Monthly Archives: July 2023

Coping Strategies for Social Anxiety

Anxiety, Behavior, Coping Mechanisms, Mental Health, Neuroplasticity, Psychology, ReChanneling, Social Anxiety, Social anxiety disorder, , , ,

Recovery from social anxiety and related conditions.

Robert F Mullen, PhD
Director/ReChanneling

Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.

The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided apply to comorbid emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior. 

“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI – deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)   

“Success depends upon previous preparation,
and without such preparation, there is sure to be failure.”
– Confucius

EDIT

Recent Posts

Perfectionism and Unreasonable Expectations

Coping Mechanisms for Social Anxiety

How Can Negative Information Be Neutralized?

Coping Strategies for Social Anxiety

Social anxiety disorder is culturally identifiable by the persistent fear and avoidance of social interaction and performance situations, which causes us to miss the life experiences that connect us with the world.

The primary goal of recovery is to dramatically alleviate the anxieties, apprehensions, and fears associated with social anxiety. To achieve this, we identify three objectives:

  1. Replace or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones.
  2. Restructure: produce rapid, concentrated positive stimulation to offset the abundance of negative information in our brain’s metabolism.
  3. Regenerate our self-esteem through mindfulness of our assets.

As strategists for our recovery, we are responsible for developing a cohesive plan to meet our three objectives. These can involve multiple coping strategies. Coping mechanisms are tools and techniques that implement our coping strategies. The distinctions are important.

  • Recovery Goal: the outcome we seek to achieve.
  • Recovery Objectives: the steps we take to achieve our recovery goal.
  • Coping Strategies: The plans of action designed to meet our recovery objectives.
  • Coping Mechanisms: tools and techniques utilized to implement our coping strategies.

Social anxiety disorder is culturally identifiable by the persistent fear and avoidance of social interaction and performance situations, which causes us to miss the life experiences that connect us with the world.

Situations

A situation is a set of circumstances – the facts, conditions, and incidents affecting us at a particular time in a specific place. A feared situation provokes fears and anxieties that negatively impact our activities and associations.

Two Types of Situations

Anticipated situations are those that we know, in advance, will provoke our fears and anxieties. Examples range from restaurants and the classroom to job interviews, family gatherings, and social events. They can be one-time situations like a job interview or social event. They can be recurring situations such as the classroom or work environment.

Unexpected situations are those that catch us by surprise. Examples include an accident, the unexpected houseguest, and losing your wallet. 

Automatic Negative Thoughts

Automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) are the immediate, involuntary, emotional expressions that occur when our situational fears challenge us. They are the unpleasant, self-defeating things we tell ourselves that define who we are, who we think we are, and who we think others think we are.

ANTs result from our negative self-appraisal, e.g., “No one will talk to me.” “I will do something stupid.” “I am a loser.” Adverse behaviors consequently accompany these self-maligning thoughts.

Identifying situations and unpacking associated fears and corresponding ANTs are crucial to recovery. Our responses are as distinctive as human thought and experience.

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“It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will
continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life.” – Nick P.

*          *          *

9 STEPS TO MODERATE SITUATIONAL FEARS AND ANXIETIES

Alleviating our associated fears and corresponding ANTs demands an integrated approach. Through the 9-Step Process for Rational Response, we learn to: 

1. Identify our feared situation. Where are we when we feel anxious or fearful, and what activities are involved? What are we thinking? What might we be doing? Who and what impacts these insecure feelings? 

2. Unpack our associated fear(s). One way to identify our fears and anxieties is to ask ourselves: What is problematic about the situation? How do I feel (physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually)? What is my specific concern or worry? What is the worst thing that could happen to me? What do I imagine will happen to me?

3. Unmask our corresponding ANTs. How do we express our fear or anxiety? What are our involuntary emotional expressions or images? How do we negatively self-label? What do we tell ourselves? “I am incompetent.” “I am stupid.” “I am undesirable.”

4. Examine and analyze our fears and ANTs. What are the origins of our fears and anxieties? How do we express them? Discovery approaches include cognitive comprehension, introspection, psychoeducation, and the vertical arrow technique.

5. Generate rational responses. We become mindful of the irrationality and self-destructive nature of our associated fears, anxieties, and corresponding ANTs. We unmask, examine, and analyze the cognitive distortions and maladaptive behaviors that validate or reinforce them. Then, we devise rational responses to counter their false assumptions.

6. Reconstruct our thought patterns. Through proactive neuroplasticity and other cognitive approaches, we convert our thought patterns by replacing or overwhelming them with healthy, productive ones. This process is an essential component of recovery.

7. Devise a structured plan. Utilizing our learned tools and techniques, we develop our coping strategies and mechanisms to challenge our situations, associated fears and anxieties, and corresponding ANTs.

8. Practice the plan in non-threatening situations. We strengthen our rational responses by repeatedly implementing our plan in simulated situations and practicing exercises, including role-play and other workshop interactivities.

9. Expose self to the situation. We challenge our fears and anxieties on-site in real-life situations. This action transpires after a suitable period of graded exposure to accommodate the reconstruction of our neural network and ensure familiarity with our strategies and coping mechanisms.

Coping Strategies

Researchers point to over 400 coping strategies to address emotional malfunction, including problem-focused, emotion-focused, social, and meaning-focused.

Our social anxiety recovery program emphasizes response-focused and solution-focused strategies but considers multiple approaches to facilitate an individually targeted recovery program.

Emotion-focused coping strategies focus on managing or regulating our emotional response to feared situations. Identifying the emotions associated with a stressor is essential to mitigating them. In the first three of our 9-Step Process for Rational Response, we identify the feared situation, associated fears, and corresponding ANTs.

Problem-focused coping strategies employ the same tools and techniques as our solution-focused strategy. One crucial difference: the pathographic disease model of mental health focuses on the problem, whereas the wellness model we favor emphasizes the solution.

Recovery is a here-and-now process. The past is immutable. We have no control over it beyond our reaction and response to it. It is the here-and-now and how it reflects on the future that is of value in recovery.

Meaning-focused coping strategies entail rationalizing or delegating responsibility for our thoughts and behaviors to a moral or religious code or influence. These, however, can encourage negatively valanced emotions like shame, guilt, and blame, which are major impediments to recovery. The more rational approach emphasizes personal accountability and self-determination.

Social coping strategies are essential to counter our fears of human interconnectivity and avoidance of social situations. Graded exposure includes practiced cognitive-behavioral techniques that reduce sensitivity to our feared situations. The 9-Step Process for Rational Response encourages systematic desensitization of our fears/anxieties in non-threatening workshop environments before exposure to real-life situations.

Avoidance-focused coping strategies pursue alternate activities to avoid situations that endanger our emotional well-being. They are short-term solutions. In the long term, we mitigate our fears/anxieties by learning to respond rationally to them, allowing us to engage in feared situations at our discretion.

Restructuring, replacing, and regenerating comprise the framework for recovery and self-empowerment. A coalescence of coping strategies is needed to accommodate these goals as well as the diversity of human thought and experience.

Best Coping Strategies for Social Anxiety

Response-based coping strategies, which we focus on in our recovery program, pay particular attention to generating rational responses to our maladaptive thoughts and behaviors. We learn to rechannel our emotional angst to intellectual evaluation and response. We facilitate this component of recovery in the first four of the 9-Step Process for Rational Response.

Solution-based coping strategies keep our attention centered on finding solutions rather than researching the origins of our problems. Recovery is a here-and-now and how it reflects on the future process. We define ourselves by our character strengths, virtues, and attributes rather than our symptoms.

Recovery relies on self-reliance and self-motivation. The onus of emotional well-being rests with the recovering individual. A comprehensive recovery program is individually targeted to emphasize the solution rather than the problem.

Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series

*          *          *

WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT?  ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of social anxiety and related conditions and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing neuroscience and psychology including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups and workshops.

Committing to recovery is one of the hardest things you will ever do.
It takes enormous courage and the realization that you are of value,
consequential, and deserving of happiness.

The Character Resume

Anxiety, Behavior, Depression, Mental Health, Neuroplasticity, Psychology, ReChanneling, Self-Empowerment, Social Anxiety, Social anxiety disorder, , , ,

Recovery from social anxiety and related conditions.

Robert F Mullen, PhD
Director/ReChanneling

Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.

The distinction between social anxiety and social anxiety disorder is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided apply to comorbid emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior. 

“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI – deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)   

“Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power,
but in character and goodness. People are just people,
and all people have faults and shortcomings,
but all of us are born with a basic goodness.”
– Anne Frank

DIT

Recent Posts

Perfectionism and Unreasonable Expectations

Coping Mechanisms for Social Anxiety

Negative Words Impede Recovery

Heaven’s Reward Fallacy

The Character Resume

A character resume is a written compilation of our positive qualities, achievements, and happy memories. Mindfully retrieving and cataloging these qualities compels us to embrace our value, confirming we are desirable, consequential, and worthy.

Self-esteem is mindfulness of our value to self, society, and the world. The trajectory of our negative self-beliefs disrupts the development of our positive self-qualities. This trajectory erodes mindfulness of our inherent and acquired character strengths, virtues, and attributes. Fortunately, these qualities are not erased but misplaced, repressed, or compartmentalized away from our consciousness.

Recovery is regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost. In social anxiety and related conditions, what has been stolen or lost is our emotional well-being and quality of life.

Insufficient Satisfaction of Needs

Self-esteem can be further understood as a complex interrelationship between how we think about ourselves, how we think others perceive us, and how we process and present that information. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs reveals how childhood disturbance and subsequent negative self-beliefs disrupt our emotional development by denying us satisfaction of certain fundamental needs.

Core beliefs of abandonment, detachment, exploitation, and neglect subvert certain biological, physiological, and emotional support. This lacuna negatively impacts our self-esteem which we express by undervaluing our positive qualities. Again, this does not signify obliteration, but diminishment or latency due to inactivity or suppression. 

Space is Limited
Register Early

“It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will
continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life.” – Nick P.

*          *          *

Purpose of the Character Resume

In his examination of anxiety and depression, Aaron Beck, the pioneer of cognitive-behavioral therapy, maintained that social anxiety provokes feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and unworthiness. The concept of undesirability revealed itself in our SAD recovery workshops. Until we commit to recovery, we continue to be manipulated by these destructive self-beliefs. 

To highlight Sun Tzu’s words of wisdom, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” I am continually amazed at how little SAD persons know their symptoms. It is as if, by ignoring them, they do not exist or will somehow go away. Ignorance is a major impediment to recovery. How can we fix something if we do not know why it malfunctions? How do we regenerate our character qualities if we remain blissfully unaware of what they are? Thus, the value of the character resume.

An objective of recovery is to become mindful of our inherent and acquired character strengths, virtues, attributes, and achievements. This recognition includes mutual consideration of our shortfalls, as well. Again, we are repairing our brokenness.

Overwhelming Negativity

Childhood disturbance generates negative core beliefs that influence our intermediate attitudes, rules, and assumptions. These attributions produce a cognitive bias that compels us to misinterpret information and make self-destructive decisions. Since humans are hard-wired with a negativity bias, we already respond more favorably to adversity. Add our SAD symptomatology and our neural network is replete with toxic information.

We convey this in our thoughts, behaviors, and the words we use to express them.

Throughout our lives, we are consumed and conditioned by adversity. SAD sustains itself through our negative self-beliefs and image. By the age of sixteen, we have heard the word no from our parents roughly 135,000 times. Some of us use the same unfortunate characterizations over and over again. It is not just the words we say aloud in criticism and conversations. The self-annihilating words we silently call ourselves support our adverse thoughts and behaviors.

Additionally, we are continuously impacted by outside negative forces over which we have limited to no control, including life’s vicissitudes, physical deterioration, and social hostilities.

Our neural network is replete with negative Information. A character resume is a constant visual reminder of our value and significance.

Recovery Goal and Objectives

The primary goal of recovery from social anxiety is the mitigation of our irrational fears and anxieties. In self-empowerment, it is the rebuilding of our self-esteem and motivation. We execute these goals through a three-pronged approach.

  1. Replace or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones.
  2. Produce rapid, concentrated positive stimulation to offset the abundance of negative Information in our brain’s metabolism.
  3. Regenerate our self-esteem through mindfulness of our assets.

Replace

The goal is to replace or overwhelm our adverse thoughts and behaviors with positive ones. Our character resume is constructed with our positive qualities, achievements, and memories. It is these attributions that replace the abundance of negative self-beliefs acquired throughout life. These qualities that were lost, misplaced, or compartmentalized, are retrieved and recognized through recovery approaches, e.g., personal introspection and inventory, memory work, cognitive comprehension, and other tools and techniques. They are subsequently input into our character resume.

Restructure

Proactive neuroplasticity produces rapid, neurological stimulation to change the polarity of our neural network. Our brain receives around two million bits of data per second but is capable of processing roughly 126 bits, so it is important to provide substantial information. DRNI is the deliberate, repetitive, neural input of Information. A deliberate act is a premeditated one; we initiate and control the process. Repetition accelerates and consolidates neural renewal and connectivity. Information that is sound, reasonable, goal-focused, and unconditional determines its strength and integrity. The information we assemble in our character resume generates the most efficient words and statements to accelerate and consolidate the process of neural restructuring.

Regenerate

To regenerate means to renew or restore something damaged or underproduced. Because of the disruption in our optimal development, many positive self-qualities that construct our self-esteem are latent or dormant – underdeveloped or suspended. 

These self-qualities (e.g., confidence, reliance, compassion, and other self-hyphenates) are damaged but not lost. Disruption interrupts productivity. It does not destroy it. Like stimulating the unexercised muscle in our arm or leg, we can regenerate our self-esteem.

Due to our negative self-analysis, we tend to repress, misplace, and forget our inherent and developed assets. They are not erased or lost. But we compartmentalize them in the recesses of our minds because our social anxiety compels us to focus on our negative qualities. 

Elements of a Character Resume

What goes into our character resume? The simple answer is anything and everything that stimulates a positive personal response, including our successes, achievements, contributions, personal milestones, talents, charitable deeds, and happy memories. 

What Goes Into our Character Resume?

Entries into our character resume include our positive personal affirmations, rational response to our ANTs, affirmative visualizations, character strengths, virtues, and attributes rediscovered through various exercises, retrievable happy memories, and self-esteem attributes from multiple inventories.

Character Strengths, Virtues, and Attributes. Make a list of your positive qualities. Renewed mindfulness of our assets is essential for regenerating our self-esteem. 

Positive Autobiography. List your successes, achievements, contributions, personal milestones, talents, charitable deeds, and service to others. Recollecting and listing these accomplishments encourages you to recognize and embrace the extraordinariness of your lives. 

Positive Personal Affirmations are self-motivating, empowering statements that help us focus on goals, challenge negative, self-defeating beliefs, and reprogram our subconscious minds. 

Self-Esteem Self-Analysis. What do we like about ourselves mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and socially?  

Write these things down. Our brain receives around two million bits of data per second but processes roughly 126 bits. If we don’t write things down, they don’t register, and we forget them.

When challenged by our negative self-appraisal or automatic negative thoughts, we have a constant reminder of our qualities and assets – a written evaluation of our value and significance. It is an indispensable resource that helps address those situations that generate self-destructive thoughts, behaviors, and other adverse self-beliefs. 

Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series

*          *          *

WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT?  ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of social anxiety and related conditions and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing neuroscience and psychology including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups and workshops.

Committing to recovery is one of the hardest things you will ever do.
It takes enormous courage and the realization that you are of value,
consequential, and deserving of happiness.