What is Social Anxiety Disorder?
Social anxiety is found in both men and women, they
are very normal people, only when they have to Interact
with another person outside their immediate family
members. They can be colleagues, classmates, people
living in the same apartment etc. The anxiety is both
with members of the opposite sex and same sex. They
form close relationships with very few people inside
the family and outside the family also. They will
take a very long time to form such relationships.
Invariably the person with whom they form relationships
would also be little socially shy people.
Do
people develop this in childhood or as adults?
A person can acquire as a child or develop it as an
adult. Socially shy parents or parent may teach the
child to avoid unnecessary interactions, which the
child may follow in the initial years, and then it
becomes their nature to avoid people. In case of adults
it can happen when successive relationships result
in disappointment, rejection, criticism or being exploited
financially or sexually.
How
does it affect the person’s life?
The sense of AVOIDANCE will be so high that they will
not hesitate to resign their jobs if their job profile
necessitates interacting with people, they will drop
out of a relationship if the other person starts getting
friendly with others. Even if the salary is lucrative
they will refuse promotion and remain in a self-defined
comfortable zone.
If one of the married partner has social anxiety then
when the other person gets friendly even if a person
of the same gender they can misinterpret it as loss
of interest in marriage, or even as being unfaithful.
This can lead to enormous strain in the relationship
and if the other person has to avoid they have to
stay away from all relationships which may be realistically
possible in the initial years but after few years
it can start leading to enormous frustrations.
These people will avoid parties they will find a good
excuse to stay out of it. If someone manages to motivate
them to attend a social gathering they will be silent
spectators during the event and then they will only
be thinking of as to how to leave the place. So seeing
their discomfort and silent participation people slowly
stop inviting them for social gatherings.
What
is the treatment for Social Anxiety Disorder?
It has to be treated with Medicines and Psychotherapy.
Social anxiety manifests due to faulty thought processing,
dysfunctional beliefs and consequent anxious physical
reactions. This can be either secondary to a traumatic
real life experience or totally imagined.
Cognitive Behaviour therapy is very effective in
treating this disorder along with anxolytic medication.
In this therapy we enable the person to identify
the initial experience, which lead to the formation
of thoughts process leading to social anxiety.
Formation of Social Anxiety
A
negative life experience with someone
or faulty teaching about socialisation
Criticism
or Rejection or Disappointment or Exploitation
or self-doubts
Formation
of Faulty thoughts: I am incapable/It
is better to stay away from people/Interactions
only leads to disappointments/People
will wonder why I am coming and talking/People
will think bad of me etc.
On
an average, what is the percentage of Indians suffering
from Social Anxiety Disorder?
We do not have epidemiological data to answer this
question. My rough estimate would be about 8 to 10
per cent of people must be suffering from this. Due
to cultural restrictions women are more vulnerable
towards developing this condition.
What
is the biggest hurdle involved in fighting Social
Anxiety Disorder?
a) People do not consider this as a problem; they
just learn to live with it. Only if it grossly disturbs
their vocation or marital relationships they look
for some kind of treatment. b) Indians have a tendency
to expect medicines or their birthstone to solve their
problems. Instead if they put in efforts on physical
and cognitive exercises they can easily overcome this
embarrassing and paralysing disorder. c) People with
social anxiety disorder AVOID situations, consequently
they live a very restricted life, which they find
to be comfortable and compromise with many aspects
of life
