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How do you know if you have social anxiety?
Some of the symptoms include:
Feeling red in the face, self-conscious, afraid of humiliation, afraid of being judged when faced with social situations.
Often times people with social anxiety will avoid social situations to the point that it actually affects their life. They also may abuse alcohol before a social situation in order to feel calmer, or may insist on bringing someone with them.
If this sounds like you, don’t worry! It may suck to be anxious about social situations, but a new study says there’s a whole new way to manage it: being kind to others.
A new study done at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia has shown that doing something specifically for someone else helped improve social anxiety much more than carrying on their day as normal or being forced to take part in social interaction.
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These acts of kindness ranged from giving to charity to cooking dinner for a friend.
Why does this work?
Dr. Jennifer Trew, a psychologist and leading researcher in the study, says that these acts of kindness help these people get out of their own heads.
Much of social anxiety involves those people overanalyzing how they’re perceived by others, and being kind to someone else moves their focus onto another person.
Of course, a study of 115 college students is too small for this to be a definitive study, but there’s definitely something to be said for focusing on others as a way to stop worrying about yourself.
