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)
When left unresolved, three types of resentments adversely impact our psychological well-being by sustaining our victimization and abuse.
Mistreatment of us by others.
Mistreatment of others by us.
Mistreatment we inflict on ourselves.
In each instance, we are victims and abusers. Victimized by the transgression against us, we self-abuse with our anger and resentment. When we transgress, we abuse the victim and victimize ourselves with our shame and guilt.
The victimization we embrace when we harm ourselves is a particularly insidious form of emotional self-abuse. Victims are likely to experience depression and anxiety, which aggravate and perpetuate our condition.
We retain an abundance of destructive information formed by our negative trajectory. Much of this information stems from the unresolved debris of negative emotions that adversely affect our emotional well-being.
They influence our thoughts, behaviors, and relationships. When unresolved, they continue to permeate our neural network with negative energy and obstruct recovery.
Mistreatment by Others
We often hold onto anger and resentment because we convince ourselves that they impact those who harmed us. However, the perpetrators are frequently (a) unaware of, have forgotten, or take no responsibility for their mistreatment. The only person affected, then, is the injured party.
To paraphrase Buddhaghosa in The Path of Purification, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; we are the ones who get burned.”
Our innate drive for vengeance can be formidable; our baser instinct wants retribution. Forgiving removes our need for retaliation; it mitigates our vindictiveness.
“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.
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Mistreatment of Others
Forgiving ourselves for harming another is accepting and releasing the toxicity of our actions. Our mistreatment not only impacts the recipient but our emotional well-being as well. We feel guilt for hurting them and shame for being the type of person who would cause harm.
It is prudent to remain mindful that the emotional upheaval provoked by our social anxiety can contribute to the cycle of abuse common in such situations. The mistreated often displace their mistreatment or unconsciously hurt others as a result of their pain.
These self-destructive emotions are resolved by accepting responsibility and our humanness, making amends, and forgiving ourselves. When making personal amends is unfeasible, performing a random act of kindness or other compassionate social behavior alleviates our hostility.
Self-Transgression
Self-transgression is particularly destructive. It defines us as deserving of abuse. Self-pity, contempt, and other hyphenated forms of sabotage devalue our self-esteem. Forgiving the self is challenging for those of us with social anxiety because of our negative self-appraisal.
Anxiety and depression make us feel helpless, hopeless, and worthless. A worthless individual feels undeserving of forgiveness, a helpless one lacks fortitude, and one without hope has no reason to forgive. However, the act is necessary to rebuild our self-esteem.
Freeing up Space for Growth
Our brain’s neural network is inundated with negative information from childhood disturbance, negative core and intermediate beliefs, low self-esteem, negativity bias, and social anxiety – not to mention the constant adversity of world events and society in general.
One of the key strategies in our recovery journey is to flood our neural network with rapid, concentrated positive stimulation. This is crucial to counterbalance the overwhelming negative information that often dominates our thoughts. By evicting the hostile tenants of negative beliefs and self-esteem issues, we create space for new, healthier thought patterns. And forgiveness, my friends, is the key that unlocks this door to freedom.
Retaining the toxicity of our self-destructive emotions aggravates our anxiety and depression, compelling behavioral issues, avoidance, and other personality shortfalls that can severely jeopardize intimacy and other forms of relationships.
Recovery from social anxiety and related conditions requires letting go of our negative self-analysis, expectations, and beliefs. It opens our minds to new ideas and concepts. Holding onto shame, guilt, and other hostile self-indulgences keeps us imprisoned in the past. Forgiving opens us to new possibilities unencumbered by prior acts.
Forgiving takes work. In Mahatma Gandhi’s words, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Forgiving is Not Forgetting
We cannot hope to function optimally without absolving ourselves and others whose actions impaired our emotional well-being. They may seem indefensible, but forgiving is purely subjective. It is for our well-being.
Let’s be clear: forgiveness is not about forgetting or condoning. It’s not about excusing the transgressor or the transgression. It’s about reclaiming our power. Our noble self forgives; our pragmatic self remembers and remains mindful of the circumstance. This is the true essence of forgiveness.
Holding ourselves or others accountable for harmful behavior is a justifiable response. Clinging to the corresponding anger and resentment is self-destructive. We forgive to promote change within ourselves, and, as architects, we reap the rewards.
Stand Outside of the Bullseye
Our social anxiety compels us to personalize, inhibiting consideration of alternative viewpoints. Cognitive distortions close our eyes to options that conflict with our self-centered point of view. We neglect to consider the multiple perspectives of every situation.
When we find it challenging to forgive someone, it is helpful to consider the larger narrative. Stepping outside of the bullseye not only broadens our understanding of the perpetrator’s motivations but also encourages us to evaluate their pressures, temperament, influence, and environment, fostering a more comprehensive perspective.
While imperfect motivations may not justify or excuse the act, taking the time to understand the intent can empower us, alleviating residual hostility and making us feel less victimized.
Write a Forgiveness Letter
Many experts endorse the psychological benefits of writing a forgiveness letter, sharing our perspective of the event. The letter describes in detail the injury or offense. How did it make us feel? What are its residual effects? How did it impact our relationship with the perpetrator?
How would we have approached the situation? What would we have done differently to mitigate its emotional impact? What is our responsibility?
Forgiving mitigates our obsession with the situation and our resentment, shame, and guilt. However, it is inadvisable to send the letter for a variety of reasons. This is a subjective exercise that promotes personal growth and emotional well-being.
Whether we journal or write a letter to ourselves, the key is to approach it with self-compassion. This practice allows us to recognize and accept our imperfections, fostering a sense of understanding and acceptance. There is no logical reason to allow a past, intangible act to impede our growth.
We symbolically wash our hands of the toxicity.
Why hold onto something emotionally enervating from the past we cannot change or alter? The past is immutable. We have no control over it. It is the here-and-now and how it reflects on the future that is of value. The only logical response is to accept that it happened and realize it has no material impact on the present unless we allow it to fester. It is time to let it go and move on.
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.
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)
“I believe that a negative statement is poison. I’m convinced that the negative has power. It lives. And if you allow it to perch in your house, in your mind, in your life, it can take you over.” — Maya Angelou
Words have enormous power; they influence, encourage, and destroy. They are a source of compassion, creativity, courage, and intimacy. They evoke desire, emotion, fear, and joy. They lift our spirits, inspire our imaginations, and plunge us into the depths of despair.
Recovery Goal and Objectives
The primary goal of recovery from social anxiety is the mitigation of our irrational fears, anxieties, and apprehensions. We execute this goal through a three-pronged approach.
Replace or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones.
Regenerate our self-esteem through mindfulness of our assets.
We achieve these objectives by eliminating negative and self-defeatist thoughts, behaviors, and self-appraisal and replacing them with affirmative and productive ones. Roughly ten percent of communication is in our words, which influence, instigate, and complement our body language (60%) and inarticulate emotional expressions (moans, sighs, guffaws, etc.) (30%).
Negative Trajectory
Our neural network is replete with toxic information established by the negative trajectory of childhood disturbance, core beliefs, negativity bias, SAD onset, intermediate beliefs, cognitive biases, and self-appraisal that we manifest by the negative words, expressions, and body language that convey our thoughts and feelings.
Negative Overabundance
We are consumed and conditioned by negative words. Some of us use the same unfortunate words over and over again. The more we hear, read, or speak a word or phrase, the more power it has over us. By the age of sixteen, for example, we have heard the word no from our parents roughly 135,000 times. Our SAD-induced adverse self-appraisal compels automatic negative thoughts of incompetency, undesirability, and other forms of negative self-labeling.
The illusorytruth effectdefines how, when we hear the same false information repeatedly, we begin to believe it. Repeatedly telling ourselves we are incompetent, or unlikeable, and other forms of negative self-labeling have the same effect.
Our brain accelerates and consolidates learning through repetition.
“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.
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Neural Negativity
Our neural circuits have structured themselves around emotionally hostile information. While positive words boost our self-esteem and self-image, contradictory words support our irrational attitudes, rules, and assumptions. Negative absolutes like “no one,” “nobody,” “nothing,” and “nowhere” substantiate our isolation and avoidance of relationships. Qualifiers such as “barely,” “maybe,” and “perhaps” devalue our commitment, while self-doubt expressed by “can’t,” “shouldn’t,” and “won’t” support our sense of incompetence.
There are three categories of words to remain mindful of and eliminate from our thoughts and vocabulary as much as possible:
Pressure Words like “should” and “would” equivocate our commitment. “I should start my diet” means “maybe I will and maybe I won’t.” (We are either on a diet or will be on a diet.) Pressure words permit us to change our minds, procrastinate, and fail. The pressure comes from the guilt of potentially doing nothing (“I should’ve done that”).
Compare “I shouldn’t drink at the office party” to “I will not drink at the office party.”
NegativeAbsolute Words. The impact of “won’t” and “can’t” is obvious. Our objective in recovery is to replace or overwhelm toxic input with healthy neural information – positive over negative. Consider the two statements: “I won’t learn much from that lecture”and“I will learn something from that lecture.” Which one offers the probability we will attend? Negative absolute words include “never,” “impossible,” and “every time.” (“Every time I try…”)
ConditionalWords like “possibly,” “maybe,” and “might” weaken our resolve. “Maybe I will start my diet” is not a firm commitment. Conditional words originate in doubt and manifest in avoidance. Other examples include “ought,” “must,” and “have to.” Qualifying or conditional words or statements give us an excuse to procrastinate and obfuscate. “I will not drink at the office party” is a more robust commitment than “I will not drink at the party unless I get nervous.” Qualifying or conditional words or statements are also pre-justifications for our failures. (“I might have won if only …”)
The word “hate” is a highly destructive sentiment to describe something we dislike. “I hate doing the dishes.” Do we really, or do we “dislike” doing the dishes? Hate is an emotion; dislike is a feeling. Feelings dissipate, while emotions can metastasize. Hate correlates to rage, resentment, and fear – feelings we seek to avoid. For those of us experiencing social anxiety and related conditions, the word is detrimental to recovery.
It is essential to recognize the harmful nature of these words and eliminate them from our self-referencing thoughts and vocabulary. They are potentially harmful to us as well as others. They adversely impact our neural information’s integrity and positivity, which impedes recovery.
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.
Recovery from Social Anxiety and Related Conditions
Robert F Mullen 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)
The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.” – Winston Churchill
Positive personal affirmations (PPAs) are self-empowering phrases or statements that challenge our negative thoughts and self-appraisal. They help foster a positive outlook on life and validate our significance while stimulating the regions of the brain involved in emotional processing and healthy self-awareness.
The primary goal of recovery from social anxiety is to mitigate our irrational fears and anxieties. Self-empowerment is the rebuilding of our self-esteem and motivation. We execute these goals through a three-pronged approach.
Replace or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones.
Produce rapid, concentrated positive stimulation to offset the abundance of negative information in our brain’s metabolism.
Regenerate our self-esteem through mindfulness of our assets.
Deliberately repeating PPAs supports these objectives.
Scientifically, we produce rapid, concentrated positive stimulation to offset the abundance of negative information in our brains’ metabolism. We regenerate our self-esteem through concerted mindfulness of our character strengths, virtues, and attributes.
The continual self-appraisal of PPAs helps us focus on goals, challenge negative, self-defeating beliefs, and reprogram our subconscious minds. Over time, we replace or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones.
We regenerate our self-esteem through concerted mindfulness of our character strengths, virtues, and attributes.
Practicing PPAs appears deceptively simple. However, many experiencing social anxiety are skeptical, resistant, and unaware of the scientific ramifications.
Resistance
We are skeptical of new ideas and concepts because all prior efforts have failed. Our resistance to the tools and techniques is robust. Our negativity bias responds more favorably to adversity. We view PPAs as archaic and impotent. Since childhood, we have been inundated with irrational thoughts and behaviors. Our negative core and intermediate beliefs produce a cognitive bias that compels us to misinterpret information and make self-destructive decisions.
Additionally, humans are hard-wired to resist anything jeopardizing their physiological status quo. Our brain’s inertia senses and repels change, and our basal ganglia resist modifying our behavior patterns.
PPAs, by definition, are positive manifestations that naturally conflict with our negative emotional trajectory.
“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.
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Neuroscience
The neuroscience of proactive neuroplasticity confirms the effectiveness of PPAs. Proactive neuroplasticity is rapid, concentrated neurological stimulation that changes the polarity of our neural network from toxic to positive. We execute this through DRNI—the deliberate, repetitive neural input of information.
Complex Simplicity
On the surface, creating PPAs sounds easy, but it is deceptively complex for SAD persons. It is challenging to grasp how a few choice words compensate for years of negative self-beliefs. That’s why mindfulness of the science behind proactive neuroplasticity is so essential. If our PPAs meet the criteria for authentic information, they will register in our neural network.
Physiological Benefits
Behaviorist B. F. Skinner claimed that the information of the neural input was more critical than the amount; he was half right. That was before we realized how our brain reacts to information – how repeated input results in repeated firing. Neurons don’t act by themselves but through circuits that strengthen or weaken their connections based on electrical activity. Like muscles, the more repetitions, the more robust the energy of the information.
Proactive neuroplasticity information’s deliberate, repetitious information input of proactive neuroplasticity compels neurons to fire repeatedly, causing them to wire together. The more repetitions, the more robust the new connection. This process is called Hebbian Learning. DRNI is the most effective way to promote and retain learning and unlearning.
Hebbian Learning
Neuroscientist Donald Hebb pioneered the correlation between psychology and neuroscience concerning behavior. He theorized that neurons that fire together wire together. That means the simultaneous activation of nearby neurons increases the strength of their synaptic connections.
Synaptic connections consolidate when two or more neurons are activated contiguously. Neural circuits are like muscles; the more repetitions there are, the more durable the connection. Hebb’s rule of neuroplasticity states neurons that fire together wire together.
When multiple neurons wire together, they create more receptor and sensory neurons. Repeated firing strengthens and solidifies the pathways between neurons. The activity of the axon pathway heightens, causing the synapses to accelerate neurotransmissions of motivating hormones.
We not only prompt our neural network to restructure by deliberately inputting information, but through repetition, we cause circuits to strengthen and realign, speeding up the process of learning and unlearning.
What happens when multiple neurons wire together? Every input of registered information causes a receptor neuron to fire. Each time a neuron fires, it reshapes and strengthens the axon connection and the neural bond. The more repetitions, the more neurons are impacted, creating multiple connections between receptor, sensory, and relay neurons, attracting other neurons.
PPAs accelerate learning by causing neural circuits to wire together, strengthening and consolidating the neural connections that forward information.
An increase in learning efficacy arises from the sensory neuron’s repeated and persistent stimulation of the postsynaptic cell. Postsynaptic neurons multiply, amplifying the positive or negative energy of the information. Energy is the size, amount, or degree that passes from one atom to another during their chain reaction.
Three PPAs repeated five times, three times daily, generate forty-five cellular chain reactions, dramatically accelerating and consolidating the restructuring of our neural network. The process takes approximately five minutes out of our day.
Benefits of PPAs
The benefits of PPAs over an extended period are evident. Multiple firings substantially accelerate and consolidate learning. In addition, they activate long-term potentiation, increasing the nerve impulses’ strength along the connecting pathways, generating more energy. Deliberate, repetitive neural information causes higher levels of BDNF(brain-derived neurotrophic factors) proteins associated with improved cognitive functioning, mental health, and memory.
We know how challenging it is to change, remove ourselves from hostile environments, and break habits that interfere with our optimum functioning. DRNI empowers us to assume accountability for our emotional well-being and quality of life by proactively controlling our information input.
Neural Reciprocity
Neural restructuring is an ongoing process. The successful pursuit of any ambition varies by individual and is subject to multiple factors. However, once we begin the process of DRNI, progress is exponential.
The reciprocating energy from DRNI is vastly more abundant because the repeated firing by the neuron receptor involves millions of neurons that amplify energy on a massive scale. Positive energy in, positive energy reciprocated in abundance.
Conversely, negative energy in, negative energy multiplied millions of times, negative energy reciprocated in abundance.
ChemicalHormones
PPAs decrease the influx of our fear- and anxiety-provoking hormones while simultaneously producing beneficial ones for memory, learning, and concentration.
Scientists have identified over fifty chemical hormones in the human body. They are the messengers controlling our physiological functions—metabolism, homeostasis, and reproduction. Their distribution is precise. Even slight changes in levels can cause significant disruption to our health.
Under stress, our amygdala signals the brain stem’s hypothalamus and sympathetic nervous control systems. In turn, the hypothalamus alerts stress-provoking hormones like cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine.
Chronic stress induced by our SAD symptomatology causes a higher, more constant influx of these hormones into our system. Not only does this increase the risk of health problems like heart disease and stroke, but they contributes significantly to our anxiety and depression, causing problems with memory, cognition, and sleep patterns.
PPAs help reduce the influx of these neural transmissions.
Our brain doesn’t think. It is an organic reciprocator that provides the means for us to think. It maintains our heartbeat, nervous system, blood flow, etc. It also tells us when to breathe, stimulates thirst, and controls our weight and digestion.
Because our brain doesn’t distinguish healthy from toxic information, the natural neurotransmission of hormones happens whether we feed it unhealthy or constructive information.
Positive information causes our brain to release hormones that make us feel viable and productive. We receive neurotransmissions of GABA for relaxation, dopamine for pleasure and motivation, endorphins for euphoria, and serotonin for well-being. Acetylcholine supports our positivity, glutamate enhances our memory, and noradrenalin improves concentration.
Conversely, when we input negative information, our brain naturally releases neurotransmitters supporting negativity and provoking stress. Thus, the value of positive personal affirmations.
The Powerof Suggestion
Additionally, the power of suggestion instigates positive changes in our thoughts and behaviors. Psychology attributes it to our ‘response expectancies,’ which refer to our anticipation of a positive response. Similar to affirmative visualizations, PPAs are optimistic outcome scenarios that we mentally recreate by imagining or visualizing them.
All information passes through our thalamus – the small structure located just above the stem between the cerebral cortex and the midbrain. It has extensive nerve connections to both. By visualizing activity or affirmations, we increase activity in the thalamus, and our brain responds as though the activity is happening. Our thalamus makes no distinction between inner and outer realities. Visualizing raising our left hand is, to our brain, the same thing as physically raising our left hand.
Any idea or suggestion, if contemplated solidly, will take on a semblance of reality. If we visualize a solution to a problem, the problem begins to resolve itself because visualizing activates the cognitive circuits involved with our working memory. PPAs provide the same results.
Criteria
The most authentic and effective PPAs are constructed using the following seven criteria.
Rational: Our primary objective is to subvert the irrationality of our negative self-beliefs.
Reasonable: Of sound judgment; sensible. “My first novel will be a best-seller” is an unreasonable expectation if we choose to remain illiterate.
Possible: Our efforts are counter-productive and futile if our goals are impossible. “I will win a song-writing Grammy” is not a reasonable option for the tone-deaf.
Unconditional: Placing limitations on our commitment by using words like “possibly,”“maybe,” and “might” weaken our resolve. “Maybe I will start my diet” is not a firm commitment. Conditional words originate in doubt and manifest in avoidance. Other examples include “ought,”“must,” and “have to.” Qualifying or conditional words or statements provide an excuse to procrastinate, obfuscate, and justify our failures. (“Imight have won if only …”)
Goal-Focused: Our path will be focused and uniform if we know our destination.
First-Person,Present Time: The past is immutable, and the future is indeterminate.
Succinct: Brief, clearly expressed, and easily memorized.
The most effective PPAs are calculated and specific to our intention. Are we challenging the negative thoughts and behaviors of our social anxiety? Are we reaffirming the character strengths and virtues that support recovery and transformation? Are we focused on a specific challenge? What is our end goal – the personal milestone we want to achieve?
PPAs are theoretically simple but challenging due to the commitment and endurance required for the long-term, repetitive process. We do not advance to Wimbledon without decades of practice with rackets and balls and philharmonics cater to pianists who have spent years at the keyboard. As described earlier, neural restructuring requires a calculated regimen of deliberate, repetitive neural information that is tedious and fails to deliver immediate, tangible results.
Fortunately, the positive impact of PPAs is exponential due to the restructuring process and the ongoing neural benefits.
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.
Recovery from social anxiety and related conditions
Robert F Mullen 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)
Coping mechanisms help us cope with stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions. They range from practiced skills in recovery (e.g., grounding, reframing, and rational response) to everyday stress reducers like gardening, journaling, and listening to music.
Social anxiety 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.
Replace or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones.
Restructure: produce rapid, concentrated positive stimulation to offset the abundance of negative information in our brain’s metabolism.
Regenerate our self-esteem through mindfulness of our assets.
Coping Strategies and Coping Mechanisms
Coping strategies are the methods or approaches that best execute our three objectives. Coping mechanisms are tools and techniques that implement our coping strategies. The distinctions are important.
For example, to support a response-based strategy, we would utilize cognitive coping mechanisms that focus on our automatic negative thoughts and reduce the influx of our fear and anxiety-provoked chemical hormones.
A comprehensive recovery program employs multiple strategies sustained by cooperative coping mechanisms. These applications are not rigidly distinct solutions but complementary. One-size-fits-all approaches cannot address the underrated complexity of social anxiety.
Coping mechanisms alleviate our situational fears and anxieties, allowing us to step outside the bullseye and objectively analyze our irrational thoughts and behaviors to respond rationally and productively.
In general terms, coping mechanisms help us cope with stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions. They range from practiced skills in recovery (e.g., grounding, reframing, and rational response) to everyday stress reducers like gardening, journaling, and listening to music. Healthy coping mechanisms are situationally adaptive.
Decompensation
Without coping mechanisms, healthy or otherwise, we can experiencedecompensation – the inability or unwillingness to generate effective psychological stress response, resulting in personality disturbance or disintegration.
Defense Mechanisms
Defense mechanisms are temporary safeguards against situations that challenge our conscious minds. They are ostensibly automatic psychological responses designed to protect us from our fears and anxieties.
Cognitive distortions are exaggerated or irrational thought patterns that perpetuate our anxiety and depression. They are defense mechanisms that reinforce or justify our toxic behaviors and validate our irrational attitudes, rules, and assumptions. They twist reality, painting an inaccurate picture of the self in the world with others. They interpret experiences through a glass darkly.
Any process that protects us from our fears, anxieties, and threats to our emotional well-being is a defense mechanism. Some, like avoidance, humor, and isolation, require no explanation. Others, such as compensation and dissociation, have positive applications in recovery.
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 anxieties and apprehensions that negatively impact our activities and relationships.
Two Types of Situations
Two types of situations concern us: the anticipated situation and the unexpected one.
Anticipated situationsare those that we know, in advance, trigger our fears and anxieties. They can be one-off situations like a job interview or social event. They can be recurring situations like the classroom or our daily work environment.
Knowing our feared situation in advance gives us ample opportunity to devise a structured plan to counter our fears and anxieties. We develop it utilizing situationally focused coping mechanisms in a workshop environment. We practice our plan in non-threatening simulations. This method is called graded exposure or systematic desensitization.
Exposing ourselves to a feared situation without a strategy and functional coping mechanisms is jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. In the words of a master of moderation, Benjamin Franklin, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”
Unexpected situationsare those that catch us by surprise – stress-provoking chance encounters such as faulty plumbing, an unexpected guest, or losing a wallet.
Knowing how to respond effectively to unexpected situations is like playing bridge. We know what’s in our hand (our coping mechanisms) but don’t know which card to play until we see the others on the table. Accordingly, we assemble our emergency preparedness kit – a variety of practiced coping mechanisms proven subjectively effective.
“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.
* * *
Associated Fears and Corresponding ANTs
Automatic negative thoughts are immediate, involuntary expressions of our fears and anxieties. These thoughts can occur in advance of, during, or after a feared situation. ANTs are terse emotional responses, unbased upon reason or deliberation. They are the unpleasant expressions of our negative self-beliefs that define who we are, who we think we are, and who we think others think we are.
Alleviating Our Symptoms
Coping mechanisms are valuable tools in the recovery process. Their role is to offset the negative stimuli within the situation, allowing us to de-stress and reframe our responses.
We develop and practice detailed coping mechanisms in a workshop environment. Introspection, collective activities, and graded exposure are helpful to the client in determining the mechanisms that are most individually effective and adaptable.
Know the Enemy
Did you ever try to talk to someone about your social anxiety? It’s hard. Like it’s some alien disease or something. Nobody gets it. That is why we are reluctant to disclose it. Many of us deliberately choose to remain ignorant of SAD’s destructive capabilities. Others pretend it doesn’t exist or ignore it, hoping it will disappear or no one will notice. Our resistance is a significant impediment to our recovery.
It is disconcerting how many affected clients are unfamiliar with SAD’s causes, symptoms, and impact. The information is readily available. When we have the sniffles, we dash to the internet and familiarize ourselves with every snake oil remedy known to civilization. Nevertheless, despite experiencing social anxiety for decades, it remains as mysterious to some as the mating habits of the Loch Ness Monster.
It is essential to know the symptoms of our condition and how they impact us. To paraphrase Sun Tzu, our chances of recovery are negligible if we neither know the enemy nor ourself. It is pointless to assemble a puzzle if the pieces are missing.
There are multiple ways to mitigate the anxiety of negative triggers. Three of the more effective are grounding, positive reframing, and rational response.
Grounding
Grounding is turning attention from our anxiety-provoking thoughts, memories, and worries by refocusing on our presence in the present moment. Whenever we feel anxious or stressed, we can use grounding techniques to distract ourselves from the emotional stress of the situation. This research-based strategy helps us mitigate our fears and automatic negative thoughts. When we find ourselves in moments of stress or panic, grounding techniques can help our body relax and return to our physical presence.
One of the most common grounding techniques is the 5-4-3-2-1 technique, which grounds us to the moment by accentuating one or more of our five senses. We deliberately focus on objects, sounds, smells, tastes, and our tactile contact. Doing so alleviates our emotional distress by distracting or diverting our anxiety.
Reframing
Our brain’s metabolism is overwhelmed with negativity. In addition to the lifetime negative trajectory associated with social anxiety, humans are hard-wired with a negativity bias, meaning we respond to negative things over positive ones.
Social anxiety and low self-esteem sustain themselves through our negative self-appraisal.
Positive reframing is turning a negative perspective into a positive one. By reframing, we identify our triggers and self-esteem issues and change how we respond to them. There are always multiple perspectives to any situation. While we cannot control everything that happens, we can control how we react and respond.
One example of reframing is viewing a problem or issue as a challenge or opportunity. We reframe an argument by looking at it from the other’s perspective. In a snowstorm, we can either be housebound and despondent or take the sleds and ice skates out of the closet. Experts agree that positive reframing is critical for emotional well-being.
Unhappiness, disillusionment, anxiety, pejorative self-appraisal, and all the other adversities in our lives negatively impact our self-esteem. Positivity regenerates it. It is as simple as that.
Rational Response
Our automatic response to everything is an emotional one. To compensate negative emotions, we address them rationally. A rational response is a logical, self-affirming counter to our fears, apprehensions, and ANTs.
We first identify the fear-provoking. Where are we when we feel anxious or apprehensive, and what activities are involved? What are we thinking? What might we be doing? Who and what do we avoid because of these insecure feelings?
We then unpack the associated fears and anxieties. We ask ourselves the following: 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 might happen to me?
The next step is unmasking our corresponding automaticnegative thoughts, e.g., “I am incompetent.” “No one will talk to me.” “I will do something stupid.” “I am a loser.”
Examining and analyzing this information allows us to generate rational responses.
As we progress in recovery, grounding, reframing, and rational response become habitual and automatic.
Remember, fears are irrational. Predicting what is going to happen is a fool’s errand. We are not fortune-tellers. Believing we know the thoughts and perspectives of others is absurd unless we’re mind readers. They are cognitive distortions.
Seek Progress, Not Perfection
SAD persons worry about their performance before and during a situation and obsess about the outcome long after. We fear criticism and negative appraisal. We set unreasonable expectations to compensate for our perceptions of incompetence and inadequacy, and then we beat ourselves up when our expectations are unmet. Perfectionism is not the desire to do well but the need to be faultless. Anything less is unsatisfactory. Perfectionism and social anxiety have a parallel relationship.
Recovery, however, is a life’s work in progress. There is no absolute cure for social anxiety, but with work and over time, we experience a dramatic and exponential alleviation of our symptoms. The key is progress over perfection.
Set Reasonable Expectations
An expectation, by definition, is afirm belief that something will take place in the future. When we set an expectation, we invest a fervid interest in its outcome. What happens in the likelihood that our expectations are unmet? Because we have a vested interest, we are psychologically attached to the outcome. Fixed In our minds, we see it as a reality. When it does not go our way, the general response is one of disappointment.
Experts describe the reaction to disappointment as a form of sadness – an expression of desperation or grief due to loss. While it is true that we cannot lose what we have not acquired, fixing the expectation in our mind makes it real and visceral. Loss leads to depression, self-loathing, and other traits associated with perfectionism and social anxiety.
Engender Joy and Laughter
The endorphins and chemical hormones transmitted by positive emotions dramatically enhance our psychological well-being. Joy and laughter counteract anxiety and defuse anger, resentment, and shame. Theystrengthen our immune system,boost energy levels, and enhance memory and concentration. When we smile and laugh, the influx of our fear and anxiety-provoking hormones decreases. Finding humor in stressful situations reframes our perspective and takes the edge off our anxiety. It provides a sense of shared comradery and community, which helps counter our fear and avoidance of intimacy and social events, improving our physiological and psychological health.
Remember, You Are Not Alone
Roughly 124 million U.S. adults and adolescents experience anxiety disorders. 60% of those have depression, and many resort to substance abuse. Persons experiencing SAD are too preoccupied with their center of attention to seek us out for judgment or criticism. Roughly two of five people in any situation are experiencing anxiety. So, when we worry and stress during a social event, we are in good company. Social anxiety is common, universal, and indiscriminate. We are never alone.
GENERAL COPING STRATEGIES
Controlled Breathing
Controlled breathing reduces stress, increases our mental awareness, and boosts our immune system. Scientific studies show that this simple grounding technique helps relieve symptoms associated with anxiety, depression, and other stress-related conditions. The grounding distracts from negative stimuli by focusing on the present through our body and senses. It helps us manage our NTs and reactions.
Our vagus nerve manages our heart rate, digestion, and nervous system. It also manages our fight-or-flight response. Science tells us that the simplest way to manipulate our vagus nerve is to practice controlled breathing, which decreases the flow of cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine while releasing mood and memory-enhancing chemical hormones like GABA, glutamate, and serotonin.
Positive Personal Affirmations
Positive personal affirmations are self-motivating and empowering statements that help us focus on goals, challenge negative, self-defeating beliefs, and reprogram our subconscious minds. We drastically underestimate the significance and effectiveness of PPAs because we don’t appreciate the neuroscience behind them.
Providing all the neural benefits of positive reinforcement, our PPAs self-describe who and what we aspire to be in our emotional development. PPAs are rational, reasonable, possible, positive, unconditional, problem-focused, brief, and in first-person present or future time. Think of PPA’s as aspirations or self-fulfilling prophecies that, through deliberate repetition, help replace our abundance of negative neural information with healthy, productive input.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR)
PMR is another grounding technique. We progressively relax our muscle groups, beginning with the lower extremities and extending to the forehead. Like controlled breathing, there are long and short applications. Abbreviated PMR takes less than a minute and can be executed surreptitiously during a situation. This coping mechanism relieves the discomforting muscle tension aggravated by stress. It also reduces the influx of our fear and anxiety-provoking hormones while momentarily distracting us from our negative thoughts and reactions.
Slow Talk
Our anxiety often compels us to mumble or rush our words under pressure. Slow talk is deliberately speaking slowly and calmly. It slows our physiological responses, alleviates rapid heartbeat, and lowers our blood pressure. It is also helpful to incorporate the 5-second rule, i.e., pause any response for five thoughtful seconds. Not only does this coping mechanism moderate the flow of cortisol, adrenaline, and other stress-provoking hormones, but it also presents the appearance of someone considerate and confident.
Affirmative Visualization
An affirmative visualization isa positive outcome scenario we mentally create by imagining or visualizing it. All information passes through our brain’s thalamus, which makes no distinction between inner and outer realities. Whether we visualize doing something or actually do it, we stimulate the same regions of our neural network. Visualizing raising our left hand is, to our brain, the same thing as physically raising our left hand.
Affirmative visualization activates our dopaminergic-reward system, decreasing the neurotransmissions of anxiety and fear-provoking hormones and accelerating and consolidating the beneficial ones. When we visualize, our brain generates alpha waves, which can reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Research shows that visualizing a situation in advance improves our mental and physical aptitude. We consciously source information that will enhance our performance outcomes, dramatically improving the likelihood of success in the actual situation. IT also produces the same neural benefits as any other form of proactive neuroplasticity, i.e., the deliberate, repetitive neural input of positive information.
Character Focus
Focusing on our character strengths, virtues, attributes, and achievements channels our emotional angst to mental deliberation, mitigating our fears, anxieties and corresponding ANTs. It supports the regeneration of our self-esteem as we rebuild our latent self-qualities. By manifesting our character strengths and achievements, we reframe our perspective, empowering our asset awareness and generating renewed self-confidence.
Distractions/Diversions
Distractions are mental grounding techniques that engage our focus when confronted by anxiety. Also called directed attention, we focus our attention on a sensory target (i.e. sight, tactile, sound, smell, and taste) to supersede moments of stress and discomfort in our feared situation. Snapping a rubber band on our wrist to momentarily ground our attention is a prime example of a tactile distraction.
Diversions are activities that fulfill the same function (e.g., initiating small talk or humming a song to yourself.) A diversion rechannels the stress of a situational fear or anxiety into a diversionary tactic. These physical diversions and mental distractions temporarily alleviate our fears and anxieties and help manage our negative thoughts and reactions.
Persona
Our body language represents roughly sixty percent of communication. Ten percent is words, and thirty percent is sounds (sighing, laughing, moaning). Persona is the social face we present to our exposure situation, designed to make a positive impression while concealing the nature of our social anxiety. Developing personas is vital to preparing for and adapting to multiple exposure situations.
Our persona establishes our body language. It determines how we carry ourselves, the timbre of our voice, our attitude, and the clothes and shoes we wear (boots, sneakers, high heels). It reflects our character strengths best suited for the situation. (The actor, Paul Newman, allegedly crafted his characters by initially determining their walk and posture.)
We all have multiple personas. We present ourselves differently depending upon the context of the situation, e.g., a sports event versus an interview for a job, a funeral versus a wedding, or a family dinner versus a hoedown. Our personas are ostensibly unconscious – they reflect the environment. Deliberately crafting our persona is an essential learned skill that can dramatically alleviate the stress of a situation.
Persona is an extension of the Social Psychology of Dress, which is concerned with how our dress appearance affects our behavior and that of others toward us. Our outward appearance expresses our internal vision of who we want to present. Persona is more than appearance. It is attitude and performance.
Personas are not other selves distinct from who we are but different aspects of our personality. To analogize, all the clothes in our wardrobe belong to us, but we choose an outfit for a specific occasion to appeal to our sense of self. The same pattern of thought-driven choice establishes our persona.
Projected Positive Outcome
Our projected positive outcome is the reasonable expectations we set for our feared situation. We already know the projected negative outcome if we capitulate to our ANTs. Therefore, we rationally respond by setting reasonable expectations. A projected positive outcome is rational, practical, and doable to ensure success. For example, being immediately hired with a fantastic salary at a networking event is not a reasonable expectation. Making an initial and fruitful contact is an effective projected positive outcome.
Purpose
Purpose is the primary motivation behind our exposure to a situation. What do we seek or hope to accomplish? Why are we exposing ourselves? If our feared situation is the barbershop or beauty salon (not uncommon sources of anxiety), it is reasonable to consider that our purpose might be to get our hair cut or styled comfortably. Our purpose is a subjective determination.
Attending a social event offers multiple purposes, e.g., networking, carousing, making friends, and seeking an intimate relationship. However, maintaining numerous purposes reduces the probability of success, leading to disappointment and self-recrimination. Therefore, we set a reasonable expectation a focus on the principal purpose. To paraphrase a Russian proverb: if you chase two pigs, you have less chance of catching either one.
Small Talk
Small talk is an Informal greeting, comment, or conversation – discourse absent any functional topic of discussion or transaction. In essence, it is polite, non-confrontational verbal interaction meant to acknowledge presence and or open channels of further communication. This activity is not as easy as it appears for those experiencing social anxiety. In interactive workshop activities, graded exposure defines the parameters and establishes the comfort zone critical to successful small talk.
SUDS Rating and Projected SUDS Rating
The Subjective Units of Distress Scale ranges from 0 to 100, measuring the severity of our situational stress. Additionally, it allows us to set reasonable expectations of success. We evaluate what level of distress we anticipate in our feared situation (SUDS Rating) and what we project it will be upon its successful completion (Projected SUDS Rating). Again, we set reasonable expectations. A moderate projected SUDS rating will offer the probability of a successful venture. For example, if our SUDS rating of distress for making a presentation is 80, a reasonable projected SUDS rating might be 70 or 75. Projecting a 10 SUDS rating would imply that we expect a standing ovation and a national speaking tour. It’s possible, but it is an unreasonable expectation.
Coping Mechanisms for Everyday Stress
Anything that alleviates stress qualifies as a coping mechanism. From listening to music to tending a garden, coping mechanisms are as numerous and varied as individual experience and imagination.
To iterate, some will work for us, and others we will discard. Some will work sometimes and not at other times. Many are general activities like exercise, meditation, and creativity. Examples of coping mechanisms for everyday stress include:
Arts and Crafts:
DIY
Music
Creative Pursuits
Connecting with nature
Hobbies
Personal Time
Physical Activity
Body Relaxation
Self-Empowering Activities
Coping mechanisms are tools and techniques with a wide range of uses. They assist in moderating our situational fears, anxieties, and ANTs. They temporarily allow us to step outside the bullseye so that we can objectively analyze our thoughts and behaviors and react and respond rationally and productively. They also help us cope with everyday stress and other negative emotions.
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.
Now Accepting
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Social Anxiety Disorder, Anxiety and Depression, and Comorbidities
