Social Anxiety Disorder

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S.A.D. Social Anxiety Disorder

Those who suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder, or S.A.D., feel they must hide from other people: "I can't let other people see me."

While the intensity of those feelings varies widely, those who suffer from social anxiety disorder share one common underlying premise: "There's something wrong with me, and I can't be fixed."

Maybe not those exact words, but you get the idea. When you have S.A.D., you feel flawed and defective to the very core of your being. You feel 'bad and wrong' and nothing you can do will help.

So the only viable option- the only thing that makes sense- is to HIDE! Because the more you're noticed, the more likely someone else will see your 'defectiveness'.

You have two basic problems here.

1. The underlying shame that was dumped onto you. Usually it starts in childhood, but it can continue throughout your lifetime. Shame comes from mental, emotional, verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. It also comes from abandonment. Even if a parent dies when you are a child, you can feel shamed because of it.

Shame holds enormous complexity. There is nothing simple about it. Shame destroys many lives. Very few people truly overcome their shame.

Fortunately, it can be completely healed. In a nutshell, it involves 'bundling up' the shame- like collecting dirty smelly clothes into a burlap bag- and mentally returning the bundle to the offender, not once but many times.

It also involves healing the inner child, which means 'returning to the scene of the crime' in your imagination. Powerful, life-changing results can be achieved by working with these two steps. Reading the works of John Bradshaw- a pioneer in the field of shame- is an excellent place to start.

And as you work with healing your shame, it's equally important to look at the shame you dump onto yourself. This often becomes more entrenched and more insideous than the shame dumped onto you by others.

Shame is like a hot potato. When someone dumps their shame onto you, your natural reaction is to dump it onto someone else. And especially, you start dumping it onto yourself.

You create a story to make sense of the abuse: "I must really be a bad person, or else they wouldn't be doing this to me."

You create a 'little story' to explain to yourself why you're being abused. You start lying to yourself, and you start believing the lies. Not because you really are bad and wrong, but because that's the nature of shame. Now we come to the second basic problem:

2. You create a faulty story to explain the abuse you're enduring.Unfortunately you end up believing you're 'rotten to the core', rather than telling yourself the truth:

"I'm like a brilliant, dazzling diamond , who's beauty has been hidden by a paper-thin layer of crud. And I an the only one keeping that crud in place."

I'ts not possible to be 'rotten to the core'. It's so far from the truth that you must keep repeating the lies or they would fall away on their own. You must keep lying to yourself.

It's the only way to keep the shame in place. And out of this repetition, social anxiety disorder is born. It becomes part of the package of lies.

And the shame and the anxiety become habituated. It becomes ingrained, it becomes more and more internalized. It becomes 'the way things are'. It becomes 'the way Iam!

Shame and social anxiety disorder intertwine into a painful, tangled mess. Like being trapped in the middle of a briar patch; no matter what you do, it hurts. Life becomes more and more painful.

The first step to healing involved recognizing the complexity of the problem, and to be mindful of the shame you dump on yourself. Also look to any abusive relationships you may be involved in now.

(It may be time for drastic action!)

Once you're in a place of safety, then you can start working to heal the shame and anxiety. I've laid out a complete, step-by-step plan to escape anxiety. It works, but to keep the anxiety from coming back, you'll also want to end the shame- by returning it to the original offender, healing your inner child, and finally by stopping the shame you dump on yourself.

Shame won't end in a day-or even a week- but it can start ending today.

Anxiety can be dealt with much easier and faster than shame. Just go to reduce-fear.com for all the details.

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7 Human Emotions

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While dozens of human emotions exist, each of us has one of seven root emotions.

(For a general list of emotions, go to this page.)

Before I list the 7 human root emotions, it might be helpful to understand a little more about what the word 'emotion' really means.

An emotion is a package of thoughts and feelings. Nothing more- nothing less. You experience a never-ending flow of thoughts. (No surprise there!) But you also have a never-ending flow of feelings.

Out of these two streams- the stream of thought and the stream of feeling- come the artificial labels we call 'emotions'.

Anger is a package of thoughts and feelings. Fear, joy, happiness, sadness; they're all labels we use to try to explain and understand our thoughts and feelings. Emotions are labels we use in an attempt to gain some bit of control over what we're feeling.

Obviously, labels have their place. It's good to be able to describe what we experience. But it's much more important to understand the streams of thought and feeling.

Let it in: a never-ending flow of thoughts and feelings constantly and continuously bubble up inside you

Now let's look at those root emotions.

The 7 Human Root Emotions

The root emotions:

Shame.
Anger.
Fear.
Despair.
Lonliness.
Hurt.
Pity.

One of these seven is your root emotion.

It may be the one you feel the most, but it doesn't have to be.

Your root emotion resembles an anchor. It's the one you 'return to' as you go through your trials and tribulations.

You use it to justify and rationalize and explain to yourself 'why things are going the way they are'.

Oftentimes, it's the emotion you 'wallow' in. It's the one you're most comfortable with. It's the one that makes the most sense.

And usually it's the one emotion you never question:

"Of course I'm angry! Look what they did!"

"Of course I'm scared! Look what might happen!"

"Of course I feel shame! Look at my childhood!"

"Of course I'm lonely! Look at..."

Obviously, all of the 7 human root emotions are felt by everyone at one time or another. Because thoughts and feelings are a gift, as humans, we have the right to feel and think anything we want. Nothing can take away that right because it's a 'human gift'.

But you've latched onto one of those emotions. You've made it more than it was meant to be.

Start by going over the list of the 7 root emotions. Let yourself feel each one- one at a time. Like trying on a new outfit. Give yourself permission to feel each one with wreckless abandon. Immerse yourself. Fill yourself- fully and completely- with each one. Let it absorb into your skin. Imagine yourself as a sponge.

Now here's the key point:

While a sponge will just sit there filled with water, you can channel that emotion right through you.

Imagine your eliminatory canal. You take food and water into your mouth, the nutritive value is extracted by your digestive system, and the waste passes right through you and leaves your body.

In a similar fashion, you can take in each emotion, extract power and energy from it, and release it. When you 'clearly' feel any emotion, you'll always feel more alive. And it always releases.

As you go through these 7 emotions, look for the one that seems a little too familiar, a little too strong, a little to deep. Most likely, that's your root emotion.

Remember- the root emotion is the one you always return to. The problem is, it's also the one that can clog up your streams of thoughts and feelings.

As I mention in my free e-book on emotional healing, you have a well-spring inside you. The thoughts and feelings come through the well-spring.

Well, your root emotion is sort of like a layer of rocks that impede the flow of those streams. By learning about your root emotion -the 'heaviest' emotion you experience- you can work to alleviate its influence.

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