How to Recognize and Manage Your Social Anxiety Triggers

While everyone deals with anxiety occasionally, people with a social anxiety disorder or SAD can experience excessive or persistent anxiety that interferes with their daily lives.

If you are someone who has social anxiety, it is crucial that you identify your anxiety triggers to be able to manage them.

Your triggers can either be external or internal, which include emotions, sounds, smells, things, or people you see around. It can be specific social situations like meeting new people in social gatherings or parties or speaking or performing in public.

According to experts, these triggers are usually things your brain perceives as dangerous. For some, these triggers cause shortness of breath, an upset stomach, and muscle tension. More than physical indications, these triggers can change your behavior.

Here are three critical steps to recognizing and managing social anxiety triggers.

1. Identify your triggers

Different people have different triggers. Here are some common anxiety triggers:

• Performances

Performing or public speaking is a common anxiety trigger.

• Social events

Gatherings that require you to interact or make small talk with people you do not know can trigger your feelings of anxiety. It may help if you are with someone you know.

• Conflicts

You may find arguments, disagreements, or relationship problems triggering or worsening your anxiety.

• Negative thinking

With anxiety, your mind controls your body. The words you say to yourself can either worsen or lessen your anxiety. If you tend to say negative things to yourself, it can trigger more powerful feelings of anxiety. On the other hand, learning to focus on positive things can help alleviate your negative emotions.

• Stress

There are various things that can stress you out daily. If stress leads you to not getting enough sleep, skipping meals, or drinking alcohol, your anxiety may worsen too.

• Medications and health issues

Certain medications or prescriptions may trigger your anxiety symptoms because of their active ingredients. In addition, upsetting health diagnoses may also start or worsen your anxiety.

2. Manage your triggers

Once you have identified your social anxiety triggers, developing coping strategies is essential. Coping strategies are techniques you can use to manage your anxiety at the moment.

• Practice performing or public speaking.

It will help if you find ways to practice public speaking. This method is for those with mild-to-moderate social anxiety disorders or those not likely to experience panic attacks when facing these situations. If there are groups in your community that you can join to practice public speaking, it may be a helpful step to overcoming your fear.

• Slowly introduce yourself to anxiety-inducing situations.

What are the situations that trigger your fear? Identify these situations and try to slowly expose yourself to them while trying to relax so you can tolerate your anxiety. You can ask for help from a close friend to go with you so the experience won't be abrupt. Or you can start socializing with a small group of people. Do this repetitively in different places, such as going to a cafe, a restaurant, a grocery store, and others. Indeed, you will eventually feel more comfortable going to these places and ease yourself into going to bigger venues. Your psychologist can also help you work on situational exposure.

• Ask for help from the people you love.

Letting your family or close friends know about your situation and asking for their help can aid in overcoming your anxiety. Getting their help, encouragement, and support will benefit you a lot.

• Work on making your outlook in life positive and be kind to yourself.

Don't try to make your social anxiety disappear instantly. Your small daily progress is already a huge step toward getting there. Take time to analyze the situations that trigger your anxiety and work on relaxation and distraction techniques.

Experimenting with different coping strategies is essential to find what works best for you. Not all coping strategies work for everyone, so finding what works for you and incorporating it into your daily routine is essential. Also, remind yourself that people are more focused on themselves than on you because they are busy thinking about what they need to do or what they need to say. Most of the time, the things you are overly aware of about yourself are not noticeable to others.

3. Practice self-care

As you develop the coping strategies that work for you, self-care is also essential to managing your social anxiety. Start doing things that will enhance your physical and mental wellness.

Studies show that some physical activities like jogging can lessen your anxiety. Progressive muscle relaxation – flexing and releasing groups of muscles in your body while keeping your attention on feeling the release – can help. Some studies also show doing yoga for a few months can help lower overall anxiety. Certain yoga types involve deep breathing, which helps reduce your blood pressure and heart rate. One yoga class may improve your mood and lessen your feeling of anxiety.

Other self-care activities such as eating a healthy and balanced diet, getting enough sleep, engaging in hobbies, and walking or any activities that make you spend time outdoors can reduce your overall stress and anxiety levels. You must consistently do these and make them part of your daily routine.

We acknowledge that anxiety can be challenging to manage, but you can take action to overcome it with the steps we discussed. If you continue to struggle with anxiety despite these strategies, seeking professional help from a therapist or mental health provider may be helpful.