Understanding and overcoming the roots of Fear and Social Anxiety

What (would) it look like if we created an honest reality unhinged from things which hold us back, free from fear based ideas, and opened to the disconnection between us and the things we cannot change?

The Written Addiction : Overcoming

The quote is referenced to the post/blog which I will link to below this one. It was not possible to reblog it today for some reason.

The important point made in this post, I believe is that much self help focused on anxiety concentrates on symptoms rather than cause and for this particular writer anxiety was trauma based and a result of feeling different, being bullied, hurt, shamed or excluded.

For many of us we carry this pain all through adolescence and well into adult life and it may take a long time to realise our anxiety is about what was done to us and how we responded due to emotional sensitivity. We often blame ourselves as a result. We often try to medicate the pain. We may try to change ourselves which is really the worst thing we can do because that then results in self abandonment which is even more traumatic. Facing the social anxiety and fear that we feel and tracing it back to its origin or root cause is important work. I know for myself when I feel anxiety and respond from the scared self instead of holding myself and feeling the reasons and feelings through and act despite it, I get myself in trouble. Acting based on being driven unconsciously by anxiety or fear rather than on containing it or working through it often lands us in even more problems.

For myself I recognise more and more in my life these days where fear has held me back. I see where I allowed it to turn me into someone else in order to be loved. I see the longing for attention and love that so often fuelled it as well as the emptiness of emotional neglect that I did not really recognise until about a year or more ago and continued to blame myself for just as others were content at times to blame me.

I am currently just listening to a programme on the radio about adolescence and the issue of feeling, most particularly how difficult it is at this age for many to identify their emotions. It is also addressing the need for at least one good friend or soul mate or parent that the person can relate to. When others cant relate to us, when they shame us or make us feel wrong or bad for being ourselves we really suffer in our core. Interpersonal relationships are of such important to teenagers particularly, between the ages of 7 and 14 we begin to turn out towards the world and social relationships in order to identify who we are. At this time we are forming our social identity and wounding or scarring at this time leads to problems in assertiveness, self esteem and self knowing all of which make us vulnerable to bad relationships and a bad relationship with ourselves. It can also lead to the start of depressive thinking. Thoughts like “I am not good enough”, “Things are hopeless” or the feeling that no one really cares or that we are an alien who does not belong on earth. Most important to our sense of healthy self esteem is a sense of good self value, without this we tend to founder.

Recognising where our social anxiety wounds may lay, taking steps to address the erroneous beliefs we may have developed about our sense of self in earlier years are all important things in dealing with the impact of depression and anxiety conditions that beset us in adulthood. I highly recommend the following post by The Written Addiction which I just read this morning. All of us deserve to know we are worthy just as we are and that our feelings make sense and have value.

https://thewrittenaddiction.com/2019/04/16/overcoming/