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Coping Mechanisms for Social Anxiety

Anxiety, Automatic Negative Thoughts, Behavior, Cognitive Distortions, Coping Mechanisms, Mental Health, Neuroplasticity, Psychology, , , , ,

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 most emotional malfunctions, including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, generalized anxiety, and self-esteem and motivation issues. 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 for Social Anxiety

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

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.

Our primary recovery goal is the dramatic moderation of these symptoms. To achieve this, we identify three objectives: To (1) replace or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones, (2) produce rapid neurological stimulation to restructure our neural network, and (3) regenerate our self-esteem.

Coping Strategies versus Coping Mechanisms

Coping strategies are the methods or approaches that best execute our three objectives. In recovery workshops, we emphasize response-focused and solution-focused strategies, but multiple complementary strategies are utilized, including problem and emotion-focused coping strategies that help us manage our response to feared situations.

Coping mechanisms are tools and techniques that implement our strategies. They allow us to temporarily step outside the bullseye to objectively analyze our automatic negative thoughts and reactions to respond rationally and productively.

In general terms, coping mechanisms help us cope with everyday stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions. They range from practiced skills in recovery (e.g., slow talk, persona, and character focus) to everyday stress reduction like gardening, journaling, and listening to music. Healthy coping mechanisms are adaptive – positive contributions to our emotional well-being.

Decompensation

Without coping mechanisms, healthy or otherwise, we can experience decompensation – the inability 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 automatic psychological responses designed to protect us from our fears/anxieties. Notwithstanding their label, many defense mechanisms support recovery when utilized appropriately.

Cognitive distortions are common defense mechanisms. CDs are exaggerated or irrational thought patterns that perpetuate our anxiety and depression. They interpret experiences in ways that don’t represent reality. We twist it to reinforce or justify our toxic behaviors and validate our destructive thoughts and conduct.

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 and negative values.

Situations

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

Two Types of Situations

Two types of situations concern us. Anticipated situations are those that we know, in advance, will provoke our fears/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.

Unexpected situations catch us by surprise—stress-provoking incidents impacting our daily lives such as faulty plumbing, an unexpected guest, or losing a wallet.

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Associated Fears and Corresponding ANTs

Automatic Negative Thoughts are immediate, involuntary expressions of our fears/anxieties. They can occur prior to, during, or after a feared situation. ANTs are terse emotional responses, unbased upon reason and 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.

We first determine the fear-provoking situation to Identify our fears/anxieties and corresponding ANTs. 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 our associated fears/anxieties. We ask ourselves the following: What is problematic in 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 automatic negative 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 to our fears/anxieties and corresponding ANTs, which are not factual but subjective abstractions.

Moderating Our Fears/Anxieties and ANTs

In anticipated situations, we have the luxury of preplanning strategies to address our fears/anxieties and ANTs. For unexpected situations, assembling an emergency preparedness kit of practiced coping mechanisms is prudent and helpful.

Coping mechanisms are valuable tools in the recovery process. Their role is to moderate the negative stimuli within the situation, allowing us to de-stress and reframe our responses.  Our apprehensions adversely impact our ability to concentrate. Additionally, we are hampered by our negative self-appraisal and the influx of stress-provoking hormones.

We develop and practice more 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 socially anxious 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 us as the eating 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 ourselves. It is pointless to attempt to assemble a puzzle if the pieces are missing.

Rational Response

A rational response is a logical, self-affirming counter to our fears/anxieties and ANTs. For example, if we fear criticism and negative judgment, rational responses might be, “I belong here as much as anyone,” “I am valuable and significant,” and “I am equal to anyone here.”

Positive personal affirmations focus on general aspects of our condition. We devise rational responses to rebut the automatic negative thoughts that correspond to our situational fears/anxieties. Rational responses challenge stressful incidents that impact us at a particular time in a particular place. Essentially, rational responses are intellectual evaluations of our emotional angst.

Reframe Your Perspective

Reframing is identifying and resolving negative emotions and situations by changing our perspective on how we experience and respond to them. Positive reframing is turning a negative perspective into a positive one. Reframing addresses our negativity in general, while rational response focuses on our feared situation. Positively reframing adverse experiences, events, thoughts, and behaviors as an opportunity to challenge them supports both processes. As we progress in recovery, both positive reframing and rational response ostensibly become habitual and automatic. Experts agree that positive reframing is critical for emotional well-being.

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 moderation of our symptoms. The key is progress over perfection.

Set Reasonable Expectations

An expectation, by definition, is a fervid belief that something will take place in the future. When we set expectations, we invest a strong interest in their 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 set 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 with positive emotions dramatically enhance our psychological well-being. Joy and laughter counteract stress and defuse anger, resentment, and shame. They strengthen 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, takes the edge off our anxiety, and helps us take things less seriously. It provides a sense of shared community, which helps counter our fear and avoidance of intimacy and social events, improving our psychological health.  

Remember, We 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. Others experiencing SAD are too preoccupied with their center of attention to seek us out for judgment or criticism. At least two of five people in any situation are just as apprehensive as we are, if not more so. So, when we worry and hyperventilate at a social event, we are in good company. Social anxiety is common, universal, and indiscriminate. We are never alone.

Avoid Non-Productive Situations

A primary SAD symptom is our intense fear or anxiety during social situations, causing us to avoid interacting with others. Human interconnectivity, however, is essential for emotional health. Turning down opportunities to socialize exacerbates our isolation, and we continue to miss possibilities for intimacy and friendship. In recovery, we gradually expose ourselves to situations that can engender positive social interaction.

This, however, does not mean that we need to challenge every situation. There is a distinction between avoiding out of fear and avoiding out of reason. One workshop exercise is to initiate a salutation or small talk with a stranger. Discretion about who and where we engage is important. Another example is the socially anxious individual with an arts degree attending a conference for chemical engineers. Avoidance is not only reasonable but also evident.

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 own center of attention to seek us out for judgment or criticism. At least two of five people in any situation are just as apprehensive as we are, if not more so.  So, when we worry and start to hyperventilate at a social event, we are in good company. Social anxiety is common, universal, and indiscriminate. We are never alone.

Emergency Preparedness Kit

Knowing how to respond effectively to unexpected situations is challenging. When dealing with a scheduled event or one that meets regularly, we have the wherewithal to plan accordingly. Strategizing for unanticipated situations is somewhat of a crap shoot. Accordingly, we assemble an emergency preparedness kit of practiced coping mechanisms that can be effective in any feared situation.

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 moderate symptoms associated with anxiety, depression, and other stress-related conditions. Grounding distracts from negative stimuli by focusing on the present through our body and senses. It helps us manage our negative thoughts and reactions.

Our vagus nerve controls our heart rate 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 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 need to understand their neuroscience. 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 positive personal affirmations 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 any 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 speaking 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 thoughtful and confident.

Coping Mechanisms for Anticipated Situations

Knowing our feared situation in advance gives us ample opportunity to devise a structured plan to counter our fears/anxieties. In providing rational responses to our negative emotional stimuli, we identify the feared situation, associated fears/anxieties, and corresponding ANTs. From there, we devise our rational responses by reframing the negative self-appraisal of our ANTs.

We develop a structured plan utilizing situationally focused coping mechanisms in a workshop environment. We practice the strategy in non-threatening simulations. This method is called graded exposure – systematic desensitization consisting of thought and behavioral modification techniques that reduce our sensitivity to feared situations.

When we feel adequately prepared, we expose ourselves to the feared situation. 

In addition to the coping mechanisms already outlined, situationally specific coping mechanisms include the following:

Affirmative Visualization

An affirmative visualization is a 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 and produces the same neural benefits.

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 performance. We consciously source information that will enhance our performance outcomes, dramatically improving the likelihood of success in the actual situation.

Character Focus

Focusing on our character strengths, virtues, attributes, and achievements channels our emotional angst to mental deliberation, disparaging 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 assets and generating renewed self-confidence and viability.

Distractions/Diversions

A distraction is another grounding technique that momentarily channels our attention away from our fears/anxieties. Also called directed attention, we focus on specific sensations, items, or activities to supersede moments of stress and discomfort in our feared situation. These physical and mental distractions temporarily remove us from our fears/anxieties and help us manage our negative thoughts and reactions. Snapping a rubber band on our wrist to momentarily ground our attention is a prime example of a distraction.

Persona

Our persona is the social face we present to our exposure situation(s), designed to make a focused impression while concealing the visibility of our social anxiety. We have multiple personas. We present differently depending upon the context of the situation, e.g., a sports event versus an interview for a job or a family dinner versus a fraternity bash.

A static or negative persona (e.g., SAD-induced) inhibits our psychological development. A strong sense of self-esteem relates to the outside world through flexible personas adaptable to different situations. Establishing a persona is similar to an actor preparing for a role. While we may employ new mannerisms, a different stride, or attitude, a persona is not another self. It is an affectation – a novel rendering of our personality. It is also a formidable distraction.

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 sensible projected positive outcome is rational, practical, and doable to ensure success. For example, expecting to be immediately hired with a fantastic salary at a networking event is not a reasonable expectation. Making an initial and fruitful contact is a more reasonable 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 the situation is the barbershop or beauty salon (not uncommon sources of anxiety), it is reasonable to consider that our purpose is get our hair cut or styled. It may be something else, however. Purpose is a subjective determination.

Attending a social event offers multiple purposes. We may want to network, make friends, and seek an intimate relationship. Maintaining numerous purposes reduces the probability of success, leading to disappointment and self-recrimination. Therefore, we redefine and focus on one purpose and set reasonable expectations.  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 discourse absent any functional topic of conversation 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 for those experiencing social anxiety as it appears. 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 fears/anxieties. 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.

These coping mechanisms are specialized and focused on responding to expected and unanticipated feared situations. 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.”

Coping Mechanisms for Everyday Stress

Anything that takes us out of the stress of the moment qualifies as an adaptive 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. Most are general activities like exercise, meditation, and creativity. The key is to become mindful when a pursuit helps us unwind from our anxieties and apprehensions and utilize them when the stressful occasion arises. Examples of coping mechanisms for everyday stress include:

  • Arts and Crafts: Pottery, knitting, photography, scrapbooks, candle and jewelry making.
  • DIY: Building, redecorating, reorganizing, constructing, painting.
  • Music: Soundscapes, chants, and ambient music can be restful and motivating; sound therapy therapeutic; and emotionally supportive music and songs stimulate the positive flow of chemical hormones.
  • Creative Pursuits: produce videos, write, read, play an instrument, visit a museum.
  • Connecting with nature reduces anger, fear, and stress and increases pleasant feelings while contributing to our physical well-being, lowering blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones. Spending time in nature is linked to both cognitive benefits and mood and emotional well-being improvements. 
  • Personal Time: Take a relaxing bath, cuddle with the family pet, spend time with friends, colleagues, and family, fun shopping.
  • Physical Activity: Dancing, jogging, swimming, yoga, the gym.
  • Body Relaxation: Tapping, acupuncture, meditation, massage, autogenic relaxation.
  • Self-Empowering: Gratitude list, journaling, self-compassion, volunteering, random acts of kindness.

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 to objectively analyze our perceptions and reactions and respond rationally and productively. They also help us cope with everyday stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions.

Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series

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WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT?  ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction 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, workshops, and practicums.

Embrace Your Condition

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

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 are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, 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)

Embrace Your Condition

In recovery, we do not face our fears, we embrace them. Rather than confront them, which implies hostility, or challenge them, which signals competition, we willingly and enthusiastically recognize and accept all facets of our humanness. Whether in pre-recovery where our fears and anxieties run rampant or in-recovery where we have established governance, our experiences are part of our being – who we were, who we are, and who we have the potential to be.

Embracing our social anxiety encourages transformation. The act is not acquiescence, resignation, or condoning. Acquiescence is accepting our condition and doing nothing to change it. Condoning is accepting it and allowing it to fester. Resignation is defeatism. Embracing our condition is accepting who we are – human malfunctioning beings comprised of character strengths virtues, and attributes as well as shortcomings and vulnerabilities. We embrace our totality.

Social anxiety disorder is ostensibly the most underrated, misunderstood, and misdiagnosed disorder. It sustains itself by compelling irrational thoughts and behaviors. Emotionally, we feel depressed and lonely. Physically, we are subject to trembling, hyperventilation, nausea, fainting, and muscle spasms. Mentally, our thoughts are distorted and illogical. Spiritually, we define ourselves as incompetent, inadequate, and unworthy. Since SAD infects during adolescence, many of us have endured the distress of these negative self-perceptions for decades. Estimates reflect that roughly 60% of us also have depression and are prone to substance abuse.  Recovering from social anxiety is a commitment that SAD will do anything to prevent us from making.

Goal and Objectives

The primary goal of recovery from social anxiety is the moderation of our irrational fears and anxieties. This is best achieved through a three-pronged approach. To (1) replace or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones, (2) produce rapid, neurological stimulation to change the polarity of our neural network, and (3) regenerate our self-esteem. These comprise our overall strategy.

The success of each activity requires a transformation – a rigorous and dramatic change in form and nature. Through proactive neuroplasticity, our neural network changes its form and configuration. Thought and behavior self-modification subverts the destructive nature of our negative self-beliefs. Mindfulness of our character strengths, virtues, and attributes regenerates our self-esteem. Hence, our form and nature have changed.

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The difference between pre-recovery and in-recovery is immeasurable. The metamorphosis of our form and nature is evidence of the power of transformation. We are not the same entity. Mindfulness of our assets compels us to recognize and embrace the extraordinariness of our lives, self-confirming we are of value, desirable, and significant.

Self-Esteem

While we remain governed by our social anxiety disorder, we view ourselves as helpless, hopeless, undesirable, and worthless. These are the commonly accepted attributions of our malfunction. As we regenerate our self-esteem, we become less helpless and hopeless, but still feel undesirable and worthless. There is joylessness in self-satisfaction for its own sake. As intelligent, social beings, we are driven to share our resources. We are so overwhelmed and appreciative of our renewed self-awareness, we feel compelled to pay it forward.

Self-appreciation is the inherent byproduct of healthy self-esteem.

In pre-recovery, we remain overwhelmed by our negative core and intermediate beliefs. We eliminate those false abstractions by recognizing and rationally responding to their absurdity. We remove ourselves from the target, turn outwards, and expand our vision. Our broadened scope minimizes our SAD-indeed self-centeredness and isolation to embrace the largeness of others as they participate in society.

There is no cure for social anxiety disorder; there is dramatic moderation of its symptoms. Recovery does not eradicate our past, our memories, or experiences. It heightens them with a new positive perspective. Candid self-awareness is a fundamental component of self-esteem. If we cannot comprehend ourselves, warts and all, we cannot fully understand another.

In-Recovery

In-recovery describes someone who has been through a recovery program and utilizes the tools and techniques to effectively moderate their symptoms. In-recovery, we are no longer hopeless but confident and optimistic, appreciating possibility instead of inconceivability. We have subverted our core sense of helplessness by reanimating our self-reliance and resilience. We are desirable because we have become beneficial to others. Recovery has rediscovered our value and significance. 

This awareness manifests in a sensitivity to the needs and experiences of others. By evicting our negatively valenced emotions of fear, shame, and guilt, we make room for new possibilities unencumbered by the past. This opens us to new relationships and commitments. Recognizing and accepting our strengths as well as vulnerabilities produces a more nuanced and compassionate perspective. We no longer see life through the glass darkly. Our emergence from the cave displays the world as it is, and generates what Dr. King called the fierce urgency of now, which we embrace with a vivid sense of belonging. 

Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series

*          *          * 

WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT?  ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction 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 scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.

Dissociation: Step Out of the Bullseye

Anxiety, Behavior, Coping Mechanisms, Mental Health, Neuroplasticity, Psychology, Recovery, Self-Empowerment, , , ,

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 are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, 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)

Dissociation: Step Out of the Bullseye

Unhealthy or negative coping mechanisms are called defense mechanisms – temporary safeguards against situations we find difficult to manage. Defense mechanisms are mostly unconscious psychological responses that protect us from our fears and anxieties. At one time or another, we all use defense mechanisms. Dissociation, or stepping out of the bullseye, is a useful defense mechanism in recovery.

Coping Mechanisms

Coping mechanisms are tools and techniques that we utilize to moderate stress and reduce the neurotransmissions of our fear and anxiety-provoking hormones, cortisol and adrenaline. There are recovery coping mechanisms we employ when exposing ourselves to a feared situation, including distractions, and projected positive outcomes. There are those we turn to when confronted by sudden unexpected stress – controlled breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and slow talk.

There are hundreds of coping mechanisms that make stressful situations in life easier to handle, including yoga, dancing, meditation, painting, writing, and streaming a movie. These activities moderate the anxiety of the moment and reduce the flow of those pesky chemical hormones. Coping mechanisms are as varied as individual experience and imagination.

Space is Limited
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It is important to remain mindful, however, coping and defense mechanisms do not address the unresolved issues of our fears and anxieties. They are temporary ways to moderate stress and the influx of cortisol and adrenaline. Like an analgesic to relieve the pain of a physical condition, they do not address the cause and remedy of the ailment. Notwithstanding, even a temporary emotional balm has a positive impact on our emotional well-being and helps regenerate our self-esteem.

Defense Mechanisms

Any unconscious mental process that protects us from threats to our emotional well-being and sense of self is a defense mechanism. Cognitive distortions are defense mechanisms. Some, like avoidance, humor, isolation, and intellectualization need no explanation. Other defense mechanisms have positive benefits as well when used appropriately. Accordingly, they become tools in our recovery. 

Compensation is one example: We compensate for our negative thoughts and behaviors by replacing them with healthy, productive ones. We compensate for our low self-esteem by becoming mindful of our character strengths, virtues, and achievements. 

Ritual and undoing is subjectively undoing negative behaviors or impulses by performing rituals or actions designed to offset them. For example, a person might donate to a homeless shelter to make up for evicting low-income tenants to build a condominium. Substance abuse is a common but extreme example of ritual and undoing. 

Utilized appropriately, ritual and undoing is a valuable coping mechanism. It supports negative to positive neural restructuring (ritual) by replacing (undoing) our negative thoughts and behaviors with positive ones. 

Most defense mechanisms can be converted to coping mechanisms once we begin to recognize them when they materialize. This allows us to respond rationally, adapting them to support healthy behaviors. Projection and rationalization are two examples of this adaptation. Rationalizing to justify bad behavior is a defense mechanism that, when utilized to logically respond to our SAD-provoked fears, becomes a coping mechanism. Projecting our irrational behaviors onto others is a good way to observe ourselves as others see us. Some, like cognitive distortions, are generally detrimental to our emotional integrity and less adaptable to positive reconstruction. Dissociation, on the other hand, is a prime example of a defense mechanism that is useful in recovery.

In standard psychological terms, dissociation is a disconnect from reality to shield us from traumatic experiences. In theory, our mind unconsciously shuts down or represses emotionally conflicting thoughts, memories, or experiences. Daydreaming or streaming television to block discord in the next room is a harmless form of dissociation. Creating multiple personalities (DID) is at the other end of the spectrum.

While some experts may find fault with my use of the objective, its definition supports our utilization. Dissociation is a disconnection between a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of self. When our sense of self is that of a SAD person, then deliberate and voluntary disconnecting or severing from that sense is positively functional. Furthermore, the broad spectrum of dissociation encompasses both daydreaming and a disconnect from reality, so the concept is interpretational.

In recovery, we deliberately dissociate ourselves from the symptoms of our social anxiety disorder. We redefine ourselves by our character strengths, virtues, and attributes rather than by the adversities of our malfunction. Essentially, we subvert the disease model of mental health by adopting the wellness model. The disease or pathographic perspective focuses on the problem; the wellness or positive psychology model emphasizes the solution, defining health as a state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

To iterate the oft-used analogy: when we break out leg, we do not become the injured limb. We are simply someone experiencing a broken leg. The same concept is important to recovery from our emotional malfunction.

Stepping Out of the Bullseye

While we remain conjoined with our social anxiety disorder, we continue to view ourselves as helpless, hopeless, undesirable, and worthless. These core and intermediate beliefs are formed by childhood disturbance and sustained by our emotional malfunction. By dissociating ourselves from our condition, we remove ourselves from the bullseye allowing us to objectively analyze our thoughts or behaviors, and respond rationally and productively. 

Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series

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WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT?  ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction 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 scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.  

Forgiving is Self-Empowerment

Anxiety, Mental Health, Psychology, Self-Empowerment, Social Anxiety, Social anxiety disorder, , , ,

Robert F Mullen, PhD
Director/ReChanneling

Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.

“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)

“It is not ‘forgive and forget,’ as if nothing wrong had ever
happened, but ‘forgive and go forward,’ building on the past mistakes
and the energy generated by reconciliation to create a new future.”
– Alan Paton

There are three forms of transgression important to us: (1) those inflicted on us by others, (2) those we inflict on others, and (3) those we inflict on ourselves. We are both victims and abusers. We are victimized by the transgression against us, and we abuse ourselves with our resentment and hate. When we transgress, we abuse the other, and our guilt and shame for the act victimize us. Self-transgression is both self-abuse and victimization.

We retain an abundance of destructive information, formed by our core and intermediate beliefs – toxic neural input seemingly impervious to uprooting due to its resistant or repressive nature. A lot of this information stems from the unresolved debris of our negatively valenced emotions.

Valenced is a psychological term used to characterize and categorize specific emotions that influence how we approach our daily lives. Negatively valenced emotions like shame, guilt, and resentment adversely impact our thoughts, behaviors, and relationships. When left unresolved, they permeate our neural network with negative energy and obstruct the process of recovery. 

Withholding Forgiveness

There is credence to the cliché that by withholding forgiveness, we allow the transgressor to occupy valuable space in our brain. The design of recovery and self-empowerment is to (1) replace or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones, (2) produce rapid, neurological stimulation to change the polarity of our neural network, and (3) regenerate our self-esteem. These objectives are inhibited by our negatively valenced emotions.

We fail to challenge these emotions because they sustain us. We justify them, savor them, or wear them like a hair shirt. Not knowing any better, our neural network is accustomed to this negativity and continuously transmits the chemical hormones and other physiological benefits that sustain and give us pleasure. We are so inundated from childhood with the concept of forgiveness, we tend to disregard its power and significance.

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Forgiveness in Recovery

Recovery requires restructuring our neural network by feeding it positive stimuli to counter the years of negativity. But our brains have less room for healthy input until we evict the bad tenants. Retaining the toxicity of our negatively valenced emotions aggravates our anxiety and depression, and compels behavioral obsessiveness, avoidance, and other personality shortfalls that impact our interconnectedness and self-esteem. The inability or unwillingness to forgive is foolish and self-defeating.

Recovery requires letting go of our negative self-perspectives, expectations, and beliefs – opening our minds to new ideas and concepts. We remain imprisoned in the past when we hold onto shame, guilt, and other hostile self-indulgences. Forgiving opens us to new possibilities unencumbered by prior acts. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

Three Forms of Transgression

Forgiving those who have harmed us

We often hold onto anger and resentment because we convince ourselves it impacts those who harmed us. The irony is the likelihood that they are (a) unaware or have forgotten they injured us, or take no responsibility for it. The only person affected is us, the injured party. As Buddha purportedly said, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; we are the one who gets burned.”

The act of forgiving resolves our animus and restores us to equal footing by eliminating the other’s influence. The innate drive for vengeance can be formidable, as our baser instinct cries out for retribution. Forgiving removes any desire for retaliation; it rids us of our vindictiveness. 

I vividly recall a recovery group member who refused to entertain any prospect of absolving his parents. “If you knew what they’ve done to me you wouldn’t ask me to forgive them.” His adamancy was formidable. Despite his awareness of the personal negative ramifications, he denies himself the opportunity to remedy it, much like a cancer victim refusing chemotherapy.

Forgiving ourselves for harming another

Forgiving ourselves for harming another is accepting and releasing the guilt and shame of our actions. It’s important to recognize that transgression against another subjectively affects us more severely than the person we harmed. We feel guilt for harming them, and shame for being the type of person who would cause harm. These self-destructive emotions can only be resolved by accepting responsibility, making direct or substitutional amends, and forgiving ourselves.

Forgiving ourselves for harming ourselves

Transgression against the self is particularly cataclysmic. It is telling ourselves we are deserving of abuse. Self-pity, self-contempt, and other hyphenated forms of self-abuse condemn us and devalue our self-esteem. Forgiving ourselves is challenging for those of us with social anxiety because our self-abasement is underscored by our negative core and intermediate beliefs.

Forgiving is Not Forgetting

It is important to recognize that forgiveness is not forgetting or condoning. Forgiving does not excuse the transgressor or transgression; it takes their power away. Our noble self forgives; our pragmatic self remembers and remains mindful of the circumstance.

Negatively valenced emotions have their usefulness. They can be revealing and cathartic, motivating emotional and spiritual growth and broadening self-awareness. Notwithstanding, resolution is important to mitigate their toxic neural residue.

Forgiving expels negativity. We cannot hope to function optimally without absolving both ourselves and others whose actions negatively impacted our well-being. Our actions and those of others may seem indefensible, but forgiving is subjective – for our own well-being. Holding ourselves or others accountable for harmful behavior is a justifiable response. Holding onto corresponding anger and resentment is self-destructive. We forgive to promote change within ourselves and, as the architects of forgiveness, we reap the rewards. 

Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series

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WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT?  ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction 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 scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.  

It’s Not Your Fault!

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

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 are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, 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. 

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 are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, 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)

It’s Not Your Fault!

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Part Deux
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Social anxiety is not behavior caused. We did not make it happen; it happened to us. Emotional malfunction is the consequence of childhood disturbance. Social anxiety sensed our vulnerability and infected us during adolescence. We did not ask for or encourage it. It is not retribution for immortal conduct or disagreeable habits. It is indiscriminate and ubiquitous and afflicts at least one in four adults and adolescents.

Attributions

We have examined the multiple reasons we resist recovery. Public opinion, the media, the pathographic focus of psychology, stigma, and even our families deter us from revealing our social anxiety. These external attributions to our resistance are the tip of the iceberg, however.

We contribute our baggage as well. Many of us choose to remain ignorant of SAD’s destructive capabilities. Some go to enormous lengths to remain oblivious to its symptoms as if, by ignoring them, they do not exist or will somehow go away.

We cling to irrational and misguided assumptions due to our willful pursuit of ignorance or fears of revelation. We avoid confrontation due to unjustifiable shame and guilt.

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It’s Not Our Fault.

Cumulative evidence that a toxic childhood is a primary causal factor in emotional instability or insecurity has been well established. During the development of our core beliefs, we are subject to a childhood disturbance – a broad and generic term for anything that interferes with our optimal physical, cognitive, emotional, or social development. SAD senses our vulnerability and swoops in, negatively impacting our emotional well-being and quality of life.

When we research its origins, we uncover the likelihood no one is responsible. The disturbance may be accidental or intentional, real or perceptual. The suggestibility of a child is legendary. A toddler whose parental quality time is disrupted by a phone call may develop a sense of abandonment. Nonetheless, as I’ve said before, while not liable for the cards we have been dealt, we are responsible for how we play the hand we hold. 

The negative cycle we find ourselves in has convinced us that there is something wrong with us when the only thing we are doing is viewing ourselves and the world inaccurately. That is a natural reaction to our symptoms. SAD sustains itself by feeding us irrational thoughts and behaviors. 

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. 

We are Not Alone

Roughly, 124 million U.S. adults and adolescents experience anxiety disorders. 60% of those have depression, and far too many resort to substance abuse. Anxiety and depression are the primary causes of the notable increase in adolescent suicide over the last decade. An estimated 40 million U.S. adults experience social anxiety disorder and roughly one-in-three college students have a lifetime anxiety disorder diagnosis. So, when you start to sweat and hyperventilate at a social event, remember, you are in good company. Social anxiety is common, universal, and indiscriminate.

It is Not the Consequence of Our Behaviors 

Combined statistics reveal that the vast majority of emotional malfunction onsets at adolescence or earlier. Excepting conditions like PTSD or clinical narcissism that impact later in life, the susceptibility to disorders originates in childhood. Emotional malfunction is hereditary, environmental, or the result of trauma. Perhaps parents are controlling or do not provide emotional validation. Maybe we were subjected to bullying or from a broken home. Behaviors later in life may impact the severity but are not responsible for the condition itself. While our lifetime behavior can impact the severity, the origins of our malfunction happen in childhood. This disputes moral models that we are to blame for our disorder, or that it is God’s punishment for sin.  

We are Not Mental

Not only is the description inaccurate, but it promotes hostile perceptions of incompetence and derangement. It is the dominant source of stigma, guilt, and self-loathing. The word mental defines a person or their behavior as extreme or illogical. In adolescence, anyone unpopular or different was a mental case or a retard. The urban dictionary defines mental as someone silly or simpleminded. It is often associated with violent or divisive behavior. Add the words illness or disorder and we have the public stereotype of the dangerous and unpredictable individual who cannot fend for themselves and should be isolated. Emotional malfunction is not ‘mental,’ biologic, hygienic, neurochemical, or psychogenic, but all of these things.

To the early civilizations, mental illnesses were the domain of supernatural forces and demonic possession. Hippocrates and diagnosticians of the 19th century favored the humours (bodily liquids). Lunar influence, sorcery, and witchcraft are timeless culprits. In the early 20th century, it was somatogenic. The biological approach argues that disorder is due to our brain’s physical structure and functioning. The pharmacological approach promotes it as a brain chemistry imbalance. The first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1952) leaned heavily on environmental and biological causes. Social anxiety sustains itself through the simultaneous mutual interaction of mind, body, spirit, and emotions.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

We are Hopeful, Powerful, Desirable, and Worthwhile

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

We are not helpless unless we choose to be. Multiple resources are available to anyone with the motivation and commitment to recover.

Likewise, we are not hopeless. Once we recognize the irrationality of our fears, we see them for what they are: powerless abstractions.

We are not undesirable. SAD compels us to view ourselves inaccurately. It reinforces or justifies our negative self-image, convincing us our cognitive distortions are the truths of a situation instead of emotional interpretations. Our fears and anxieties manifest in how we think about ourselves, how we think others think about us, and how we process that information. Any assumption of undesirability is self-centered and irrational.

We are not worthless but integral and consequential to all things. We are unique in every aspect; there is no one like us. We are the totality of our experiences, beliefs, perceptions, demands, and desires with unique DNA, fingerprints, and outer ears. There is and never has been a single human being with our sensibilities, our memories, our motivations, and our dreams.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

Yet, we continue to beat ourselves up for our perceptual inadequacies. We blame ourselves for our defects as if they are the pervading forces of our true being, rather than symptoms of our dysfunction.

We are not defined by our social anxiety disorder but by our character strengths, virtues, and achievements. When we break our leg do we become that injured limb or are we simply an Individual with a broken leg? 

To moderate our social anxiety, we identify the situations that provoke them. Further self-examination unpacks the associated fears and corresponding negative thoughts and behaviors. We need to know the enemy to conquer it. We cannot fix the complexity of our emotional malfunction unless we know what is broken. SAD is the most underrated, misunderstood, and misdiagnosed disorder. Nicknamed the neglected anxiety disorder, few professionals understand it, and fewer know how to challenge it. One has to experience it to know it.

We dread situations that provoke our fears of criticism and ridicule. We anticipate being judged negatively. We reject overtures anticipating rejection. Unless we are fortune tellers or mind-readers, assuming to know what another person is thinking or planning is irrational. It is a symptom of our condition.

We worry we might do or say something foolish. Fretting about something that may or may not happen is illogical. If it happens, it happens. We learn from it and move on. Avoiding doing things or speaking to people out of fear of embarrassment eliminates opportunities and diminishes possibilities.

Once we know ourselves and know the enemy, nothing is standing in the way of recovery. The process is theoretically simple, albeit time-consuming, repetitive, and personally revealing. However, the rewards dramatically outweigh the commitment.

SAD sustains itself by inflicting anxiety and fear, but they have no power on their own. We fuel them; we give them strength and power. We control our emotional well-being and quality of life, and only we can compel change. The onus of recovery is on us.

Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series

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WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT?  ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction 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 scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.  

The Sky is Falling!

Anxiety, Behavior, Cognitive Distortions, Mental Health, Neuroplasticity, Psychology, Self-Empowerment, Social Anxiety, Social anxiety disorder, , , ,

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 are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, 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)

Cognitive Distortion #11

Catastrophizing

Chicken Little was plucking worms in the henyard when an acorn dropped from a tree onto her head. She had no idea what hit her and assumed the worst. The sky is falling, the sky is falling, she clucked hysterically. Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion that compels us to conclude the worst-case scenario when things happen to us, rather than consider plausible explanations. It is the irrational assumption that something is or will be far worse than reasonably probable. We prophesize the worst and twist reality to support our projection. If our significant other complains of a headache, we assume the relationship is doomed. When this happens again, our belief is confirmed. Moreover, not only did we project the outcome, but it is likely we were a party to it.

SAD Expectations

A symptom of SAD is our tendency to expect negative consequences to things that happen during a situation. Because of our life-consistent negative self-appraisal, and the inherent human negativity bias, we tend to assume the worst. We often justify our catastrophizing based on prior events, misrepresenting the outcome of both situations.

Similar Cognitive Distortions

This is strikingly similar to other cognitive distortions. Overgeneralization prompts us to assume one bad apple renders the entire bushel rotten. When we Filter, we ignore the suggestion of a positive outcome in favor of a disastrous one. Our four horsemen of social anxiety disorder – helplessness, hopelessness, undesirability, and unworthiness aggravate our negative assumptions.

Predisposition

Catastrophizing is often a consequence of our symptomatic fears of criticism, ridicule, and rejection. We create self-fulfilling prophecies to justify our irrational assumptions. We will be rejected and therefore, never find love. We will be criticized and, therefore, never be taken seriously. 

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Consequences

Catastrophizing is paralyzing. It limits our interactivity and social engagement because we avoid situations that posit the possibility of disaster. Our fatalistic obsessions prevent us from experiencing and enjoying life. It limits our ability to establish, develop, and maintain healthy relationships. We self-project our failures through our SAD-induced automatic negative thoughts (ANTs). “What if no one talks to me?” “What if they criticize my presentation?” “What if they find me unattractive?” Worrying about something that hasn’t happened is an exercise in futility and supports our sense of hopelessness. It negatively impacts our entire outlook in life, causing issues of motivation and self-esteem that lead to self-disappointment and underachievement.

Considering the consequences of what can happen is a regular and rational part of determining our actions and activities. The compulsion to project the worst possible scenarios, no matter how improbable, is self-destructive. 

When those of us experiencing social anxiety disorder find ourselves in a situation where we dread negative feedback, the smallest incident, like a failed attempt at humor, can convince us the entire evening is a personal disaster. This projection is likely a self-fulfilling prophecy because we strongly anticipated the outcome. 

Again, the obvious remedy is to become mindful of our susceptibility to this distortion, rationally assess the situation, and consider plausible explanations (rational responses) for the incident that triggered our catastrophizing.

Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series

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WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT?  ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction 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 scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.  

Feeling Our Way Thru Life

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

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 are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, 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)

Cognitive Distortion #1

Emotional Reasoning

Emotional reasoning is making judgments and decisions based only on feelings – relying on our emotions over objective evidence. It is best defined by the colloquialism – my gut tells me…  This emotional dependency dictates how we relate to the world. At the root of emotional reasoning is the belief that what we feel must be true. If we feel like a loser, then we must be a loser. If we feel incompetent, then we must be incapable. If we make a mistake, we must be stupid. All the negative things we feel about ourselves, others, and the world must be valid because they feel true. 

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Emotions are the reactions that we express in response to situations. Emotions by themselves have little relevance to the truth of a situation. They are products of what we think or assume is happening, and our subsequent reaction or response.

Emotional Reasoning is the catalyst for many of the other distortions. The irrational thought patterns that underscore our cognitive distortions stem from the SAD-provoked convictions we are helpless, hopeless, undesirable, and worthless. For example, when we engage in filtering, we selectively ignore the positive aspects of a situation because of our life-consistent negative self-beliefs. This unbalanced perspective leads to polarized thinking, where we perceive things only in black or white. Because of our negative self-appraisal, we assume everything that happens is our fault, and anything said derogatorily reflects on us. That’s called personalization, which is very much like internal blaming. Emotional reasoning is the likely progenitor of all of our cognitive distortions as they are ruled by our emotions.

We are hard-wired to be swayed by our emotions. They are our initial influence because they are unconscious and automatic; evidence and facts are secondary considerations. If we have distorted thoughts and beliefs, our emotions will reflect them.  When we make judgments and decisions based on our feelings without supporting evidence, we are likely misinterpreting reality. 

We are all highly susceptible to emotional reasoning, and not all decisions made are wrong or destructive. It is healthy to stay in touch with our feelings or trust our instincts, provided they correspond with reality. A balanced perspective embraces emotions and intuitions as well as evidence. Because SAD sustains itself on our irrational thoughts and emotions, we are prone to making poor decisions.

Recovery requires a rational response-based strategy for psychological balance. One that considers the simultaneous mutual interaction of our mind, body, spirit, and emotions working in concert. To counter our predilection for emotional reasoning, we examine and analyze our automatic negative thoughts before reacting and responding. We learn to rechannel the emotional angst of our situational fears and anxieties into intellectual self-awareness, considering the facts, evidence, alternative possibilities, and multiple perspectives.

Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series

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WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT?  ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction 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 scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.  

Regenerating Our Self-Esteem

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

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 are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, panic disorder, ADHD, PTSD, 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)

Regenerating Our Self-Esteem

“It is only when you have mastered the art of
loving yourself that you can truly love others.
It is only when you have opened your own
heart that you can touch the heart of others.”
– Robin Sharma

Self-esteem is mindfulness of our value and significance to ourselves, society, and the world. It is honest and nonjudgmental recognition, comprehension, and acceptance of our flaws as well as our assets. It 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.

Implicit and Explicit Self-Esteem

Due to our disruption in psychological development, we are subject to significantly lower implicit and explicit self-esteem relative to healthy controls. Our negative core and intermediate beliefs stemming from childhood disturbance and disorder onset are directly implicated. Our symptomatic fears and anxieties aggravate this deficit.

Fortunately, our latent self-qualities can be regenerated through specific tools and techniques developed for that purpose.

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Self-Properties

Self-properties are the elements that constitute the strength of our self-esteem. Positive self-properties include self -reliance, -compassion,
-confidence, -worth, and other qualities. Negative self-properties include self -destructive, -loathing, and -denigrating.

Our healthy self-properties tell us we are of value, consequential, desirable, and worthy of love. Conversely, toxic qualities confirm our perceptions of helplessness, hopelessness, undesirability, and worthlessness.

Regeneration

In physiological terms, regeneration is the ability of our living organism to replace lost or injured tissue. In recovery, we replace our self-destructive thoughts and behaviors with healthy and productive ones. The primary goal of recovery from social anxiety is the moderation of our irrational fears and anxieties.

This is best achieved through a three-pronged approach. To (1) replace or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones, (2) produce rapid, neurological stimulation to change the polarity of our neural network, and (3) regenerate our self-esteem. Regeneration reawakens our dormant and latent self-properties.

Maslow’s Hierarchy

As we now recognize, our susceptibility to SAD originates with childhood disturbance and onset happens in adolescence. These are the periods when we establish the core and intermediate beliefs that negatively impact our psychological development. This is well-illustrated by Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The pyramid on the left portrays healthy evolution due to the satisfaction of basic developmental needs. The one on the right reveals how neglect of these needs can establish childhood perceptions including detachment, exploitation, and neglect.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a series of human requirements (needs) deemed necessary for healthy physiological and psychological development. A pioneer of positive psychology, Maslow’s original hierarchy contained five categories: physiological needs, safety and security, love and belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization. The hierarchy establishes how important the stages are to basic human functioning and motivation, and how they influence the other stages.

While the hierarchy appears fairly rigid, satisfaction is not a purely linear process but fluid and individuated, subject to experience and environment. A child will have difficulty learning if they are hungry. Absent reliable parenting, a child is unlikely to feel safe. It is also worth noting that Maslow’s theory is based on Western culture and does not necessarily comport with other customs and traditions. 

Physiological

Physiological needs are the basic things that we need to survive and develop optimally. They include air, food, drink, shelter, clothing, warmth, sleep, and health. Deprivation of any of these disrupts our natural development and impacts our core beliefs, which are rigid and difficult to moderate.

Safety and Security

Needless to say, childhood disturbances of any kind can impact our feelings of safety and security. Our formative years need order, protection, and stability, and these stem, primarily, from the family unit. Any upheaval can generate, among other reactions, negative core beliefs of, abandonment, detachment, or exploitation, and a distrust of family, authority, and relationships.

Love and Belongingness

Love is broadly defined and subject to interpretation. The classic Greeks distinguished love by specificity to include platonic, practical, sexual, and so on. For those of us experiencing SAD, love is challenging because of our fear and avoidance of relationships and social interaction. SAD disrupts our ability to establish interconnectedness in almost any capacity.

Belongingness is our physiological and emotional need for interpersonal relationships and social connectedness. Examples include friendship, intimacy, acceptance, receiving and giving affection, and social contribution. We are social beings; we are driven by a fundamental human need for social interaction and interpersonal exchange. The necessity for social connectivity tribe is hardwired into our brains.

Human interconnectedness is one of the most important influences on our mental and physical health. Research has shown that social contact boosts our immune system and protects our brain from neurodegenerative diseases. Healthy interpersonal contact triggers the neurotransmission of chemical hormones that improve learning and cognition while moderating the influx of the fear and anxiety-provoking hormones, cortisol and adrenaline. 

Esteem

The next stage of our Maslowian psychological development centers on how we value ourselves and are valued by others. Esteem includes self-worth, achievements, and respect. Self-esteem is both esteem for oneself (character strengths, virtues, and achievements), and the need for respect and appreciation from others (status and reputation). It is important to recognize, however, that the love and approval of others do not equate to self-esteem; otherwise, they would call it other­-esteem. 

Notwithstanding the initial disruption of our childhood disturbance and disorder onset, any number of factors impact our self-esteem including our environment, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, and education. Family, colleagues, teachers, and influential others contribute heavily. Our symptoms exacerbate self-esteem issues unless challenged.

Self-Esteem

Healthy self-esteem is our mindfulness of our flaws as well as our inherent character strengths, virtues, and achievements. It compels us to assess our strengths and limitations honestly and nonjudgmentally and to value ourselves over the opinions of others. It is independent of status or competition with others. It is self-recognition and appreciation for our character strengths, virtues, and achievements. 

The dichotomy of self-esteem is clarified in the Greek Philautia. Translated as love-of-self, philautia is both the love of oneself (narcissism) and the love that is within oneself (self-esteem, self-love). 

Self-esteem or the love that is within oneself is a prerequisite to loving others. If we cannot embrace ourselves, we cannot effectively love another. It is difficult to give away something we do not possess. 

Narcissism is a psychological condition in which people function with an inflated and irrational sense of their importance, often expressed by haughtiness or arrogance. It is the need for excessive attention and admiration, masking an unconscious sense of inferiority and inadequacy. 

Healthy philautia is beneficial to every aspect of life; individuals who love themselves appropriately have a higher capacity to give and receive love. By accepting ourselves, warts and all, with understanding and compassion, we open ourselves to sharing our authenticity with others.

Healthy philautia is the recognition of our value and potential, the realization that we are necessary to this life and of incomprehensible worth. To feel joy and fulfillment at self-being is the experience of healthy philautia. Mindfulness of our self-worth compels us to share it with others and the world.

The deprivation of our fundamental needs caused by our emotional dysfunction impacts our acquisition of self-esteem. It is not lost but undeveloped and subverted by our negative self-perspectives. The rediscovery and regeneration of our self-esteem are essential components of recovery. We learn to emphasize the character strengths and virtues that generate the motivation, persistence, and perseverance to function optimally through the substantial alleviation of the symptoms of our dysfunction. 

SAD Symptoms

Common symptoms of social anxiety disorder, according to MayoClinic and other resources, include the following:

  • We feel needy or unworthy.
  • We struggle to build healthy relationships. Persons with low self-esteem have difficulties with intimacy, trusting partners, and establishing personal boundaries.,
  • We have a poor (negative) self-image.
  • We experience negative self-talk.
  • We compare ourselves to others.
  • We experience self-doubt.
  • We avoid expressing vulnerability and are apprehensive of criticism and ridicule.
  • We lack confidence.

Regeneration

Regenerating our self-esteem is an essential element of recovery and cannot be second-tiered. We rediscover and revitalize our self-esteem through the integration of historically and clinically practical approaches designed to help us become mindful of our inherent strengths, virtues, and achievements, and their propensity to replace negative self-perspectives and behavior.

Social anxiety disorder generates negative self-beliefs, inducing us to repress our inherent and developed assets. Fortunately, our brain never deletes files; it fractures neural connections that can be repaired or regenerated. Proactive neuroplasticity and DRNI (the deliberate, repetitive, input neural input of information) compel our brain to repattern and realign its neural circuitry.

Common Regeneration Techniques

So, we can either participate in a recovery program or try to rebuild our self-esteem on our own. How do we do that? There are too many books and Internet sites to list, so we should research the approach(es) that best fit our lifestyle and the severity of our low self-esteem. Here are the five common methods of rebuilding self-esteem:

  1. Practice Self-Compassion. Contrary to what our low self-esteem tells us, we are worthy, significant, and consequential.
  2. Accept, Recognize, and Identify our negative self-beliefs, fears, and apprehensions.
  3. Reframe Self-Judgements. Positive reframing is when we take a negative thought and make it positive or neutral. There are at least two sides to every story.
  4. Practice Enforcing Boundaries. If situations or people provoke our anxiety, we learn to distance ourselves from them as much as possible.
  5. Prioritize Physical Activity

Moderating our issues of self-esteem and motivation is best accomplished in a workshop environment where we can identify and examine the challenges through personal introspection, memory work, journalling, role-playing, and other tools and techniques that help us rationally respond to the negative self-beliefs that generate our lacuna of self-esteem. For those who want to begin the work on their own, there are some basic steps we can take to identify our issues of self-esteem and begin to moderate them.

  1. Identify the situation where our self-esteem is an issue. Where are we? Who is present? What specifically is causing our distress? What are the symptoms associated with this distress?
  2. Unmask our fears. What is problematic for us in the situation? How do we feel (physically, mentally, emotionally)? What is our specific concern or worry? Are we afraid of rejection? Are we worried we will say something stupid? Are we concerned people will criticize or ridicule us?
  3. Identity our corresponding ANT(s). Automatic negative thoughts are our immediate, involuntary, emotional expressions of our fears. They are the self-defeating things we tell ourselves. “No one will talk to me.” “I’ll say something stupid.” “I’m a loser.” “She’ll reject me?” “He’ll find me undesirable.”
  4. Examine and analyze our fear(s) and corresponding ANTs. What are the causes, thoughts, and images that precipitate our fears and anxieties? It is these that impact our self-esteem.
  5. Generate Rational Responses. Our fears and ANTs are irrational. Once we have examined and analyzed them, and accept that they are false assumptions, we devise rational responses to counter them.

Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series

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WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT?  ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction 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 scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral self-modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.

Selective Perspective

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

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 are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, 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)  

Cognitive Distortion #2

Filtering

It is important to reframe the myopia of filtering and the rigidity of polarized thinking with rational responses offered by a kaleidoscope of viewpoints, interpretations, and possibilities.

Our negative core and intermediate beliefs form in response to childhood disturbance and the onset of our emotional malfunction. Core beliefs are more rigid in those of us living with social anxiety because we tend to store information compatible with negative beliefs. Our intermediate beliefs establish our attitudes, rules, and assumptions. These beliefs govern our perceptions and, ostensibly, remain as our belief system throughout life. Even if irrational or inaccurate, our beliefs define how we see ourselves in the world. When we decline to question these beliefs, we act upon them as though they are real and reasonable, ignoring evidence that contradicts them. This produces the cognitive bias that compels us to misinterpret information and make irrational decisions. 

To compound this, humans have an inherent negativity bias. We are genetically predisposed to respond more strongly to adversity, which aggravates our SAD symptoms. We anticipate the worst-case scenario. We expect criticism, ridicule, and rejection. We worry about embarrassing or humiliating ourselves. We project unpleasant outcomes that become self-fulfilling prophecies. It is not surprising that we readily turn to Filtering and polarized thinking to justify these irrational thought patterns. 

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Negativity Bias

When we engage in filtering, we selectively choose our perspective. Because of our social anxiety coupled with our inherent negative bias, we often gravitate toward the negative aspects of a situation, ignoring the positive. This applies to our memories as well. We dwell on the unfortunate aspects of what happened rather than the whole picture. 

A person who consistently filters out negative information might be someone with an excessively cheerful or optimistic personality. Conversely, a person who emphasizes gloom and doom can be considered unhappy or defeatist. Those of us living with SAD tend to mirror the latter. We filter out the positive aspects of our life, choosing to dwell on situations and memories that support our negative self-image. This creates an emotional imbalance due to the exclusion of healthy thoughts and behaviors.

Negative filtering is one of anxiety’s most common cognitive distortions because it sustains our toxic core and intermediate beliefs. Our pessimistic outlook exacerbates our feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. We accentuate the negative. A dozen people in our office celebrate our promotion; one ignores us. We obsess over the lone individual and disregard the goodwill of the rest. We reinforce our feelings of undesirability and alienation by dwelling on the perceived critical response. 

Cognitive Distortion #3

Polarized Thinking

One of the symptoms of SAD is our compulsion to overanalyze our performance in a situation, mortified by our mistakes, inept interaction, or poor social skills. We preoccupy ourselves – often for days on end – with our perceptual ineptness, obsessing over what we should have done better. We persuade ourselves that unless a thing is done to perfection, it is not worth doing at all.

In polarized thinking, we see things as absolute – black or white. There is no middle ground, no compromise. We are either brilliant or abject failures. Our friends are for us or against us. We do not allow room for balanced perspectives or outcomes. We refuse to give people the benefit of the doubt. Worse than our anxiety about criticism and ridicule is our self-judgment. If we are not flawless and masterful then we must be broken and useless. There is no room for mistakes or mediocrity. (“I failed my last exam. I fail at everything I try. I’m a loser.”)

To effectively challenge our tendency to filter or polarize information, we identify the situation(s) that provoke our anxiety and the corresponding ANTs (automatic negative thoughts). From there, we analyze the unsoundness of our reaction and devise a rational response. Initially, the conversion process is exacting, but with time and practice, it becomes reflexive and spontaneous. Cognitive behaviorists call our rational responses ARTs – automatic rational thoughts. 

Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series

*          *          *

WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT?  ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction 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 scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to reinvigorate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.  

Controlled or Controlling: Who’s in Charge?

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

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 are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, 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)

Cognitive Distortion #8

Control Fallacies

A fallacy is a questionable assumption. It is a belief based on unreliable evidence and unsound arguments. A Control Fallacy is the conviction that (1) something or someone has power and control over things that happen to us, or (2) we hold that type of power over others. We either believe events in our lives are beyond our control, or we assume responsibility for everything.

External Control Fallacy

When we feel externally controlled, we perceive ourselves as weak and powerless. We blame outside forces (fate, weather, authority figures) rather than assume responsibility for our actions. A health scare becomes an act of god, the philanderer blames his wife for leaving him, and our failing grade is because our instructor carries a personal grudge. We believe external forces control us because our emotional malfunction makes us feel helpless.

Internal Control Fallacy

The fallacy of internal control is when we assume responsibility for the conduct of others. We compensate for our failure to manage our own lives by taking control of others. Often, our compulsion to assume responsibility for another’s actions is because we have subconsciously projected our own behaviors onto them.

Our social anxiety provokes internal control fallacies. Our expectations of criticism and rejection become self-fulfilling prophecies, implying we control other people’s thoughts and behaviors. We become prognosticators and mind readers.

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Blaming 

Control fallacies rationalize or enable unacceptable conduct which demands accountability. Assigning responsibility to another for something we did suggests an inability or unwillingness to accept the repercussions of our behaviors. We subsequently feel guilt for our inadequacy, and shame for our weakness. When these feelings become unmanageable, we externally blame the other because they control our actions.

On the other hand, assuming responsibility for the negative actions of another can lead to self-blaming. “It’s my fault she’s unhappy.” “He drinks because I ignored him.” When the conduct of the other is destructive, the notion that we have let failed them wreaks havoc on our self-esteem.

One final control fallacy prevalent in emotional dysfunction is our tendency to blame ourselves for our condition under the false assumption that we are responsible for the childhood disturbance that precipitated it. Self-blaming for our unwillingness or inability to moderate our symptoms later in life is, obviously, reasonable.

Inaccurate Accountability

Control fallacies inform us we are assigning blame in inappropriate ways. Logic dictates we assume responsibility for our actions and stop taking responsibility for problems we do not create. Social anxiety disorder, however, subsists on provoking irrational thoughts and behaviors. We are trapped in a vicious circle of self-delusion and a way to manage our emotional well-being is to rationalize our misconceptions. Thus, we twist our thinking to support our distorted reality. A fundamental component of recovery is learning how to identify our cognitive distortions, analyze them, and devise rational responses. 

Proactive Neuroplasticity YouTube Series

*          *          *  

WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT?  ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction 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 scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to reinvigorate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.