Don't want to talk or socialize? Am I suffering from social phobia?

Nowadays, many people say that they have social phobia, such as-

1. I don't like answering the phone, and I'm even afraid of hearing the phone. Even if I answer the phone, I just barely cope. I have something to say.

? 2. I don't like dealing with people, socializing, eating and group activities.

? 3. Willing to deal with animals or inanimate objects.

? 4. I feel very tired of contacting friends to maintain relationships, so I stay alone.

I'm afraid of owing others kindness, and I always feel flattered and uneasy in the face of the benefits and warmth given by others.

These are all problems in our interpersonal communication, but they are far from social phobia!

Do you know what social phobia is?

How to judge whether you are a social phobia?

Symptoms of social phobia? Why? Treatment?

What is social phobia?

To say that you have a phobia, several conditions must be met here:

The first condition, panic attack.

Panic attack is a strong anxiety reaction, accompanied by physical symptoms, such as pounding heart, shortness of breath or inability to breathe, sweating, weakness and dizziness.

? Panic attacks are often accompanied by an absolute sense of terror, a sense of impending danger and death, and an impulse to flee the scene. At the same time, I have the idea of losing control, going crazy and dying.

The second situation has an impact on life.

For example, needle phobia, a bride-to-be, because of needle phobia, can not do premarital examination (blood sampling, etc. ), which makes it impossible to get married!

People with this symptom, as long as they have the idea of an injection, start to tremble uncontrollably, have panic attacks, sweat all over, can't stand it, and will faint!

For example, there is a case of elevator claustrophobia. Xiao Wang, an employee of a well-known company, is claustrophobic. The company is on the 55th floor. Because he can't take the elevator, he has to take the stairs every time the leader asks him to do something. Over time, he was forced to leave his job because of inefficiency!

The third condition is that you can't extricate yourself.

But knowing that what you are afraid of is unreasonable or even impossible, but you will still be trapped in it.

For example, a woman with severe agoraphobia hasn't been out of the house for nearly 20 years, and hasn't opened the door by herself for more than 10 years because she didn't dare to look into the corridor. Her life is confined to the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. Because once beyond these areas, she will be nervous, panic attacks, and feel that the whole person is going to die!

Are there any ghosts or pests waiting to kill her outside these areas? Of course not! The woman knows this herself, but she just can't control her fears.

If you are afraid of one thing or a certain situation, and meet the above three points at the same time, and last for more than half a year, then you are likely to suffer from some kind of phobia, and you should actively seek the help of a psychologist.

After talking about the symptoms of phobia, let's talk about the more common types of phobia.

1. Animal phobia, that is, fear of certain animals. Here, the animals that easily cause fear are: insects, mice and snakes in turn. Of course, phobias against birds, dogs and cats are also common.

2. Natural phobia is the fear of some natural factors, such as water, thunderstorm and darkness.

A thunderstorm phobia patient said that whenever it thundered and rained, she would drive the whole family to the car and leave until the thunderstorm was over. Because she has seen the story that people will not be struck by lightning in the car-the metal shell of the car forms an isolation cover, which is what the electrician calls "faraday cage". It seems that I don't know anything about physics, and I dare not get phobia easily.

3.？ Some people are afraid of water, and their heads will stay away from the water column when taking a bath or shower. Because if the head touches the water, the feeling of depression will come like an avalanche and make them suffocate like drowning.

What's more, there is fear of darkness. People with dark phobia never sleep in an environment without light. They are particularly afraid of waking up and finding themselves in a completely dark environment. Because they often associate darkness with fear of death, one patient said, "When I woke up, I found myself in the dark, just like in a grave."

? The above are the more common types of phobias. Let's talk about those more unknown phobias. There is no doubt that they are real-

1. Auditory phobia, fear of hearing sound.

? 2. Airflow phobia, fear of airflow, fear of ventilation and fear of wind.

? 3. Walking phobia, fear of crossing the road, fear of crossing the grass and fear of crossing the Woods.

4. Sharp phobia, fear of sharp objects, such as knives and broken glass.

5. Dust phobia, fear of dust.

6. Male phobia, fear of men, fear of having sex with men.

7. flood phobia, fear of floods.

8. Infinite phobia, fear of infinity, no margin, such as the deep sea.

9. Fear of ruins, fear of ruins and abandoned buildings.

10. Aurora phobia, afraid to see the aurora.

1 1. Vomiting phobia, fear of vomiting in public.

12. The last one, which is also the most heartfelt one, is called loneliness phobia, fear of being single, fear of living alone and fear of being alone.

After talking about the specific manifestations of social phobia and other phobias, let's talk about the causes and countermeasures of social phobia.

First of all, the question we have to solve is, where does human fear come from?

All kinds of phobias are described above, some of which are stimulated by things and situations that once posed a potential threat to our primitive ancestors, such as animals, darkness, heights and water.

With the development of society, these stimuli are gradually under the control of human beings: dangerous animals are put in cages, railings are installed on high platforms or cliffs, and we invented lifebuoys. Animals, darkness, height and water are not as dangerous as before.

Then why do they still appear in our phobias?

Because of one thing-"gene bank".

These dangerous memories are recorded by genes and remain in our collective subconscious.

Collective subconsciousness, also known as collective unconsciousness, is a psychoanalytic psychological term invented by psychologist Jung. It refers to the collective experience precipitated by human ancestors in the process of evolution, which is stored at the bottom of human spirit and widely owned by human beings. But we have never realized its existence, and it can only be obtained through heredity.

? These great fears can be passed down because they can encourage people to avoid dangerous situations and help us survive successfully. It can be said that human fear is innate. At this level, fear is not only harmful, but also beneficial to our lives.

So, how did things get to the point where phobia seriously affected our normal life?

What kind of secrets about fear are hidden in the human brain?

The amygdala is overactive!

Fear develops into phobia because our bodies overreact to it. The key is that there is an important organ in our brain that is over-activated. This organ is the amygdala. The amygdala is the part that produces, recognizes and regulates emotions. What happens to overactivation?

Someone has done a set of such experiments and showed the owner of amygdala a set of photos in normal operation and over-activation state. It is found that when the amygdala is over-activated, people will recognize more hostile and threatening faces in photos faster. In other words, after the amygdala is over-activated, people will become "persecutors" to some extent!

People will think that "there are always unruly people who want to kill me."

In this case, people are more likely to suffer from phobia because they excessively think that their surroundings are full of deadly threats.

This is also the first cause of phobia, which is caused by the abnormal operation of functional parts of the brain, such as the amygdala.

For example, the spotlight effect, sometimes when we make a fool of ourselves, we always think that people will pay attention to it, but this is not the case. No one cares about you as much as you care about yourself. Some people may have noticed it at the time, but they forgot it immediately afterwards. So the spotlight effect is also saying that for others, you are not as important as you think, so don't always add drama to yourself!

? For people with social phobia, their spotlight effect should be magnified to the extreme. Their self-concern is too strong!

For example, when people with social phobia communicate with others, the focus of attention is not the content of communication, but other ridiculous and irrelevant things, such as whether their faces are red? Is your mouth shaking? Is it right to put your hands this way or that way? If I don't do this well, will the other party see at a glance that they will miss me? What would you think of me? This is a very serious matter.

However, for their communication partners, all the concerns may be on the content of the conversation. Even if these problems are found, they will be brushed aside and won't be too concerned. What is even more unimaginable is that there are so many dramatic conflicts and secret struggles in the hearts of people with social phobia.

So another cause of social phobia is that patients pay too much attention to themselves pathologically, which magnifies the spotlight effect infinitely.

Social phobia is not just because of "fear"

Many people think that social phobia is caused by fear, but it's not that simple.

Social fear is almost always intertwined with other negative emotions, rather than acting alone.

Fear is usually the center of these negative emotions: if you wait for your turn to speak in a meeting, you will feel a forward-looking fear at the beginning of the meeting, which we call "anxiety". Then, when someone calls you to the podium, you will feel the possession of "fear", which invades your flesh and blood, climbs up along your body, makes your heart beat faster, and your stomach and throat seem to be tied hard, making you cry.

In addition to this feeling of fear, there are many deadly emotions helping others. For example, shame!

Fear is the feeling when facing danger, and shame is the frustration when you are sure that you can't face this danger directly and can't accept others' secretly critical eyes.

Most people with social phobia are afraid of getting negative comments. When this fear becomes certain, we will be more influenced by internal beliefs than by external reality. At this time, what we feel inside is no longer fear, but shame.

Suppose I have a blush phobia (yes, I really do). I will be afraid to blush in front of others. But once the face is really red, we are no longer afraid. Water under the bridge. But things didn't get better, because I would be ashamed. I only have one idea. I want to find a hole to get into.

Shame is actually a more destructive emotion than fear, more lasting and more sinister, because it will make people feel ashamed and give up on themselves.

It is its existence that forces people to become self-enclosed, sometimes even closed for a long time, after a certain exchange, at least after he feels ashamed or simply makes a fool of himself.

In addition to shame, there is also an emotion that is very poisonous! That's anger.

Feeling socially fearful means a lot of self-denial, such as: "I dare not, I want to give up." When the person I talk to raises his voice or even raises his eyebrows, I will shrink back. " People with social phobia say, "I'm useless. I don't even tremble when I read the newspaper."

? These large-scale self-denial behaviors can also lead to a lot of frustration. We find that many people with social phobia often fly into a rage. They regard everyone around them who may be polluted as their enemies, such as parents, relatives, friends, people who talk to them, or people who look at them for a long time. ...

This poison of a lot of anger will disturb their fragile lives that have been eroded by fear. Moreover, many of them will "suppress" their anger instead of venting it in an appropriate way, which is even worse for the rehabilitation of patients with social phobia.

However, humans need phobias. Why do you say that?

For example, an organ or a function of the human body is no longer useful to human beings, and it will decline little by little. So since we invented clothes and heating, our hair is not as thick as that of primitive humans.

Similarly, some of our teeth have become less or even disappeared, and our jaws have become smaller. This is because compared with primitive humans, the food we eat is mostly cooked or soft, and we don't need to chew a lot to help digestion. Since we stopped hanging from the tree, our tail has disappeared, leaving only a small piece of tailbone.

What will happen if we end all fears and feelings of fear?

There is a good saying: "The more fragile a person is, the easier it is to feel fear. At this time, fear is like his protective cover, which is very precious and essential in the face of potential dangers. "

Imagine this situation. Suppose the earth is full of poisonous snakes because of the climate, but human beings have no fear, or fear of snakes. What will happen? It can be said that before long, fearless human bodies will be all over the streets.

If there is such a small group of people who are afraid of reptiles at this time, they will be the ultimate survivors and the ancestors of the next generation of human beings, because they have a perfect danger detection system. That's why we need to keep our fear of snakes in our memory.

For example, in COVID-19 now, people who are nervous about COVID-19 and take protective measures have a much lower infection rate than those who don't take this seriously and don't take protective measures at all!

Humans need phobias!

At the same time, it can also explain to people who are deeply afraid of phobias that they should not feel guilty because they are afraid of it. This is not a shortcoming, but a feature and expression of human psychological diversity.

However, they sometimes get a little out of control, and we need to intervene and adjust them appropriately.

How to deal with panic attacks?

The following coping methods are not only helpful to phobia patients, but also helpful to ordinary people. When your emotions are out of control, you can also use this method to help yourself get out of trouble and calm down.

Let's see how to do it. When you have a strong heartbeat, difficulty breathing, panic and a sense of dying, you should do the following things-

1. Don't let your breathing get out of control, focus on the rhythm of breathing and take a deep breath as slowly as possible.

2. Don't hyperventilate, hyperventilation itself is to replenish oxygen to the body when fleeing and fighting, and it will also promote the sudden appearance and aggravation of anxiety symptoms.

3.？ Try to exhale through a paper bag. Re-establish the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide in the body. The carbon dioxide in the bag will help you calm down.

? 4. Tell yourself to relax and tell yourself that you won't die. Not so easy to die. Tell yourself that panic attacks, no matter how painful, will soon pass.

Ask someone to help you out, don't carry it yourself. Call someone you know and trust and talk casually until you return to a calm world and regain control of yourself.

6. Don't shut yourself in and try to avoid the panic attack again. What should come will always come. Courage to face it and let people who care about you help you.

7. If you feel unwell, go to the hospital to see a doctor, even if it is caused by psychological factors. Getting a diagnosis is also a comfort, stronger than one's imagination.

In short, when we encounter any emotional problems, don't always think about what responsibility we should bear for it. It's not your fault. At the same time, don't be shy to ask others for help. Humans are social animals, and we need each other.

-Excerpted from "Psychology of Heavy Taste: Our Little Monster"