How to help a person with social phobia: 6 tips for support

Tips on how to help someone with social phobia: for friends, family, colleagues...

Social phobia is a more common anxiety disorder than you might think.Although the intensity in which it occurs is usually varied.

There are cases in which the people who present this psychological alteration manage to conceal the discomfort it causes them, while in the most intense cases the limitation becomes very evident.

In this article we are going to review some tips and effective strategies to know how to help a person with social phobia in support to the attendance to psychotherapy, so that little by little he/she overcomes the irrational fear (phobia) towards the other people, especially when it is a question of numerous groups.

• Article related: "Types of phobias: exploring the disorders of the fear".

What is social phobia?

To know how to help a person with social phobia, we must first understand what this disorder is. Social phobia is the irrational and intense fear that people feel before any situation related to social contact.The feeling of discomfort becomes more intense in direct relation to the number of people with whom one must interact and the degree of unfamiliarity with these people.

As we saw above, some people are able to conceal this fear, but this does not stop it from significantly affecting the subject's quality of life. This only indicates that the intensity of the social phobia is lower than in other cases, where it is not possible to conceal the distress of having to interact with others.

It is important to clarify the difference between social phobia disorder and shyness, because superficially they may seem to be the same. Basically, the difference lies in the intensity of the distress and in the thinking style of the individuals. Shyness is nothing more than a personality trait that manifests itself occasionally. that manifests itself occasionally. That is, the triggers of shyness are expressed in occasional circumstances in which one has to interact with others in person and in real time.

Social phobia, on the other hand, is very intense and deeply irrational, i.e. there is no logical trigger that generates the fear that the subject feels towards interaction with other people; it is an anxiety condition focused on interpersonal interactions, that manifests itself in a constant and intense way in the daily life of the subject, damaging his quality of life evenIt is an anxiety focused on interpersonal interactions, which manifests itself constantly and intensely in the daily life of the subject, damaging their quality of life even when no one is around (for example, avoiding going out shopping so as not to have to talk to the owner of the store).

How to help people with social phobia?

Now we are going to see a list of tips focused on providing support and help to those who suffer from social phobia.

1. Accompany to therapy

For the adequate treatment of phobias it is best to accompany the person to therapy with psychologists.. The behavioral professional will be able to properly evaluate the subject and determine what are the possible causes of social phobia.

It is important to keep in mind that each patient is unique, and we cannot pretend to base ourselves exactly on the reality of some cases to help others. That is why the most advisable thing to do is to attend therapy, in order to have a clearer picture of the situation. The advice we will see is to help and support people who are going to therapy for their social phobia problems, but this first step is essential, and no non-professional accompaniment can replace it.

2. Helping the person to rethink his or her thoughts

The second step for the person to stop feeling a lot of distress in complex social situations is to encourage him/her to adopt other thoughts associated with interacting with others. Social phobia is intrinsically associated with a catastrophic (anxious) style of thinking, in which the person imagines that everything will go very well. imagines that everything will go very wrong if he/she communicates with others..

It is necessary to make the subject see that contact with other people does not have to end badly, but can even be a rewarding experience for all parties involved, as long as it is an interaction within the social norms of respect.

On the other hand, it is also advisable to help him/her to relativize the importance of rejection (or approval) by others. In this way will come to accept the idea of not always making a very good impression.The latter is impossible for any person.

3. Facilitate the adoption of social tools

Social skills can be learned, and in cases of social phobia it is necessary to implement a didactic teaching method through which subjects can clearly understand how socialization works not only from theory, but also from practice. In order to do this, it is possible to accompany the person with social phobia and create situations in which he/she can relate to more or less familiar people, so that this task does not become a chore for him/her.This task will not be too difficult for them. Of course, always with the consent of the person suffering from this anxiety disorder.

4. To help him to establish goals

The overcoming of the social phobia goes through a staggered process, where the person will overcome little by little some goals. This will not only serve to help you gain confidence and assurance, but will also give you practice and implicit knowledge of how a normal conversation unfolds.

Of course, these goals should be geared toward sociability with other people, these goals should be oriented towards sociability with other people, and they should be concrete and short termso that they have the capacity to motivate. For example, a good idea is to set an initial goal of initiating a daily conversation for a week, so that as the days go by this behavior becomes normalized. In any case, this should always be done in coordination with the psychologist conducting the psychotherapy sessions, so that both processes (inside and outside the consultation) go at the same pace.

5. Exposure to crowded environments

An effective way of combating any type of phobia is to to make controlled exposures to that which generates the discomfort.. In the case of social phobia, the procedure is to accompany the person to social events where he/she has to experience how other people speak in public and interact with each other. Again, this should be discussed beforehand with the person conducting the psychotherapy sessions.

6. Do not encourage impatience for results.

Each person has his or her own pace of evolution, and it is not positive to try to accelerate the progression of people in the achievement of a goal, especially in cases of anxiety.especially in cases of anxiety or social phobia.

If the person feels that there is pressure from us to see immediate results, he or she will begin to feel more anxious about it and will want to stop engaging in therapy and our approach to psychological support to help him or her. In any case, it is important to be clear that this is a journey whose most spectacular results will be noticed in the medium and long term, that is, in a time scale of months.

However, it is best to emphasize simple, short-term goals, such as meeting a challenge, for example.In the first stage, when one is just beginning to combat social phobia, the satisfaction of overcoming it can be the source of motivation that replaces the fact of noticing that one is a totally autonomous person in terms of social interactions (an experience that will come later, in the last phases of therapy).

Bibliographical references:

• Bravo, M. A. and Padrós, F. (2013). Explanatory models of social phobia: A cognitive behavioral approach. Uaricha, 11(24), 134-147.
• Hermans, D. Vantseenwegen, D. and Craske, M. G. (2008). Miedos y fobias: Debates, investigaciones futuras e implicaciones clínicas. En M. G. Craske, D. Hermans y Vansteenwegen (Eds.), Miedos y fobias: de los procesos básicos a las implicaciones clínicas (pp. 257-264). México: Manual Moderno.
• Morissette, S.B., Tull, M.T., Gulliver, S.B., Kamholz, B.W., Zimering R.T. (2007). Anxiety, anxiety disorders, tobacco use, and nicotine: a critical review of interrelationships. Psychological Bulletin. 133 (2): pp. 245 - 272.
• Rapee, R.M., Heimberg R.G. (1997). A cognitive-behavioral model of anxiety in social phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 35(8): pp. 741 - 756.