Social anxiety and shyness are more around us than we think. Social anxiety is anxiety, or a sense of extreme fear, about social situations, interactions with other people, and generally how we perceive social settings. Social anxiety is often formed during childhood, and usually remains unnoticed until adolecense or early adulthood. Social anxiety is usually a great burden to those individuals impacted, since it normally results in a small social circle, and the inability to engage in new relationships and friendship. However, at a business level, social anxiety also has a great negative impact on career issues; socially anxious people often have a harder time finding a job, they usually work for lower wages, and they have an extreme hard time getting up the career ladder.

The degree of social anxiety is different for each individual. Some individuals might experience social anxiety in only a few particular social settings, whereas others experience it all the time. Typical symptoms for social anxiety are a sense of fear and a great level of stress, which might occur in any of the following situations (this list is non-exhaustive):

• Speaking in front of a large audience
• Being introduced to new people
• Being approached by strangers
• Being in the center of attention
• Speaking with people with authority (e.g. superiors, managers, the police)
• Etc…

Socially anxious people often live unfulfilling lives, have small social circles, and due to the lack of frequent and intensive social interactions, they are verbally not as competent as others. Additionally, social isolation may lead to increased stress, depressions, potentially leading to physical illnesses (skin diseases, cardiovascular disease, etc.).

Often, social anxiety is the result of particular negative experiences in the past. These experience in its turn create beliefs, which start regulating our behaviour. The one and only way to overcome social anxiety and shyness is by creating experiences, which are positive and demonstrate that existing beliefs are wrong and do not apply. The problem here, is that in order to create these experiences, the socially anxious person will need to talk with many different people and approach them, which is impossible due to his belief system. It is a mean viscious circle.

There are different therapies addressing social anxiety, such as behavioural therapy. Behavioural therapy builds on the fact that each person has the potential to develop, and step out of his/her comfort zone using little steps. Behavioural therapy may take place in groups or not, and usually the patient will receive small assignments for which he needs to step out of his comfort zone step-by-step, as well as self-assessment assignments. The goal of behavioural therapy is to ‘override’ existing behaviour by creating new, positive, experiences. The steps taken are usually small, and possible for the patient to take. Each next assignment is built on the previous one.

It might be extremely hard to overcome social anxiety, but it differs from person to person. Sometimes, a person is able to step out of his comfort zone by himself, and break the invisible barrier which is withholding him completely. However, more often this is quite impossible to most people; the fear felt in such situation is simply too strong. For individuals suffering from social anxiety, shyness, or anything which they feel is not allowing them to lead a free and happy life, it is recommended to seek the help of a professional. The professional should be able to understand the situation of the patient and develop a step-by-step plan.

There are many programs (both offline as well as online), as well as professionals, which make it easy to themselves by simply recommend patients to break the barrier and do it. These programs and people show a great lack in professionalism, since they obviously do not understand how social anxiety and shyness impacts an individual in real life.

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