks for the suggestion.
Your welcome
I have not posted anything on anxiety yet, but I have posted some sessions that would be very similar to how I would fix this, you are welcome to read over them to remove some of the mystery about hypnosis.
Just been making my way through your posts, very interesting stuff. Didn't even know breast augmentation by hypnosis was a thing! Crazy, how powerful the mind is and how it can affect the body so much.
I still get amazed by some of the stories I hear from colleagues. If you look at my first post with Mr Smith, that would be very similar to how they would proceed with you, except for the abreaction.
Hi @Stevo,
The symptoms are indeed what someone with Social Anxiety would experience when they are faced with a situation that is out of their comfort zone.
Thankfully I have left Social Anxiety in the past and there are many ways to help heal it, hypnotherapy is one way that can help.
Just to give you some clarity on what would have happened. Basically, when you're faced with a situation out of your comfort zone, you will have an outcome in mind..
"I hope this goes well." "I hope people find what I am saying interesting."
The problem is that if you haven't done this before, your ability to guarantee these outcomes will be limited by your skill level in that area.
If you have low skill in this area (which if it's a new thing and out of your comfort zone is likely) and the outcome you have in mind is out of your control, you will experience anxiety.
One solution is to get better at achieving your desired outcome with practice or to instantly have an affect, change your focus to an outcome that is within your control.
Something like, "I am simply going to deliver the material I have." Which this focus you can guarantee that you can do that, and any anxiety will be greatly reduced.
My blog covers many aspects of healing social anxiety, so check it out if it's something you would like to understand more.
https://steemit.com/@ashleysmith