Social Anxiety: Help, Anyone?

Everyone at any point of his or her life becomes anxious over things of great importance. A mother may be fearful of her daughter coming home late. Or an employee dreading the threat that his work may be taken from him.

At these instances, anxiety is a very normal thing. In fact, it allows someone to contemplate on something that may have caused the incidence. It may also be that anxiety leads to the solution that may not be found by any other means but to get troubled.

Yes, anxiousness is our body's self-preservation mechanism. Just like fear, it provides the way for us to understand that something might be wrong and we have to take an action.

But what if anxiety becomes severe that it affects the entirety of your behavior and psychological disposition? What if anxiety hunts you and it strangles you until you give into the fear? What if anxiety becomes a sickness that will cause a number of symptoms that you feel yet cannot be seen upon clinical examination? What if you are a victim of social anxiety?

These may all sound terrifying…but what if these are all true?

You need not imagine.

Millions of Americans have overlooked symptoms presuming that they are ill of some unknown disease or worse they are becoming mad. And fast…

At any given year, there are 15 million Americans suffering from a condition known as social anxiety. This condition is characterized simply by the incapability of a person to relax during in public.

In short, they become fearful of the people surrounding them. They are anxious that they are being watched, judged, scrutinized, undermined, and stared at. Thus the heightened sensation of negative behavior towards the public.

Though social anxiety is both psychological and behavioral in nature, socially anxious people are still incapacitated to take the feeling of fear away from their system. It's like they are being eaten of the feeling that their movements are critically watched. This consciousness makes them less comfortable with people around. Nonetheless, they are fully aware that all the sensations of fear that cover them aren't real.

Because the experiences during social anxiety attacks are painful, they almost always choose to lock themselves in their own comfort zones and limit their exposure to people. Although their environments are filled with familiar people, they still could not fight the overwhelming feeling of fear. Their fear all boils down to negative judgements.

However, their conditions worsen when they meet figures of authority (which makes them ineffective in work places and such). However, this form of fear is not only limited with people of higher distinction. In fact, so long as the person they are around with seem to be much better than they are, they become panicky and would want as much as possible to keep distance from the person to whom their fear is centralized.

Social anxiety becomes worse when the person under such condition is misdiagnosed with damaging names such as schizophrenic, clinically depressed, manic-depressive, panic disordered and personality disordered.

It's strange that though much of our citizens are undergoing psychological torture such as social anxiety, the medical circles are still not very much equipped with knowledge that can help treat patients.

Unlike other psychological and behavioral diseases though, social anxiety does not come and go. It will consume the person. It will thrive in him. It will always be there from the onset of the symptoms until cure is not found.

Jeanette Pollock is a freelance author and website owner of anxietydomain.com. Visit Jeanette's site to learn more about social anxiety.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com