What Should I Do If I Have Social Anxiety?

Some people are stronger in social skills, while others are weaker, and some even suffer from social anxiety disorder. Common solutions to social anxiety disorder include psychological treatment and medication.

1. Behavioral therapy is the preferred method for treating fear disorders. Systematic desensitization and exposure therapy have good effects on social anxiety disorder. The basic principles are: first, to eliminate the conditional connection between the fear object and the anxiety and fear response; second, to counteract avoidance reactions. Many patients have learned how to avoid objects and scenarios that cause them fear without affecting their daily social functions during the course of the disease.

2. Systematic desensitization is widely used and can be divided into real-life desensitization and imagined desensitization. The first stage is relaxation training. In the second stage, patients are asked to list the situations that trigger social fears according to the severity of their fear responses, and then start with the situation that causes the weakest fear response, gradually exposing the patient to these situations or imagining themselves in these situations. Each step is done until the patient adapts and feels completely relaxed, and then proceeds to the next more stressful situation until the strongest situation no longer causes fear.

Medication cannot simply eliminate patients' fear emotions, but benzodiazepines and propranolol can alleviate the physical anxiety responses caused by fear and reduce the autonomic nervous system response. SSRIs such as paroxetine and sertraline are effective in treating social anxiety disorders. Tricyclic antidepressants such as imipramine and clomipramine, and monoamine oxidase inhibitors such as moclobemide, are also effective in treating phobias, but the adverse effects of these drugs limit their application.