SAD and my life

[sajidka2010]

I am suffering from social anxiety disorder since from my childhood and now I am 35. I lost a lot. I just tried everything like medication, relaxing technic but nothing work 100 percent.

[designguy]

Here is my answer to a similar posting: I had social anxiety for years and what helped me was learning that it was due to my distorted and erroneous thinking about how others perceived me and how I perceived them. I was also suffering from low-self-worth and an inability to stand up for myself and validate myself. I also learned to never believe my anxious thoughts because they are lies whose purpose was to protect myself but now as an adult I don't need that kind of protection. I was astounded one day at work when I realized how much people liked me and valued my company when I thought just the opposite was true.

My suggestion is to find a therapist that specializes in treating SA and work with them, they may use group and exposure therapy as part of the process. If there isn't one near you, you might check out Sebastiaan at social-anxiety-solutions.com, he has some very good info and even an online program available and also good youtube videos. There are also other online SA programs available and good info on youtube about treating/healing SA. The more you educate yourself about it will help your healing.

Another helpful thing is to figure out why and how you developed SA so you understand it more and can get any additional help you need. In my case I grew up in a emotionally and physically repressive/abusive household and was punished and shamed for any kind of normal anger or trying to stand up for myself. I was also bullied in school which all led to my developing SA. I started healing my SA but also realized I was dealing with trauma/c-ptsd and had a lot of repressed anger, rage and shame that I needed to process and heal. I found a therapist that specialized in treating trauma/c-ptsd and worked with them and he used emdr as part of the therapy that was very helpful.

The other thing to do is to work on healing your low-self-worth, assuming you have it because it's quite common with those with SA. There is a lot of good info/resources on youtube about how to do it and heal.