Do you freeze, have lots of fear in social situations? I may be able to help. (Long read) - General

I reasoned though this just now and it meanders and such so it's a long read sorry :c Ok. Do you freeze, have lots of fear in social situations? The problem is 2 parts of your brain are not working together correctly. You have: An intelligent reasoning part in the front, it is very large and can do many things. And you have less evolved and smaller sections below this. A long time ago we didn't have all that extra new grey matter, we were like other animals. Think of a lizard. If you try to squash the lizard it reacts very quickly. The lizard does not have a lot of fancy grey matter to consider all the outcomes, it doesn't need it. It only needs to know about danger, getting food, and such basic things. Once the eyes see the shadow of your foot coming down on him, the lizards brain will immediately use the memory and instructions it needs. It's a knee-jerk reaction. Here is the key, this less evolved part of the brain decides what is important, NOT your intelligent part. It does not decide with reasoning but instead just tells your intellect the PRIORITY of what to think about based on previous input. Should I think about this one thing, or think about something else. Think back to when you felt shy and were thinking too much about things in a situation. Did you feel fear? You probably thought you were wrong to feel that. But it is actually normal. The difference between shy and outgoing people is shy people hate the less developed part of their brain. It makes them feel awful and if only they could just figure out what to do in every single situation, they would not have to feel that fear any more. What you must do is think the fear producing part of your brain is more important. Don't fight it. Do not try to reason with it. Do not say to it " You are WRONG you are WRONG. I am not afraid! I will figure out what to do if anything goes wrong by thinking of all the possible outcomes. When I have complete control of the situation, I will no longer be afraid. Everything will be ok" But that never happens does it. Instead you only feel ok when you are on your computer, or reading, or when alone in a room with a pet. You have much more control in those situations. If you make a mistake in a game you can stop the game and think it over. You can redo it as many times as you wish until you get it right. You are in complete control. If you don't understand a book you can stop and think about it, or close the book and do something else. If you pet starts bothering you, you can chuck it out of your room and close the door. Usually your pet will do what it has always done with you though. Go back to your scary situation. You are thinking about all the things that could go wrong and you feel very very afraid. You only want to get out of the situation so you have time to think about what to do and then come back and know EXACTLY what needs to be done. 'Lets get out of here now!' you say! But you cannot. And you are running out of time. But you have to take action. Now your fear is enormous, because you don't have the solution. How can you act in the way that is best for you if you don't even know what you have to do? "Oh shit oh shit!" Panic to the max. "I'm going to fucking die! Fuck you, time! This is all your fault, time." Here is the solution and it sounds crazy at first. Concentrate on your fear as much as you can. Don't think about anything else. Nothing else is important. Think about how it makes you feel. Are you sweating? Does your chest feel odd? Do your eyes hurt? Are you shaking? You may start to feel like you are in one of those movie scenes where everything slows down and sounds are muffled and all you can hear is your heartbeat. You zone out, stare ahead. You are aware of how every part of your body feels. And most importantly you let the fear win. You are right fear. I am fucked. I give up. There is really no point in trying to figure out what to do. When you do this the less developed part of your brain is going to give up too. It had told the intellectual part of your brain what it needed to think about. But you ignored that and only thought about the instruction itself. But Biggins you say to me now.. If I do that it's going to take FOREVER for the primal part of my brain to see that there are is nothing for it's instructions to work with. There are no memories or procedures for it to call upon, there is only it calling out in vain. Until it gives up, like a fish out of water running out of air. But the time it's going to take for the fish to die, I don't have the kind of time, you say. You are right :) Sucks to be you doesn't it? Do you have a stupid friend that doesn't get nervous and does what he needs to do in social situations straight away? When you were both little, you both had to make a decision about what do in those scary situations. Your stupid friend did this: "Durr I don't know" He then showed visible fear to others around him. He didn't immediately try to cover it up, and concentrate on all the ways he could make himself look unafraid. He did not try to think of all the possible outcomes. All he could think about is "Well fuck, I am afraid and I don't know what to do." After some time, the primal part of his brain gave up on the flight or flight response, because it didn't have anything in the intelligent part of his brain to work with. So he did some random thing when his fear gave up, something that might work. It probably didn't. At times what he did was successful though. The primal part of his brain linked together what he saw and heard, when the action was successful, directly with the actions and procedures that he had used and recorded in the smart part of his brain. Slowly and with many failures, more links were made between these two parts of the brain. Links were also attached to different sections of the decision making process. Flowcharts emerged in his brain. And the conditions for each yes or no answer, for what direction to go in those flowcharts, fired off immediately. HE DOESN'T HAVE TIME FOR THE FEAR RESPONSE TO EVEN GET TO THE FIGHT OR FLIGHT STAGE SO LONG THAT IT IS INCREASINGLY NOTICEABLE TO OTHERS AND ESPECIALLY TO HIMSELF. What would happen if he did not have those links? What would happen he had never failed at anything, and had hid his fear? Fear would come and not leave, because it would tell him to figure out what to do until he figured it out. But your thoughts are simply not fast enough to figure out entire flowcharts and then go though them. The flowcharts are like mazes. You don't know where all the dead ends are. So you have to visit each one and then backtrack and find another path. Eventually you will figure out what might work by going through the maze and simulating enough dead ends in your mind. But there's no time for that when you don't have control of the situation. Your brain is simply not fast enough to simulate more than one reality at a time. All outcomes immediately. You place too much faith in that possibility. You could try for the rest of your life to avoid fear and failures in real life, but you will just get better and better at simulating more and more possible outcomes. Think of evolution. What if only a small percentage of unfit creatures had ever died in the history of the world? Those unfit creatures are the possible actions you can take. Most of them have to fail, to die. The creatures that still exist in the tree of life don't need to be designed again every-time one is born. There is no super computer in the centre of the world figuring out what creature is most likely to survive in each part of the earth at any given time. Why are you so smart then? Why are you so good at video games, maths, and programming? You have died many times in games, and this was ok. Eventually you could own noobs in a shootout without dwelling about everything they might do in the future. So your fear is very short lived, because when you have that virtual gun pointed at you, you don't think about it for awhile and let the fear move in endless circles. You react and survive. In social situations you are not going to die. But your brain thinks of it that way. Snap your fingers three times. What you see and fear in a social situation: - Is prioritized in the primal part of your brain. - Connects to some detailed flowcharts that were created based on some information. - This information is left over from many deleted failed ideas and actions. Action and failure are required for the information to exist. These links, like lighting to the ground, happen much faster than the snaps your fingers just made. Now you have to do that in real life, in the parts of your life where you don't allow failure, avoid fear, and avoid showing fear. Fear makes you take action. Failed actions are gone forever. Fear and failure are your best friends, not your worst enemy. Now go back to social situations and start what you were supposed to begin a long time ago. Fail. A lot. It's the only way to get rid of the crippling fear.

OP needs more spaces.

Why have fear when you can be Alpha?

I'll read Op in a min, but I have had 1/3 bottle of jagermeister, thats pretty much a confidence booster, i guess. shame im not in a social situation, unless you count facebook as that ive finished my jager :(

I'm a social animal

Roofies is like a practice round.

Yup, social anxiety.

op broke his enter key

nice read. I actually read through most of it. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" comes to mind. I for one suffer from over thinking a situation. Edit: Actually I usually over think things because of my low self confidence. (which playing the drums is helping me to fix woo)

All you have to do is drink a few shots every morning before school. Absolutely nothing can go wrong!

No

cool thread you really make some valid points

enter key is cruise control for seriousness

I know I could kick anybody's ass in this forum I don't think I'm afraid of anyone or their opinions, fuck you op

Thanks I needed this. Time to meet a nice girl.

That's... interesting :colbert:

Deleted some spaces lol. I went overkill on that because I think walls of text are easier to read with lots of spaces between them.

wow that explains alot i did not know. BTW ive roamed these damn forums for like 4 years and i dont know what alot of the stuff means like OP.

This was an interesting read. Being a freshman on a big college campus is pretty scary socially speaking. It isn't like I'm socially inept or anything, I have very close friends that have gone off to different places, and my girlfriend goes to another college just about an hour away. I think it's just intimidating seeing everybody fall into place so quickly already. This could be true of any social situation ever. I feel like I need to close myself off from a particular group of people if they're laughing and having a good time because I feel like they're already taken. OP is right about failing. Failing is one of the most important parts about developing social skills. It's gonna suck but it'll make you better at developing your own personality and realizing what's important to you. It's also important to realize that getting shut down by certain people doesn't mean that you've failed. It could just mean that person was an asshole who you wouldn't have liked to have been friends with anyway. Eh, thanks for trying to help people out OP.

That was a good read, I've never thought about it that way.

[QUOTE=Biggins;25390722] It's the only way to get rid of the crippling fear.[/QUOTE] Well drugs can help too but some types aren't too healthy.

[QUOTE=Intense Funkid;25391178]wow that explains alot i did not know. BTW ive roamed these damn forums for like 4 years and i dont know what alot of the stuff means like OP.[/QUOTE] OP = Optimus Prime. :smug: [editline]13th October 2010[/editline] [QUOTE=pie_is_good;25391829]Well drugs can help too but some types aren't too healthy.[/QUOTE] Correct, for example, prozac can cause suicidal thoughts.

Sounds like people on FP need some self-confidence