If you feel that you will have to live with social anxiety for the rest of your life, this video is for you. I share what nobody told me when I was at the darkest point of my life: you will be okay, and there is a way out. I also introduce three methods that helped me, EFT tapping, Ho’oponopono and mindfulness (MBSR), with a free place to start for each of them below.
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Disclaimer:
This video is for education. It is not medical advice and not a substitute for professional treatment. If you have a diagnosed condition or a history of serious trauma, please work with a qualified professional.
Transcript
This video is very close to my heart, because with it, I want to tell everyone who suffers from social anxiety
what I never got to hear when I was at the darkest and lowest point of my life: You will be okay.
While I am making this video, I become emotional, because I can feel with you how hard this time is.
You may feel right now the way I felt back then, when I thought that I would have to spend my whole life with social anxiety.
Back then, I did not yet know that I even had social anxiety, because I thought that this was simply the way I am.
I also did not know that there is a way out, and so I believed that I would have to live with this fear for the rest of my life.
Maybe it is the same for you right now, and you have never called what you feel social anxiety.
Maybe you think that you are just shy, or that this is simply the way you are, just as I did back then.
It feels as if you are in hell, in a very dark place.
I call it hell, because the fear is with you almost all the time.
You think about a conversation for days before it happens, and after the conversation, you go through it again and again in your head.
You suffer, and you cannot see any way out of this suffering.
Someone who does not know this and has never been through it cannot imagine how endlessly bad it feels.
Because of this, the people around you often do not understand how bad it really is for you. I understand it, because I was in this dark place myself.
When I was in this dark place, at the darkest and lowest point of my life, nobody ever told me: You will be okay.
That is why I am saying it to you now, and to everyone who suffers from social anxiety: You will be okay.
Maybe you think today that you will have to spend your whole life like this, just as I did back then.
That is why I want you to know this: Your state will not last forever, there is a way out, and you will be okay.
I know that there is a way out, because I found this way out myself.
There are different ways in which you can break out of your misery,
and in which you can even get from hell on earth to heaven on earth.
In the state that you are in today, this may sound impossible to you.
I know that my promise probably feels to you like an unbelievable fairy tale.
Maybe you have already tried many things, and nothing has helped you so far.
When this is the case, a promise like mine can sound as if it has nothing to do with your life.
But if you seriously start to work on your social anxiety and put in the time it needs,
then I know from the bottom of my heart that you will make it too.
I know this, because I was in the same dark place, and I found my way out by working on myself.
I am not promising you that you will have overcome your social phobia by tomorrow.
But if you seriously work on yourself, I promise you that today will have been the worst day of your life,
and that from today on, you will feel better and better.
On your way, you will have ups and downs, and sometimes it will feel as if you are making no progress or are even going backwards.
On some days, you will feel much better, and on other days, the old fear will come back.
But your success curve points constantly upward. This is because progress happens in an upward zigzag, in which you always have your last up as your point of reference.
In an upward zigzag, your success curve goes up, then a little bit down, and then up again, higher than before.
When you have a down, you compare it with your last up, which was the best moment that you have had so far. Because of this comparison, the down feels like a step backwards.
At the same time, however, your success curve goes constantly upward, because each down is higher than the down before it and higher than the point where you started.
So when a day feels like a step backwards, you can remember that your success curve is still going up.
In just a few months, you will no longer recognize yourself, and you will be proud of everything you have already achieved.
For the work on yourself, I believe that my specially designed course can take you to your goal by the fastest way,
because in the course, you work on the specific incidents that keep your social anxiety going.
Specific incidents are moments from your past that still upset you today, for example a moment in which you were rejected or laughed at.
These moments keep your social anxiety going, because your body still reacts to them as if they were happening right now.
But I also know that several roads lead to Rome. That is why I want to briefly suggest a few methods to you that can help you to improve your situation.
They are all methods that I have practised myself or still practise, and I know that they help. These three methods are EFT, Ho’oponopono and mindfulness, or MBSR.
The first method is EFT, which is also called tapping. You gently tap with your fingertips on a few points on your hand, your face and your upper body.
While you tap, you think about something specific that still upsets you, for example a moment from your past.
When you do this, the strong feeling that is attached to this memory becomes weaker, until the memory no longer upsets you.
The memory stays, but it no longer hurts. EFT is also the method that my course is built on.
There is a free official tutorial for EFT, and you will find the link in the description.
The second method is Ho’oponopono, which comes from Hawaii. In the old tradition, families used Ho’oponopono to make peace with each other.
Today, many people also practise a form of it on their own.
In this form, you quietly let go of old hurt with words of forgiveness and thanks.
Ho’oponopono helps you, because you take responsibility for what you experience, and you let go of old memories that still cause you problems today.
You will find a place to start with Ho’oponopono in the description.
The third method is mindfulness, and MBSR is a course in mindfulness that takes about eight weeks.
In this course, you learn simple exercises, for example sitting quietly and paying attention to your breath, or slowly noticing each part of your body.
In these exercises, you practise noticing your thoughts and feelings without reacting to them right away.
Over time, you get more and more distance from your anxious thoughts, and you no longer have to follow every anxious thought right away.
There is a complete MBSR course online that is free, and you will find the link in the description.
So in the description, you will find a link for each of the three methods, and there you can find more information about each method.
The work on the specific incidents that keep social anxiety going is the way that I went myself, and it is also the way that my course shows you.
You can do this work at home, one incident after the other.
You do not have to be ready for everything at once, because you can start at the point where you are today.
If you want to understand why the work on these specific incidents helps and how it works, watch this video here.
If you feel today that you will have to spend your whole life with social anxiety,
then I want you to know that your state will not last forever.
You will be okay and you can do this.