Any advice/tips for easing social anxiety(conversation/social skills)
Any SAD sufferers have any tips that helped them to become comfortable engaging with people?
@wv2864
You may find this CBT based self-help programme useful.
@wv2864 I like what Belis shared and that does help many. We also offer mindfulness exercises here and self help guides. Deep breathing techniques before social encounters have been shown to work (mindfulness exercises can help with this). Learning how to desensatize can help also
(but everyone is different). https://www.simplypsychology.org/Systematic-Desensitisation.html
@wv2864 There's something really simple that helps me sometimes. I think about how a lot of people experience social anxiety and how they might be struggling with it too, but I may not know. Maybe they're good at hiding it. Also, when summoning the courage to initiate a conversation, sometimes I tell myself that I'm doing the person a favor because it's possible that they may have been wanting to talk to me, too, but they were too anxious about it!
Something else that helps me is telling myself something like this, "They don't care about how my ____ look(s). They see me as an individual. They are not negatively judging me. I'll be okay. They are friendly. If I feel like I don't want to keep talking after a while, then I don't have to."
