Social Panic: 10 Everyday Actions to Overcome It

A communication expert teaches you some tricks to feel more at ease in your interactions.

Social fear is a natural mechanism to avoid getting hurt. Low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence make us feel weak in social situations. We are afraid of feeling judged and it is very likely that this feeling has its origins in childhood.

Social panic: ten everyday actions to overcome it

Everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, has a fear of rejection. fear of rejection. One of the things that differentiates a self-confident person from a person who is not is that the former learned to manage fear.

But how can we overcome insecurity?

First of all, we recommend you to read this article published at Psychology and Mind which talks about shyness and how to try to overcome it.

Here are ten actions that you can apply in your daily life that will help you become a more sociable person.

1. Love yourself

The best way to put an end to our fear of rejection is to work on our self-esteem. A good way to start is by learning to talk to ourselves and to value ourselves for what we are: to be aware of our virtues and to pamper and forgive our defects. We should also be aware that we can improve and not be ashamed of not knowing how to do this or that. Nobody is perfect and nobody knows everything.To live is to learn and knowing how to correct our mistakes.

2. Do not take yourself too seriously

Laughing at ourselves and our shortcomings will help us to relativize our mistakes.. We should not get angry with ourselves but understand that mistakes are part of learning. We are not born knowing, we have to be aware that everything has its process and we should not deprive ourselves of the luxury of making mistakes. Let us rejoice in our mistakes because it will mean that we are closer to our goal. In addition, laughing at ourselves in front of others will help us to be seen as brave people who are not afraid of being judged.

3. Recount your failures

There are few things funnier than the story of a failure. Comedies tend to be stories of failure and the characters who live them are people full of mistakes that make them endearing. Let's take a look at Charles Chaplin o Buster KeatonTheir films are full of pratfalls and mistakes that make the audience crack up. Their films are plots that feed on mistakes and clumsiness and the audience laughs with them. Or if not, look at Woody Allen. All his films revolve around him and his failures and, far from looking like a fool, people laugh with him and empathize with his experiences because, deep down, we have all failed at some time and there is nothing wrong with that, we have all failed at one time or another and there is nothing wrong with that..

• About Woody Allen and his inoperability to seduce women, we recommend you to read the following article: "The 8 mistakes of a beginner seducer".

4. Talk about your social fear

Saying that we are shy will help us to communicate and will give information to others so that they can sympathize with us. We will be telling our failures and, at the same time, laughing at ourselves. This way, others will know how to treat us and we will discover that it's okay to have social panic. For example, if we are in front of the person we like, we can say: "I'm sorry, but you intimidate me and if I don't talk to you or stutter it's because I'm concentrating on not bleeding from my nose".

5. Learn to relax

There is no better way to combat anxiety than learning how to breathe and knowing a few relaxation techniques. relaxation techniques. There is plenty of information on the internet that will help us learn how to fight stress. In Psychology and Mind we are supporters of Mindfulnessbut there are plenty of ways to calm your nerves such as yoga, meditation or sports. You can consult the following articles to learn simple and fun techniques that will help you have a better relationship with your mind and body:

• Mindfulness

• Sports

• Stress

6. Make conversation with strangers

Learning to be sociable people is not an easy task. We must start in everyday situations that do not involve a great effort. Making comments to strangers is a very good way to start. There are countless everyday situations in which we can start practicing, such as saying good morning to the doorman of our building, talking about the weather in the elevator or telling a friend that her new hairstyle looks great. Little by little we will overcome our fears and learn to handle ourselves in different social contexts.

7. Assume that there are rude and impolite people everywhere.

Knowing which are our mistakes and defects and which are not will help us to attribute certain reactions to others and not blame ourselves if someone is rude to us. There are people who camouflages their insecurity by being aggressive with others. We have to learn to detect this and know how to forgive them. If we greet our boss and he responds to us in a dry or sour way for no apparent reason, we will think that he is a bore or that he must have personal problems that make him answer that way.

8. Work on assertiveness

Cultivating observation will be useful for us to know how we should communicate with others. If we begin to detect the moods of people according to their corporal expression, we will be able to express ourselves, or not, in a more adequate way and we will save ourselves from an infinity of uncomfortable situations and aggressive answers that lower our self-esteem. Knowing the personality of others we will know how to make better and more accurate attributions.

• Do you want to know some keys to assertive communication? We recommend you read this article.

9. Dare to do new things

Experimenting new things and going out of our comfort zone will help us to get to know different contexts and we will learn to adapt better to them in future occasions. As long as it is not a danger to our physical integrity or to our values, it is good and enriching for us to participate in new activities. Let's focus on the benefits of the activity and not on its disadvantages. Let's take it as an opportunity to overcome a challenge and improve as a person..

10. Take the initiative

As we face new situations and accept to do new activities, we will be prepared to be ourselves the source of the experiences to come. Making an event to go to the premiere of a movie we would like to see or organizing a dinner with our friends and asking everyone to bring a stranger is a good way to start and practice with people we trust. Gradually we will become proactive people of great value to others and we will see ourselves as someone other people want to be around because we are a wellspring of countless fun activities.

Patience, let's keep in mind that fears will not be overcome overnight.. Little by little we will fight them and overcome them. We recommend you not to compare yourself with the person you would like to be, but to compare yourself with the person you were. Day by day, month by month, year by year, you will realize that you are leaving social panic behind.