Social Anxiety – Overview
Social anxiety, sadness, or sometimes social phobia, is a strong fear of social situations and society, such as eating in a restaurant, to shopping and standing in line in the store or talking to someone you don't know. Social phobia can also mean a fear of blushing, fainting or being watched an audited.
Often these fears are irrational and exaggerated, but occasionally there can be real physical problems behind them. Social phobia often leads to a behaviour characterized by avoidance, making everyday life difficult to handle. The anxiety can vary in intensity. While some social anxiety sufferers are able to live a fairly normal life, while others completely avoid even going outside their home.
Social Anxiety – Symptoms
Symptoms of social anxiety are similar to general anxiety:
- Sweating
- Difficulty in concentrating
- Hard to breathe
- Diarrhoea
- Flushing
- Panic attack
- Afraid of going crazy
- Feel continuously audited
The general situation where individuals sadly feel uncomfortable:
- Sitting on the bus, train, airplane or other enclosed spaces.
- Eating at a restaurant, at a coffee break with colleagues.
- Shopping.
- Standing in line.
- Sitting in a classroom.
- Traveling.
- Visiting friends and family.
- Meeting new people at a social event
Social anxiety level
It can be categorized into a mild, medium and heavy case. In mild social anxiety, the person may feel mild to moderate anxiety in certain social situations, but rarely choose to avoid this situation, and rarely even know that they have the disorder.
Their quality of life is affected, but they can function normally. In cases of moderate social anxiety, person experiences moderate to severe anxiety in many social situations and also tends to avoid certain of these situations. Their quality of life is strongly affected and some social interactions can be very problematic. In cases of severe social anxiety, the person feels strong anxiety in most social situations and also tends to avoid most or all social situations and interactions. Their quality of life is obviously greatly affected by this, and their everyday life becomes severely restricted.