Social anxiety: why the mundane can be terrifying
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Version 0 of 1. One of the weirder traits humans have is the ability to be deeply unnerved by situations or contexts that many others would find utterly mundane. There are many examples of this. Here’s one from my own life: I don’t like using the phone. Never have. As a child, I would do anything other than use the cursed device. I’d walk to someone’s house rather than call them. Admittedly I lived in a small Welsh valley where nobody was more than 5 minutes away, but still. I’m glad this happened before mobile phones, or I’d have been like an arachnophobe in a world where pet tarantulas were mandatory. I’ve managed to get over it somewhat as an adult after working in a medical dissection theatre where part of my job was calling the recently bereaved and explaining what was happening to their deceased loved one’s remains. In this scenario, you either develop an acceptable phone manner or you don’t keep the job for very long (not that I especially wanted a job where I kept company with cadavers, but I still had rent to pay). But to this day, I’m loth to use the phone. Call me and you’ll likely get monosyllabic grunting, as if the phone’s been answered by a passing gorilla with a hangover. But it hasn’t. I just don’t like talking on the phone. It’s partly the total lack of body language and facial expression. These things are very important in human communication, and I like to have as much info as possible when talking in real-time, so without it I feel nervous. But I also don’t like bothering people, and if I call someone I can’t shake the feeling I’m interrupting something incredibly important, like performing CPR on an asthmatic child. So yes, I don’t like the phone. Some people may be baffled by this; how can something so mundane and commonplace be so unnerving? Well, I’m not alone. And it’s not just the phone; there are countless mundane or everyday situations or actions that cause people to get cripplingly anxious. Ordering food at a busy counter, job interviews, eating with people, group introductions, using lifts (I once absent-mindedly ate an apple while in a full lift, and the reaction I got meant I may as well have just urinated in the corner). Even very successful people have weird paranoias about certain situations. One thing that all these things seemingly have in common is that they embody a fear or worry about the potential reaction of others. Other people are the key factor, hence the label “social anxiety”. While any who experience this tend to consider themselves weird or unusual for it, this is far from the case. Some people have it so bad that it crosses the line into “social phobia” and can be quite debilitating, so much so it has its own dedicated NHS page. So social anxiety is commonplace, we’ve established that. But WHY is this the case? Why would our brains suddenly decide that an ordinary social occurrence is something akin to facing down a predator? A surprising amount of research has gone into this. One main theory is that it stems from an intrinsic motivation to make a good impression on an audience (be the audience members real or imagined). Humans tend to care greatly about their status within a group, even if it is on a subconscious level, so in any scenario where they believe they will be evaluated or judged (rightly or wrongly), they’re going to be motivated to do well. And here’s where performance anxiety can kick in. One thing the human brain is annoyingly good at is imagining a worst-case scenario. There’s a phenomenon known as counterfactual thinking. This is where we dwell on possible outcomes of actions we didn’t actually take. What if I’d given a different answer to that interview question? What if I’d put 7 instead of 19 on my lottery ticket? What if I’d sweetly kissed my date goodnight rather than thrown up on her shoes? Our brains typically spend copious amounts of time dwelling on and worrying over things that DID NOT and CANNOT HAPPEN! It may well be a means of more thoroughly/effectively learning from past behaviours, but it’s still annoying. But if the brain is so obsessed with negative outcomes that didn’t happen, how much worse will it be over things that could happen? And people experiencing social anxiety know this feeling. The creeping dread of doing something that will end up earning the disdain, contempt or, potentially worse, pity of those around us can lead to the intense anxiety we feel. This isn’t to belittle or undermine those who experience genuine chronic anxiety, that’s a whole different matter. But this more widespread social anxiety keeps occurring, and what’s causing it? Some point to factors occurring in our development, or a sort of feedback-loop of triggers and avoidant behaviours, and there’s even the possibility that it might be helpful. Yes, helpful. Sometimes, stress and pressure can increase performance. This is actually a reliable occurrence, and gave rise to the Yerkes-Dodson law. This law can be represented by a simple curve, and basically shows that as nervousness and stress increase, performance increases. You’ve heard people say they work better when a deadline is imminent? This is probably true. And maybe the brain is piling the pressure on in social situations where you want to impress – to increase your performance, upping the odds of you doing so? But this increase in performance only occurs up to a point. And that point is all important: too much stress or pressure and your performance declines to nothing. People can’t function properly when they’re incredibly stressed, and it shows. Perhaps this explains everything about social anxiety. We want people to be impressed with us (or at least approve of us) so our brains increase stress by making us worry over the possible negative outcomes. But clearly, the line between increased and decreased performance is crossed all too often, and we end up in a gibbering, hyperventilating mess. Or close to that. This doesn’t apply to everyone of course. There are people in this world who are so confident that they can’t even comprehend the possibility that others might consider their appearance/actions/statements utterly ludicrous. On an entirely unrelated note, have you been watching The Apprentice? It’s back on again. Dean Burnett wrote this article in response to a conversation with @girlonthenet and @orbette. He’s on Twitter too (duh) as @garwboy |