“Do I Have Social Anxiety?”

Sweat ran down my face as I looked in the mirror in shock at what I just committed myself to.

I had just spent a day or two recording a handful of songs for fun with a friend of mine.

We then invited some other friends over who happened to promote shows and also produce music.

I didn’t intend to show them because I wanted to impress them, I just wanted to show them for the heck of showing them something I created and was proud of.

My enthusiasm must’ve been felt by them, because my friend (who promoted shows) looked at me and said, “So, are you ready to have your first show then?”

I looked at him, paused for two seconds, and blurted out “Hell yes!”

However while I said that, my insides turned and screamed in fear.

“Me?! Performing in front of all of those people?!”

Out of pure panic I walk to the restroom and look at myself in the mirror, sweat profusely dripping down my forehead as I mumbled,

“Do I have social anxiety?”

For what felt like the first time in my life, I actually realized how scared I was not only to be the center of attention but to be around people I didn’t know in general.

And I know that so many people, even the ones who seem confident on the outside, experience anxiety in social situations.

You may then wonder if you have social anxiety, and if you are wondering that now, let’s explore whether or not you’re experiencing some form of social anxiety.

Important note:

Please remember that we are only using the label “social anxiety” to make this easier for you to understand since that term is widely known.

However, do not fall into the trap of identifying as a socially anxious person as this itself makes it difficult to free yourself from the emotional pattern, which I’ll show you in a few minutes.

What Does Social Anxiety Look And Feel Like?

Social anxiety expresses itself differently for many people, but the overarching theme is the same: a reaction of fear and tension in social events.

Here are a few ways social anxiety actually shows up for people:

1.) Getting red, sweaty, nervous, and physically hot when around one or more people.

2.) Voice cracking and stumbling over words when talking to certain people.

3.) Feeling shy around people you don’t know.

4.) Worrying about messing up while engaging in a conversation, handling a sale, leading a meeting, or speaking to a group of people.

5.) Over planning your every step and move prior to social events.

6.) Obsessing over what others are going to think of you.

7.) Comparing yourself to others when around them.

8.) Losing your confidence around successful people.

9.) Avoiding potential conflict.

10.) Wanting to say things but not being able to get it out.

These are just some of the many ways that social anxiety can look and feel for people, and if you resonate with any of the following then I encourage you to keep reading as I’m about to break down exactly how to overcome this problem once and for all.

Before I do that, let’s answer the most important question of all.

Where Does Social Anxiety Come From?

What, if anything, causes social anxiety to show up for people? Is this something you can fix? Or will I have social anxiety forever?

All of these questions are very understandable questions as I asked myself each one of them when I realized I faked being sick and out of town on two different occasions just to avoid performing my music on stage.

When that moment occurred, I realized I had social anxiety and all I could do was wonder why the heck it was happening to me.

If you’re wondering the same, let’s answer this question once and for all.

Many experts state that there is no true cause of social phobias, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

There is also a system of belief that states social anxiety can be passed down, as if it were some genetic issue.

I am bluntly stating that this belief is false.

With that said, let’s look into the real and only reason social anxiety happens.

The Ultimate Cause Of All Social Anxiety

“Adrian, I feel like everybody is judging me in social settings.”

This is what my client told me as we sat on our consultation call and I asked him what was the issue that he wanted to eliminate during our Neuro-Remapping™ session.

He said for as long as he can remember he felt like an outcast in social situations.

For some reason he felt like he didn’t belong, and despite being a successful salesman, he still felt overly anxious and fearful before every sales appointment.

It made no logical sense to him. So during the “regression” part of our session my client went back to a memory of him at 8 years old hearing his mom and dad argue downstairs.

Curious, he walked down the stairs into the living room to where his parents were arguing.

After standing there for a minute or two before his dad saw him and yelled, “Go back to your room!”

He got scared and ran back upstairs and as he got to his room he told himself:

“I get in the way.”

And this became a core belief he held about himself that he carried with him into every social situation.

He’d constantly feel like he was in the way, or like he didn’t belong.

These thoughts created feelings of anxiety when it came to social events.

The anxiety was his 8 year olds way of “protecting him” and keeping him from being social.

In his mind he associated being social with being in the way, which made him feel isolated — and as a young boy this threatened his feelings of survival — which then created a defense mechanism: anxiety.

The root cause of my client’s social anxiety was not the event that happened to him at 8 years old.

It was his assumption about himself he made based on the event.

He assumed that he didn’t belong, and because he accepted this suggestion as a belief it set up emotional responses that were forms of protection from feeling this way again.

This manifested as my client feeling fearful of social situations to the point where he avoided them which led to a significant impact on his very quality of life.

This is the root cause of all anxiety: assumptions about yourself that you accept as true.

The ideas that you have about yourself, and the core beliefs you carry to be true about yourself are the root cause of the feelings you experience about yourself and about yourself.

How To Find The Root Cause Of Your Social Anxiety

Now that you have clarity around what actually causes social anxiety to happen, you may be wondering,

“What is the root cause of my anxiety then?”

I’ll answer this for you in depth, but before I do that I have to make sure you don’t fall into the trap of all traps.

The trap of believing that you are at the mercy of your childhood or past events.

I know the story I shared with you above may make it seem like we are at the mercy of past events, but I assure you that is a false idea.

I did not have my client revisit memories because those memories were the cause of his problem, rather I had him view his past through his current beliefs.

He didn’t view the past to find a hidden belief, he just used his memory to shine a light on his current beliefs. Because you will only perceive the past through your current beliefs.

Finding the root cause behind your social anxiety has nothing to do with reviewing the past.

Finding the root cause behind your social anxiety has everything to do with finding a current belief that is held in the conscious mind.

These beliefs are not unconscious, they are in your conscious mind. It’s simply a matter of whether or not you ignore these beliefs.

If you want to become aware of the core belief behind your social anxiety, all you have to do is observe your stream of thought while you are in the midst of experiencing the anxiety full on.

Core beliefs are highly energetic ideas that produce a lot of intense emotion, therefore if you are experiencing an intense emotion (IE. Anxiety) and become aware of what you are thinking in the moment, you will become aware of the beliefs creating it.

For example, if you are about to speak on a stage and you are experiencing a panic attack or something alike, make a point to pause and observe your thoughts.

You may find yourself thinking:

“I am going to mess this up.”

“I’m going to mess this up.”

“I am not good enough.”

“There is something wrong with me.”

“I don’t belong here.”

Take note of these and understand that the only reason you are thinking them is because you genuinely believe the statements are true.

There is no other reason you’d be saying these things and having such an emotional reaction to it.

These are simple ideas about reality, not reality itself, and the moment you see that these ideas are false and made up becomes the moment you can set yourself free from this.

There is no need to dig into your past. All you have to do is follow your feelings into your thoughts, and then follow your stream of thought down to a core belief.

When you find yourself thinking “I am not good enough,” don’t be afraid to follow that thought.

Say, “I am not good enough because…”

Let the answer naturally come up (and it will if you have the intention of observing your mind.)

Don’t overthink, just write the first and automatic responses down.

Then say, “I know that is true because ….”

And fill in the blank. You’ll find yourself come to a core belief that you hold to be true about yourself with this simple awareness practice.

“Ask yourself ‘why do I think this is true? And that? And that?” and you’ll find what you’re looking for.

Once you are aware of the beliefs and assumptions behind the anxiety itself, you can now work to change and release those beliefs.

Here’s how.

A Few Ways To Eliminate Social Anxiety For Good

Exercise #1: Exposure Through Visualization

“Exposure therapy” is the act of exposing one to their fear with the hopes of overcoming the fear due to the experience of proving the belief wrong.

It’s a way to retrain your neural-pathways to respond differently during a situation, or learn a new behavior.

But the brain has a better learning capacity when you are not under pressure.

The more calm you are, the better you can learn a new response.

Therefore visualizing yourself being confident and responding how you want can be even more effective than actually doing it because you won’t be under any kind of pressure that you may experience in the real situation.

You’ll be able to respond more easily when it comes to being under pressure because your brain would have already learned how to respond by merely visualizing itself doing it over and over again.

Here’s how it’s done:

Whenever you are in a state of theta brain waves, or at the bottom of the staircase (from the exercise above) then do this.

Step 1: Visualize a screen in front of you, a large one, but not big enough to take up your entire vision. Like a movie/projector screen.

Step 2: Recall a past positive experience, one that made you feel accomplished, confident and good about yourself.

Make it as real as you can, stir up the positive emotion from that experience and focus on it.

This is important, because what you’re going to do is “carry over” this feeling of confidence into the act of you engaging in some social event.

You are “using” confidence from other areas and applying it to where its needed in the next step.

Step 3: When the confident feeling sets in, change the image from the past event into a future desired event on the screen.

For example, if you have social anxiety when networking, imagine yourself walking into a conference room full of other entrepreneurs.

Act as if you were always confident.

How would you stand? How would you talk? How would you move around the room? What would you be saying?

Get fully involved with this picture and immerse your physical senses into the picture.

“Step into” the screen and “become” the visualization.

Feel the floor beneath your feet. Feel the hands that you shake. Hear your voice and others. Feel your vocal cords vibrate as you talk. See the body langauge and facial expressions on the faces of others.

Get every sense stimulated if you can.

Make it as real as possible.

Play this entire event out for 15–30 minutes, or until you feel complete.

I encourage you to spend time really exploring within the scene and getting it clearer and more real.

Step 4: Visualize the completion.

In other words, what would you be doing AFTER the event that validated the fact that it was a success?

What would you be doing? Who would you be with? What would you say? Would you be celebrating?

Describe in detail what would be happening for you to know you successfully networked with confidence.

Really get clear on what this after-the-fact the event will be (do this beforehand) and then spend some time observing that scene.

Step 5: Step OUT of the mental screen you were visualizing with and watch the event from a third person view for an extra minute or two.

At this point you can simply count back from 5 to one and say,

“On the count of 5 back down to one I will be energized and feel better and better.”

And begin counting and open your eyes.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are doing this before bed, I recommend skipping the counting and drifting off to sleep WHILE you are visualizing.

For unknown reasons this seems to be extremely powerful and effective at making not only your mind, but BODY adjust to the event visualized as you go to bed.

Exercise #2: Conscious Autosuggestion

The next way to overcome social anxiety is to utilize conscious autosuggestion to “hypnotize” yourself into a new belief.

Hypnosis is nothing more than an absorbed state of attention on a single idea to the exclusion of other data.

For example, if you believe that there is something wrong with you, then you will train yourself to find evidence for this belief and you will effectively block out data that says otherwise.

Social anxiety is a form of a trance, and another way to remove the problem is by “changing your trance” all together.

You can do this in as little as 10 minute a day through the proper use of conscious auto-suggestion.

Here’s how it’s done:

Step 1: Enter a theta-state trance (use the above exercise).

Step 2: Recall a past event that made you feel really confident. Stir up the positive emotion of confidence — this is how we will “mix” the feeling in with the suggestion — effectively rewiring your neural pathways.

Neural pathways can only be rewired through repetition and experience, so it is important that while you use auto-suggestion you create an emotional experience to make it “stick.”

This is an effective way to do that.

Step 3: Begin repeating your power suggestion.

Your power suggestion is the brand new belief that you wish to “program” into your mind.

This one is typically the opposite of the limiting one.

For example, “I am loved and worthy” is a great one.

If this was a belief you wanted to program, then start by repeating the suggestion over and over again.

To enhance your focus, picture each word light up in your mind as you say the statement, this will give you a visual to go along with, keeping you more focused.

Repeat the new suggestion while seeing the words for 5–10 minutes and do not go longer, for sometimes when you go longer you reinforce the fact that there is something to be “changed” or something wrong.

You want to assume that you are confident, therefore keeping the idea that say otherwise is essential to this process.

After you do this exercise, forget the fact that you did it and just assume that the statement is true and act out on it with a child-like playful attitude.

Exercise #3: Inner Child Expression

As you can see from the story I shared earlier about how my client got social anxiety, many times we can pick up social anxiety due to beliefs we picked up at young ages.

One of the most interesting ways I have helped clients release these fears is by revisiting the memory that created the belief and having them reimagine the event going a different way.

You can give your “inner child” a new perspective by doing this.

Here are two different ways you can do this:

Step 1: Enter a theta-state trance (use the above exercise).

Step 2: If you KNOW a clear memory in which you picked up a limiting belief, reimagine that event happening all over again. This time give yourself a different outcome.

What did you WANT to happen? Imagine this happening in a way that leads to a new belief and emotional response.

This is so simple but very powerful, its a wonderful way to release long held limiting perspectives in a way that creates a completely different emotional response.

If you do not know an event, no worries.

Just do the next exercise, it is very similar and its designed to do the same thing.

Step 1: Enter a theta-state trance (use the above exercise).

Step 2: Reimagine the home that you grew up in between ages 2–8. If you lived in multiple homes just reimagine any of them at that time.

Step 3: Walk into the house and find your bedroom door.

Step 4: Open the door and imagine your young self in the room.

Step 5: Imagine then using their voice and expressing themselves in ways they always wanted to but never got the chance too.

This alone will release stored up energy that is causing the anxiety, and it can be sufficient enough to release limited perspectives and the belief(s) that created the social anxiety.

Again, another super simple yet very profound exercise that anybody can do.

I recommend you doing this for 15–20 minutes a night before bed for 21 days straight.

In Conclusion

Social anxiety is a learned emotional response that can be successfully unlearned.

The root cause of all social anxiety is a core belief, as these beliefs create the emotional responses of anxiety.

If you want to accelerate your results and eliminate social anxiety in two sessions or less (with a money-back guarantee) then go ahead and click here to learn how we’ve helped hundreds’ of others do the same.