Suffering Social Anxiety
Introduction
In “Managing Social Anxiety – Part 1” I introduced social anxiety as a common and troubling emotion that interferes with, if not makes impossible, a social phobic’s successful living and the satisfaction of a wide variety of their human needs. Here in Part 2 of that blog post, I discuss Exposure Therapy and explain how hypnosis enhances the ease and effectiveness of that therapy to overcome social anxiety, as well as other fears.
Exposure Therapy
A number of approaches have been tried over the centuries to overcome the difficulties that our fears present to us. Consider, for instance, what happens with Exposure Therapy in the context of dealing with fears like shyness and social anxiety.
The idea that emotions are physical drivers away from or towards something is fundamental to Exposure Therapy. When someone suffers social anxiety, that emotion drives them away from social situations and social contact. But the more they can get themselves to engage in those situations and have social contact, the less fear they can experience. The problem is, how does the social phobic, especially one who experiences heightened fear, get themselves to engage in those social situations and have social contact? To understand that, let’s first get clear about how Exposure Therapy works with any fear.
Gradual Exposure
Exposure Therapy involves voluntary exposure (to what’s feared) that is gradual; by having more and more contact with what scares them, they become desensitized to the fear.
Gradual Exposure can involve initially exposing the phobic to what’s feared for a very short period of time, and then increasing the amount of time for each subsequent exposure. For example, someone who is afraid of swimming in an unheated pool can start by dipping a toe in the water for just a few seconds before taking it out. And then each time they dip, they do so for a little longer then the previous dip.
Alternatively, Gradual Exposure can involve initially exposing the phobic to something only slightly similar to what’s fear, and then each subsequent exposure involves something more and more similar to what’s feared.
As an example, someone who has a spider phobia would, over a period of time, go from exposure to an unrealistic representation of a spider (like a cartoon spider) the first week of desensitization to being next to a real live spider on week six. In between, they might see a see a photo of a spider on week two, see a toy spider on week three, touch that toy spider on week four, see a movie of a spider on week five, and on week six, see an actual live spider.
Use of Hypnosis in Exposure Therapy
Exposure Therapy can be very effective if the person can be induced to remain calm through the gradual exposure process (sometimes known as “systematic desensitization”). That’s where the use of hypnosis comes in, since being in hypnosis is being in a relaxed, calm suggestible state of mind. If the phobic is put into hypnosis before each exposure, it will be easier and faster to go through the process and achieve desensitization.
The idea is that in the relaxed, calm state of hypnosis, spiders will to start to feel like a “normal” part of the phobic’s experience more quickly and more easily; and thus getting themselves to go towards rather than away from spiders will be much easier. Nowadays, hypnotherapy and/or self-hypnosis would a good tool for a would-be lion-tamer to use to overcome their fear of putting their head in a lion’s mouth.
As for the social phobic, the same idea is true: systematic desensitization of their social anxiety can only work if the social phobic can be induced to remain calm through the exposure process. Putting them into hypnosis before the gradual exposure to social situations and social contact is a very effective way to achieve and sustain the calm state necessary for the systematic desensitization process to work.
As an example, a social phobic would be induced into a hypnotic state before each exposure over a period of time (e.g. once a week for six weeks), going from exposure to a cartoon representation of a group meeting the first week of desensitization to being in a group meeting on week six. In between, they might see a see a photo of a group meeting on week two, see a video of a group meeting on week three, listen in a room next to a group meeting on week four, stand at the doorway of a group meeting on week five, and on week six, attend an actual group meeting.
Flooding as a Faster Form of Exposure Therapy
Another kind of exposure therapy takes a less gradual approach and is known as ‘Flooding’. This might involve, for example, the spider phobic being put straightaway into a room full of spiders, with the idea that fully experiencing their worst fear–and surviving it–will put an end to that fear.
So does Flooding work? Yes, it can work, provided the person undergoing the therapy is taught to relax deeply. Unfortunately, there are many reported cases where hypnosis (or some other effective relaxation techniques) was not applied to spider phobics who had to be treated to help them recover from the effects of this kind of therapy when it’s gone wrong. These are the ones who didn’t get better, the ones who were deeply traumatized by being put in a room of spiders straightaway, or, in the case of a social phobic, having to speak in front of a hundred people when they were still chronically shy.
Hypnosis for Treating Fears
Hypnosis, used sensibly, is highly effective for exposing someone in a safe and relaxed way to a situation they had been avoiding and don’t want to. As far as your emotional brain is concerned, if you have ever relaxed deeply and felt, while in hypnosis a few times, what being at a party would be like, this is a sufficiently strong indication that this situation is not dangerous, and that this kind of social event can now be “retagged” as something you can potentially go safely towards before you’ve even been to an actual party. As another example, someone who hasn’t left the house for years can repeatedly practice “leaving their house” in self-hypnosis and “experience it” before they go out the door in real life. The exposure therapy is fully within their own control, in sync with the relaxed mind and body they achieve using self-hypnosis or with an hypnosis audio or video specifically for agoraphobics.
When they then “do it for real”, it will already feel more familiar and therefore not as threatening. The previously dreaded social event may even, dare it be said, turn out to be relaxing and fun.
It’s important to understand here that we are talking about more than just what a person believes. Feelings and thoughts can be at odds. You can fully believe something is good for you and still fearfully flee from it. You can fully believe something (or someone) is bad for you but still be emotionally driven towards it (or them). Cognitive approaches to dealing with fears are often ineffective, because fears aren’t driven so much by “faulty thinking” as by more primitive emotional conditioning geared towards survival. It is much easier to access, and modify, these primitive drivers through the use of hypnosis than through reasoning.
When helping someone with a social phobia, it’s often obvious that the phobia has gone the moment they open their eyes and report how they are feeling. Inducing a calm, deeply relaxed hypnotic state on several occasions prior to systematic desensitization of their previously feared trigger can transform a phobic’s response. They know it wasn’t “real” – but nonetheless a new positive blueprint for responding with calm and being in flow when in social situations has become established in their subconscious. Being socially relaxed is the new “normal”.
The new hypnosisdownloads.com course entitled “10 Steps to Overcome Social Anxiety,” like all the ten steps courses they offer, has a hypnotic download for each step of the way. This is partly because social skills can be developed and honed during hypnotic rehearsal but also because the course creators want people to experience hypnotic “safe” social experiences before they go into these situations for real. In this way the horrible feelings of fear can gently be replaced with happier feelings of pleasurable anticipation and positive expectation when it comes to socializing and meeting new people.
