Social Anxiety disorder probably affects all people at some level sometime in their lives.
Social events are things like formal lunches or dinners, queuing at the supermarket or bank.
Wedding receptions, nights out with friends or work, meetings, birthday parties.
Going to the theater or the movies, on a date or at a party.
Imagine a life with non of these activities.
Just a monotonous habitual existence with no socializing where you can eat, talk and drink with others in a relaxed way.
Events such as these are what should refresh and revitalize us along our path of life.
Unfortunately, not everyone enjoys all of these occasions.
I'm sure that at some point we have all disliked some elements of those occasions.
There are some that have a fear of many types of social assemblies and go out of their way to avoid them.
These people are not workaholics or think that all social events are time wasting.
Far from it.
They would like to join in but they have a phobia that makes them feel anxious and embarrassed These people suffer from various levels of social anxiety disorder.
Social fear or social phobia some call it.
This fear or phobia may well have arisen from some event in their past life or been learnt from others.
Almost exclusively the disorder starts in childhood or teenage years and may last for life if untreated.
Once someone feels like they have been embarrassed in public by a negative reaction, real or imagined, to something they did the imagination can grow and develop those thoughts into a full blown phobia.
The fear is that should they put themselves into such a situation whereby they can get judged or criticized again then that embarrassment and shame will befall them again and they will be laughed at.
Some unexpected reactions can occur in these situations.
Breathlessness, blushing, feeling nauseous and sudden headaches are the most common symptoms.
along with sweating, shivering, stammering and even up to a panic attack.
Communication is often difficult for phobics even at the best of times.
However, they are all part of a psychological disorder.
The main cause of the reactions comes from the feeling they have that everyone else is watching, evaluating and criticizing every move they make.
They see themselves as inferior to others.
It's like an extreme case of low self esteem.
Sufferers tend to not attend any form of social gathering if they can avoid it, making them isolated from others.
As you can imagine this avoidance behavior has a negative impact on their personal and social life and to some extent on their working life too.
Strangely, most sufferers are not introvert or shy.
They are just very self conscious to the point of embarrassment and even have physical negative changes.
Social phobia is easily curable.
While some doctors may prescribe medications these only alleviate the symptoms rather than tackle the cure although medication may be needed to jump start or assist the cure.
Cognitive behavioral therapy works better as eventually the original cause may be revealed for what it was.
A past event that the imagination has locked on to for a reference point for all public activities.
One of the best, safest and fastest ways to effect a cure is by the use of Neuro Linguistic Programming.
Practitioners of NLP have had massive successes in treating the causes of phobias within an hour or so.
Very often where other types of therapy have been tried, and failed, for months or years.
Hypnotherapy is also used to help treat such cases by revealing the true causes.
With the right treatment, will power, and support from near friends and relatives, social anxiety disorder can be treated and cured without any side effects.