Introduction
Since the discovery of such phenomenon as social phobia, the scientists and most of the ordinary people were confused about the distinctions between an ordinary shyness and the social anxiety problems. Fortunately, we can clearly distinguish two these notions nowadays and even help the people who suffer from them with the help of a little assessment as assessment plays an important role in determining the problem of the human being.
Unfortunately, some of the researches takes the personal feature of shyness and apply a pejorative meaning to it. The others doubt that shyness has the same nature as the social anxiety and barely have anything to do with it. But the truth is, two terms are completely different phenomena with their own stimuli, symptoms and treatment so we should be able to differentiate them with the help of various assessments such as tests. That is why our test is supposed to determine whether your very open and communicative person, shy or just have a social anxiety disorder.
According to the recent studies:
Social anxiety has many differences from shyness such as nature and the scale of the problem.
We can easily consider shyness just as a personal virtue.
Opposed to the social anxiety disorder, shyness is not accompanied by a bad mood, negative thoughts and emotions. Shyness is just an ordinary trait with which normal people live.
It is true that many people who suffer from the social phobia and social anxiety disorder are too shy, but shyness is not a signal for a future to be social anxiety disorder.
Main Characteristics of Two Phenomena
In fact, not all people who suffer from the social anxiety disorder possess the trait of shyness and we know it from our own life experience since we have been working with such people for many years. And when they overcome their social phobia and introverted attitude, they become very social, amiable and communicative people.
Unfortunately, there is no distinctive definition of the t phobia or social anxiety disorder and moreover the definition has been shifting and changing for years since the government exposed the statistics about too big amount of people who suffers from such a disorder.
The latest research discovers that in most cases the social anxiety disorder lasts approximately for 6 months and can be overcome for such period of time. That is why, our test is very important since it can determine whether it is an ordinary shyness or some more complicated disorder. It also will help in determining the level of anxiety as well as the tool with the help of which we can overcome it.
The real problem is that some of the psychologists treat the shy people just as if they suffer from the social anxiety disorder which results in people acquiring real problems with introverted attitude and wasting of the valuable resources. And opposed to that many psychologists and psychiatrists misdiagnosed social anxiety and think that it is not a big deal, so many people lack the required attention and treatment.
There are no doubts that both of the phenomena possess similar features, but the differences are brighter and more distinctive. Even if we have a look at the definitions of two terms, we may notice that they are quite different.
Shyness is just a combination of anxiety and hesitation in the particularly unexpected situations which make people nervous about what other people will think of them. It is an ordinary feature of many people and it is also characterized as a normal state of a human behaviour. In most of the psychology books shyness is described as a simple human feature.
Social anxiety disorder is described as a big fear and feeling of being frightened to death by the specific situations that requires other people`s attention which results in people evading such situation or undergoing a big stress.
So, as we can see from their definitions, both terms are quite different and they required strict boundaries of distinguishing. Unfortunately, the social anxiety`s desire to avoid such situations make people do not participate in activities they need to or even want to.
Signs of Social Phobia
Provided that social anxiety is not a normal phenomenon that is observed in such a big amount of people, they are completely different things. The people who have shyness as a character feature does not react negatively on it and they do not consider it a bad thing, while people with the social phobia describe their emotions and attitude as negative.
As for the social phobia, it may be triggered by very different stimuli apart from the simple shyness which may be quite different and individual for any person that have a social anxiety disorder ("Consultations: Social anxiety disorder", 2013). In most cases these triggers are:
Getting acquainted with some new people
The state of being in the middle of people`s attention
A situation that oblige a person to start a conversation
The speaking in front of an audience
A state of being followed or watched by some person
The critic from other people.
Another problem is that people misdiagnose themselves with the social anxiety disorder just because they are too nervous and shy on some important meetings, but the main sign for shyness to shift into the disorder is when this shyness and constant fear happens not only withe the stimulus situations, but in the everyday life as a common thing.
How can we treat such people?
Self-help
First of all we must say that the success of all the activities depends on the shy person and it is only up to her to overcome all the social phobias and disorders. So, before starting taking medications a person should start from itself. A shy person can join some club that will gather people of its interests. In this way the person will learn how to freely communicate with others and gain some self-confidence.
A person should be able to know how to keep calm and relax itself with the help of various techniques. And for keeping your nerves in the right order a person should take up reading books, playing musical instruments, but unfortunately you can hardly do these things when you are caught in a distressful situation.
When a person feels a big urgent to change something in itself and feel that the problem of the shyness or disorder is personally in him, it would be much easier if a person draw a picture of himself and write a description so it would be much easier to know what you would like to change.
The certain changes should be done about the philosophy and the lifestyle of a person. The person who suffers from shyness or social phobia should listen to what other people are saying rather than expressing his own thoughts. Another important thing that ought to be done is stopping justifying your refuses to go out and communicate with people with the disorder and shyness and starting working on the problem.
Professional help
People who suffer from shyness and social phobia should be trained in some social and communication skills by the real professionals in order to be able to overcome their fears of being embarrassed in front of other people. Some people possess these skills from nature while some people have to acquire them in such an artificial way. The main idea of this approach is to practice the feedback, but for a start, we may use books, movies or videos so that a person can reflect on them and only after that try to use the human interaction (Pelissolo, Moukheiber, Lobjoie, Valla & Lambrey, 2011).
It is not a secret the anxiety is not a permanent, but a temporary state, so it means that the person feel fear only in the sharp situation, so it goes away with the time. The second approach is called graded self exposure it determines the level of the fear and categorize it. The essential thing about the approach is that the patient has to write down all of such situations and classify or categorize it according to the level of anxiety. From the scariest situations up to the least scary ones. By thinking about this situation you make them more common in your mind and you probably will not be scared of them in the future.
In the conclusion we must add that determining your level of shyness and social anxiety may play a very big role and determine the treatment for the problems if you have any. The overview of the researches shows that there is nothing bad or strange in the phenomenon of shyness so it is a common characteristic for many people which has no deviant hue.
References
Consultations: Social anxiety disorder. (2013). The Pharmaceutical Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.1211/pj.2013.11114328
Pelissolo, A., Moukheiber, A., Lobjoie, C., Valla, J., & Lambrey, S. (2011). IS THERE A PLACE FOR FEAR OF BLUSHING IN SOCIAL ANXIETY SPECTRUM?. Depression And Anxiety, 29(1), 62-70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/da.20851
