How I got past social anxiety

I wanted to give an overview of how I got past my social anxiety years ago, and what it meant for me personally. Hoping this can give some insight not only on practical steps you can take to change your situation, but also all of the things that lie on the other side of negative thinking.

So when I was in college I was fed up with always being shy and not talking to anyone, wanting a girlfriend, wanting to be extraverted, confident, all the good things… I went to a lot of parties but always felt somewhat out of place. I had a small group of close friends, but I still felt closed off and I wanted to meet more people. I’d say that this started to change my Junior year; and my Senior year is when things really started to pick up.

The main decisions that led to my change were:

1. I was going to start saying yes to every invitation

2. I was going to do something everyday that I was afraid of

The first one was important because this is how I really started to meet a lot of people and open up. When I was anxious I would say no to a party or an event if I didn’t know exactly who was going to be there, or if my close friends weren’t going to be around. I decided, \*\*\*\* it, I’m just going to go and deal with my anxiety as it comes up. The more I went and met other people, the better I got at it, the better I got at it the more confident I became. Of course, there were some very awkward situations along the way and not everything I went to was a success, but overall this was one of the most positive things I’ve done in my entire life.

The second one is where things get a little more interesting. I made a progressive list of social situations that terrified me, each one more horrifying than the next. Everyday I crossed off one of the challenges. Examples of this were things like- give 4 strangers a compliment- Have a 5 minute conversation with someone I just met. Every time I did one of these things I started to realize that negative outcomes in my head were elaborate fantasies. After a very short time I started to build confidence and my negative thinking started to line up closer with reality.

The other thing that changed was my thinking senior year. I realized that I only had one more year at my school and after that I would probably never see 99% of my peers ever again. I stopped caring as much about what they think and just decided to do whatever I wanted and put myself out there. I know this is a specific situation but the idea is that caring too much is what was causing my anxiety.

The positive things that came out of these decisions are more than I could have hoped for. I made some of the best friends I’ve ever had, and am still close with today, 7 years later. I gained confidence that helped me take big steps in my career and pretty much every other facet of my life. My social anxiety has come back at certain points, but I’ve used the steps listed to get past it again and again.

Hope this helps