I’ve come to learn that conventional advice for social anxiety doesn’t address the problem. It puts a bandaid on it and teaches you to live with it; to go on existing and putting yourself out there despite feeling in pain and out of sorts because the most important thing isn’t feeling ok, it’s looking ok.

Deception becomes the new game when you look to the common advice out there for social anxiety. What can you do to appear confident and normal around the people you see? What can you do to hide the panic you’re feeling and put on a mask like everything is fine?

Because the theory goes if you can “fake it” long enough then eventually you’ll make it. If you can just think positively and pretend as if you’re already someone confident then soon it will become your new reality.

So you focus all your energy and attention on fixing your appearance and behavior and how you show up around people. You direct all your conscious effort to acting in a more pro-social and outgoing manner. You push out of sight all the stuff that doesn’t fit the mold of this new person you’re trying to become – all the feelings and thoughts about yourself you don’t like – and you try to create a new person on top, believing this is the key to leaving behind your past.

But it never quite goes away inside. As good as you get at stuffing away how you feel and putting forth a more confident side of yourself, it still nags and eats away at you and causes you to experience a deep doubt and uncertainty and background anxiety; a fear of relapsing and losing all your hard won progress and people seeing through to how it really is.

It’s a Losing Game

Who wins when you try to fake and be something you’re not? Not you. Not the people around you. It makes connection impossible. It creates more fear and tension because now you’ve got the added worry of people seeing through the mask. Which, if that happens, opens up a floodgate of shame because people find out you’re not who you’re presenting yourself to be.

And at that point the jig is up and it makes you want to hide away your face forever. It makes you feel like all your hard work is for nothing. That is, until you redouble your efforts and try even harder to keep the mask in place the next time you’re around people.

And on it goes.

The cycle continues.

When you could’ve just avoided all that crap in the first place and actually worked on your issues instead of avoiding and trying to cover them up. Yes, it’s harder. Yes, it’s not an immediate change that instantly makes you into the person you want to be.

But it’s real. It allows you to actually change and grow. It addresses the fear inside in such a way that it permanently goes away. It enables you to be yourself around people because you have the internal sense you’re ok. You’ve addressed the emotional weakness and built a strong foundation that gives a real feeling of security inside.

Become Someone Truly Strong

It was the best thing that happened to me, when the facade I had built up of me being this super-friendly and outgoing and confident person finally crumbled. When I finally realized this front wasn’t going to get me what I desired in life – real relationships with people and a sense of actually being ok in myself.

It hurt. It caused me to become suicidal for a month. It spelled so much doom to my world and feeling like it was all over – all my hard work to try and overcome social anxiety had been for absolutely nothing. But it was the thing that allowed me to finally realize – if you want to change your life you MUST fix the foundation and get to the heart of it. You can only cover over the problem and pretend to be someone different for so long. Eventually your deeper issues will catch up to you and bite you in the ass.

So better just to work on them in the beginning. Pop the blister and let the pus out. Don’t just wrap around it – because that will still leave you with a sore area you have to tread so carefully around.

Otherwise…

An explosion of pain will result.