Ask HN: How do you deal with severe social anxiety? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deal with severe social anxiety?

3 pointstollis4 comments

I have had a lot of social anxiety ever since I was a child.

Small encounters (in other people's minds) have always become collosal conflicts in my mind, making me feel that social interactions are far too much cost and too little benefit.

I often spend hours thinking about all of the possible meanings of encounters I have with people, oftentimes only able to sleep for a few hours a night because I go over everything in my head so much.

I'm sure there are other techies who have dealt with this issue in different degrees. My question is, is it possible to overcome it?

The reason I ask is, I feel that it is now becoming a serious impediment to my ability to enjoy my life and even to my ability to make a living.

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I would try joining groups (of any kind) and taking some kind of community public speaking course. I dealt with what you are dealing now (maybe to a lesser degree) and threw myself into a professional position that required constant meetings and presentations. Then I started doing public speaking events and some lecturing on the side. It helped a lot.

I've suggested these activities because they're all structured. You may be stressed out by the unpredictability of social encounters. As scary as public speaking is, I found the structure (I'm the speaker, you're the audience, this is the topic, we have 45 minutes) much easier to deal with than even the simplest chat with someone.

Yes - see a (good) cognitive behavioral therapist. Done properly, you'll get a better feel for why your brain thinks certain things or acts in certain ways and how to take more control over those processes (or to ignore/reduce aberrant trains of thought).

In theory you can get quite a way entirely by yourself if you're determined (programs are even being devised for potential Mars astronauts to conduct CBT on themselves during the journey), but I think an external guide can be useful to put things into perspective initially.

Disclaimer: I have attended such a therapist but for OCD, not social anxiety. Worked pretty well at an hour a week for a couple of months. But YMMV.

Try yoga. You may be surprised at the world that opens up.

St. John's Wort helps some people. Look for a quality brand that is standardized for hyperforin and not just hypericin.

Exercise can also help. If you can, try vigorous cycling or something similar for 1 hour or more each day (work up to it).

This doesn't help the immediate term and should not be considered / waited upon as a remedy, but age also seems to decrease the anxiety. Some people say "you know yourself better" and/or "just don't care as much what others think", but I speculate that it has as much to do with lower levels of hormones, including stress hormones, as anything else.

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