Nervous at the wine table

About social phobia

Medical director/Peking University psychotherapist Fang Zhan

In life, you will inevitably have to interact with all kinds of people When dealing with, especially Office Lady, social interaction is an important aspect of showing your style. You may need to talk to important people, express your opinions in public, and appear in various social venues such as negotiations, cocktail parties, and dinners. However, you always retreat involuntarily, or go for it, but let good opportunities slip away because of your poor performance. You feel annoyed and regretful, but when the next opportunity arises, you begin to feel timid, hesitant, flustered, and have trembling hands. Over time, your self-confidence is exhausted in embarrassment again and again.

Does this happen to you or around you often:

“I can’t explain what I mean clearly in front of my boss, and my expressiveness is extremely poor. The more I try to express myself, the less I know. At a loss." ——Pang Ruoxian said, she is 29 years old.

I work as an advertising planner in a company. I know that I am very capable and have many good ideas. But I often become clumsy in front of the company's senior management and cannot express myself clearly. Just like the planning meeting just now, I had a very lively discussion with my colleagues down below, and good ideas kept emerging. It was very exciting. However, when I saw the company leader, I was suddenly speechless, as if everything was stuck in my throat. And when I saw the boss's frown getting tighter and tighter, I couldn't speak at all. Yes, I frequently lose points in front of everyone.

“I really don’t want to go to this class reunion because I don’t know what to wear.” ——Yang Meiwei said, she is 34 years old.

I received a call from the old squad leader, saying that next week the old classmates will have a grand tenth anniversary party. I've been restless this week. To be honest, I also miss my old classmates very much, but when I think about not having a few high-end clothes to complement my face, and a lot of new spots have recently appeared on my face, I hope to go there radiantly and make everyone feel that I am better than myself. They live well, otherwise they might as well not go. So, I used the excuse of a business trip to escape. This kind of escape has happened several times.

"I really can't do it outside!" - Xiaoxin said, she is 26 years old.

Looking for a "convenient" place when you are away from home is really a headache. In big cities, some bathrooms are built like five-star hotels, clean and comfortable. However, the bathrooms in some places didn't even have doors to separate compartments, and I was really embarrassed to solve the problem there. I felt extremely embarrassed being in the public eye.

Fang Zhan, a psychotherapist at Peking University, believes that fear of social interaction is also a disease:

These three ladies are not just a personality problem. Obviously, they are not just about facing others. I feel shy and embarrassed, but have a strong sense of uneasiness and rejection of the world outside myself. This kind of fear and social disorder caused by incompatibility with social life and groups is called a mental disease in the medical field - social phobia, also called social anxiety disorder.

Don’t underestimate social phobia. Social phobia is already the third most common mental illness after depression and alcoholism. This may be because modern people are facing increasing pressure to survive, especially The advent of the Internet era has brought people new social areas. If you indulge in social activities in the virtual society on the Internet for a long time, your social skills for direct communication with people in the real society will be weakened.

Most Chinese people, especially women, are reserved and reserved and do not express their feelings easily. This affects the diagnosis of social anxiety disorder to a large extent. Most people think that this is just a weakness of character rather than a pathology, or they don't think it is a disease, or they are very taboo about saying it is a mental illness.

Dr. Fang reminds everyone not to hear that wind is like rain, and not to be upset because you often blush when talking to strangers. Certain reserved and restrained behaviors of Chinese women cannot be considered to be disease. Social phobia.

The manifestation of social phobia is not only being at a loss when facing strangers, but also being unable to make phone calls in public, not being able to drink with people in public, and not being alone with strangers. Meet, do not work under the gaze of others, and other more extreme behaviors. When this kind of fear and anxiety occurs, it is often accompanied by symptoms such as palpitation, trembling, sweating, and difficulty breathing.

So, whether you suffer from social phobia must be determined by a psychiatrist. Generally, the following professional test form can be used to test:

1. I am afraid Speak in front of important people. Answer: (1 2 3 4)

2. I feel uncomfortable blushing in front of others. Answer: (1 2 3 4)

3. Parties and some social activities scare me. Answer: (1 2 3 4)

4. I often avoid talking to people I don’t know. Answer: (1 2 3 4)

5. I don’t want to be discussed by others. Answer: (1 2 3 4)

6. I avoid anything that is centered on me. Answer: (1 2 3 4)

7. I am afraid of speaking in public. Answer: (1 2 3 4)

8. I cannot do things under the attention of others. Answer: (1 2 3 4)

9. I tremble involuntarily and feel flustered when I see strangers. Answer: (1 2 3 4)

10. I dreamed about making a fool of myself when talking to others. Answer: (1 2 3 4)

Scoring method:

Each question has 4 answers to choose from, which respectively represent: 1. Never or rarely; 2. Sometimes so; 3. Often so; 4. Always so. Circle the corresponding answer in the table above based on your situation. This number is also the score you receive for each question. Add up the scores to get your final score.

(1-9 points) Don’t worry, you don’t have social phobia. (10-24 points) You already have mild symptoms, and it may not be good if they continue like this. (25-35 points) You are already on the verge of a moderate patient with social phobia. If you have time, you must go to the hospital to seek help from a psychiatrist. (36-40 points) Unfortunately, you are already a patient with severe social phobia. Go to a psychiatrist and he will help you get out of your predicament.

Get rid of phobia quickly

According to statistics, on average, one in 10 people suffers from social phobia, but very few seek medical treatment. What are the consequences of not treating it in time? Many patients suffer from mental illnesses such as alcohol addiction, drug addiction, or depression due to long-term impairment of interpersonal relationships and loss of social functions. We have to deal with people every day, so how can we isolate ourselves?

First of all, you must find out the cause of your illness. A seminar on social phobia was held in Shanghai in 2000. The speaker, Mr. David Seahan, a famous American psychiatry professor, said that both psychological and physiological factors can lead to social phobia. It is caused by an imbalance of a chemical substance called "5-hydroxytryptamine" in the human body. This substance is responsible for transmitting messages to nerve cells in the brain. Too much or too little of this substance can cause people to feel fearful.

Social anxiety disorder may also be caused by family background: the personality has been suppressed since childhood, or the parents did not teach them social skills, or they moved too much. Or it is caused by psychological reasons: low self-esteem, fear of being rejected by others; or lack of confidence in one's own appearance, excessive obesity or severe acne, etc.

For these reasons, the main treatments for social anxiety disorder are as follows:

1. Hypnotherapy: a psychoanalyst hypnotizes you and digs into the depths of your mind or memory. Something to see if you have experienced some kind of embarrassing event, trying to find the root cause of your illness. This treatment takes a long time and is relatively expensive.

2. Forced therapy: The doctor will make you stand on a busy street, or let you stand in front of the opposite sex you are afraid of, and use huge psychological stimulation to perform forced treatment on you.

3. Situational therapy: Let you continuously simulate the scenes of social phobia in an imaginary space, and continue to practice the scenarios where symptoms occur repeatedly. The psychoanalyst will continue to encourage you to face this situation. This kind of situation allows you to adapt to this anxiety-producing environment from your imagination.

4. Cognitive therapy: This is a treatment method that continuously inculcates concepts. Doctors constantly tell you that this fear is abnormal, let you correctly understand the procedures for interacting with others, and teach you some methods of interacting with others.

5. Drug therapy: This is currently considered the most effective treatment method. The main reason is that your disease is caused by an imbalance of certain chemical substances in your body, so certain types of drugs are used to adjust the balance.

Give you a self-healing method

1. Do not deny yourself, constantly tell yourself "I am the best" and "I am born with talents that will be useful."

2. Don’t be demanding on yourself, just do whatever you can. As long as you try your best, it doesn’t matter if you don’t succeed.

3. Don’t recall the unpleasant past, let the past pass. Nothing is more important than the present.

4. Treating others kindly is the basis of happiness. When helping others, you can forget your own troubles and at the same time prove your own value.

5. Find someone to talk to. If you have troubles, you must tell them. Find a trustworthy person to talk about your troubles. Others may not be able to help you solve your problem, but they can at least let you vent.

6. Give yourself 10 minutes to think every day and constantly summarize yourself so that you can continue to face new problems and challenges.

7. Go to a crowded place, let the constant flow of people pass by, and try to give people a smile.