Social Anxiety

September 9, 2009

Interview with Jonathan Berent author of Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties

www.social-anxiety.com

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Mike Carruthers:
Social anxiety, like the fear of public speaking or the fear of being in a room full of strangers – it’s a bigger problem than most people realize.

Social and performance anxiety is the biggest mental health problem behind depression and substance abuse.

Jonathan Berent, author of the book Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties

Now a lot of these people are perfectionists and obviously it’s an anxiety problem. But what is misunderstood is that it’s the obsessive mind that drives the problem. And obsessiveness is defined as sustained, ingrained worry. And there are countless people who are afflicted by this. But the people who have the problem don’t tell other people about it. They suffer with shame and embarrassment and humiliation.

If you have social anxiety, you probably have these three things going on in your head…

1.Too high an internal critical script.

2. Too much susceptibility to embarrassment and shame.

3. Low self-estem.

Countless numbers of individuals I work with have a very specific fear of being noticeably nervous, they fear blushing and sweating. If you go on the Internet now you can find a whole new industry where physicians will literally cut your nerves to stop blushing and sweating. Now do you realize how desperate someone’s going to have to be to do that?

Tomorrow, advice on dealing with social anxiety.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.