Dealing with Social Anxiety: Holidays, Birthdays & Social Gatherings [video]

I received such a positive response to my  Five Tips for Dealing with Social Anxiety During the Holidays, that I decided to get on video to elaborate on some of my most effective quick tips for social anxiety sufferers.

Watch the video below for tips on dealing with social anxiety during holidays, birthdays, and other social gatherings. For more social anxiety related videos, subscribe to the Learn to Live  YouTube channel.

Read the transcript of this video below:

Holidays can be so difficult for people with social anxiety. On the one hand, if I have social anxiety, I'm probably more comfortable with my relatives than I am with people outside of my family. But holidays often bring people into the home who I don't see very often - more extended family or people I have less contact with. So I can feel uncomfortable.

I might be pretty good at avoiding other situations - good in the sense that I can be skilled in avoiding, even though that's really not a positive thing, to avoid, because that keeps me stuck. Nevertheless, with holidays I probably feel a greater obligation to be there.

So we encourage people who have social anxiety who are getting together with others for the holidays to do a number of things:

Number one is to understand that these people mostly care about me, and they like me. I’m just going to start with that.

Number two, they probably aren’t going to judge me, because they care about me. I’m going to expect that they’re going to be supportive people.

Number three, I’m going to take every opportunity I can to nudge myself to be a little more outside of my comfort zone with regard to my social discomfort. I’m going to try to have conversations with people who maybe I don’t get to talk to very often, and I’m going to use that as an experiment to see if maybe engaging with them in a really active way winds up being a really pleasant experience that I didn’t need to be so afraid of in the first place.