Social Anxiety

Social Anxiety is the experience of fear, anxiety or panic in social situations. You may fear being around people, feeling that you are being watched, criticised or judged. You may fear embarrassing yourself or making a fool of yourself in some way, being rejected or disgraced. You may experience feelings of dread and nervousness leading up to a given situation. Perhaps you analyse and re-run situations in your mind over the event, questioning how you could have performed better?

If you suffer from social anxiety, you may find everyday tasks to be a real ordeal – tasks which most people take for granted, such as speaking on the telephone, shopping, working and socialising.

This leads to an avoidance of situations and depending on the severity, can lead to phobic reactions.

If you suffer from social anxiety, you may be reluctant to talk about it or to seek help; this is very common. The condition is not widely recognised amongst the general public. In fact it was only recognised as a disorder in the 1980s.

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