How to help a person with social phobia: 6 support tips

Social phobia is a more common anxiety disorder than we can imagine, although the intensity in which it occurs is usually varied.

There are cases in which people who present this psychological alteration manage to hide the discomfort that it produces, while in the most intense cases the limitation is very evident.

In this article we are going to review some tips and effective strategies to know how to help a person with social phobia in support of attending psychotherapy, so that little by little you overcome your irrational fear (phobia) towards other people, especially when it comes to large groups.

• Related article: "Types of Phobias: Exploring Fear Disorders"

What is social phobia?

To know how to help a person with social phobia, we must first understand what this disorder is. Social phobia is the irrational and intense fear that people feel in any situation related to social contact; the feeling of discomfort becomes more intense in direct relation to the number of people with whom it is necessary to interact and the degree of ignorance of these people.

As we saw previously, some people are able to hide this fear, but that does not mean that it stops significantly affecting the quality of life of the subject. This only indicates that the intensity of social phobia is lower than in other cases, where it is not possible to hide the anguish represented by the fact of having to interact with others.

It is important to clarify the difference between social phobia disorder and shyness, because on the surface they may appear to be the same. Basically, the difference lies in the intensity of the anguish and the thinking style of the people. Shyness is nothing more than a personality trait that manifests itself occasionally. That is, the triggers for shyness are expressed in specific circumstances in which you have to interact with others in person and in real time.

Social phobia, on the other hand, is very intense and deeply irrational, that is, there is no logical trigger that generates the fear that the subject feels towards interaction with other people; It is a picture of anxiety focused on interpersonal interactions, which manifests itself constantly and intensely in the subject's day-to-day life, damaging their quality of life even when no one is around (for example, avoiding going out to buy so as not to have to talk to the owner of the store).

How to help those with social phobia?

Now we are going to see a list of tips focused on providing support and help to those who suffer from social phobia.

1. Accompany therapy

For the proper treatment of phobias it is best to accompany the person to therapy with psychologists. The behavioral professional will be able to adequately evaluate the subject and determine what are the possible causes of social phobia.

It is important to keep in mind that each patient is unique, and it cannot be claimed to rely exactly on the reality of some cases to help others. That is why the most advisable thing is to attend therapy, to have a clearer picture in some way. The advice that we will see is of help and support to people who are going to therapy for their problems of social phobia, but this first step is essential, and no non-professional accompaniment can replace it.

• You may be interested: "Social phobia: what is it and how to overcome it?"

2. Help you reframe your thoughts

The second step for the person to stop feeling a lot of anguish in complex social situations is to encourage them to adopt other thoughts associated with interaction with others. Social phobia is intrinsically associated with a catastrophic (anxious) thinking style, in which he imagines that everything will go very wrong if he communicates with the others.

It is necessary to make the subject see that contact with other people does not have to end badly, but can even be a rewarding experience for all parties involved, as long as it is an interaction within the social norms of I respect.

On the other hand, it is also advisable to help him when it comes to relativizing the importance of rejection (or approval) by others. In this way will gradually accept the idea of ​​not always making a very good impression, so keep in mind that the latter is impossible for anyone.

3. Make it easier for you to adopt social tools

Social skills can be learned, and in cases of social phobia it is necessary to implement a didactic teaching method to through which the subjects can clearly understand how socialization works not only from the theory, but also from the practice. To do this, you can accompany someone with social phobia and create situations in which you can relate to more or less known people, so that this task does not become too difficult for you. Of course, always with the consent of those who suffer from this anxiety disorder.

4. Help you set goals

Overcoming social phobia goes through a staggered process, where the person will gradually exceed some goals. This will not only help you gain confidence and security, but it will also give you practice and implicit knowledge about how normal conversation unfolds.

Of course, These goals should be oriented towards sociability with other people, and should be concrete and short-term, so that they have the ability to motivate. For example, a good idea is to set an initial goal of starting a daily conversation for a week, so that as the days go by, this behavior becomes normal. In any case, this should always be done in coordination with the psychologist who performs the psychotherapy sessions, so that both processes (inside and outside the consultation) go to the same rhythm.

5. Exposure to crowded environments

An effective way to combat any type of phobia is make controlled exposures to what causes discomfort. In the case of social phobia, the procedure is to accompany the person to social events where they have to experience how other people speak in public and interact with each other. Again, this should be discussed beforehand with the person conducting the psychotherapy sessions.

6. Don't encourage impatience with results

Each person has their own pace of evolution, and it is not positive to try to accelerate the progression of people in the achievement of a goal, especially in cases of anxiety or social phobia.

If the person notices that there is pressure from us to see immediate results, he will begin to feel more anxious about it and will want to stop committing to therapy and our counseling approach to help her. In any case, it is important to be clear that this is a journey whose most spectacular results will be noticed in the medium and long term, that is, on a time scale of months.

Of course, it is better to emphasize simple short-term goals, such as the fact of fulfilling an agreed challenge in therapy for that weekend; In the first stage, when the social phobia is just beginning to be fought, the satisfaction of overcoming can be the source of motivation that replaces the fact It should be noted that he is a totally autonomous person in terms of social interactions (an experience that will occur later, in the last phases of the therapy).

Bibliographic references:

• Bravo, M. TO. and Padrós, F. (2013). Explanatory models of social phobia: A cognitive behavioral approach. Uaricha, 11 (24), 134-147.
• Hermans, D. Vantseenwegen, D. and Craske, M. G. (2008). Fears and Phobias: Discussions, Future Research, and Clinical Implications. In M. G. Craske, D. Hermans and Vansteenwegen (Eds.), Fears and phobias: from basic processes to clinical implications (pp. 257-264). Mexico: Modern Manual.
• Morissette, S.B., Tull, M.T., Gulliver, S.B., Kamholz, B.W., Zimering R.T. (2007). Anxiety, anxiety disorders, tobacco use, and nicotine: a critical review of interrelationships. Psychological Bulletin. 133 (2): pp. 245 - 272.
• Rapee, R.M., Heimberg R.G. (1997). A cognitive-behavioral model of anxiety in social phobia. Behavior Research and Therapy, 35 (8): pp. 741 - 756.