What are the treatments for social anxiety? Are there any medications? And how do they work?
Social anxiety disorder can result in fear of social situations. It can also lead to avoidance of these situations and feelings of dread or embarrassment. People who suffer from social anxiety therapy learn to face their fears by gradually replacing them with new, more comfortable and successful social situations. This cognitive behavioral therapy is often combined with medication – sometimes both – to help control symptoms.
In general, the best method to treat social phobia is through medication – either by taking it on its own or by combining it with cognitive behavioral therapy. You’re usually required about 12 to sixteen weekly sessions. The objective is to slowly build confidence, find new coping skills to help you deal with the embarrassing situations that frighten you the most, and eventually get out of the anxiety-induced trance into which they usually fall when exposed to real social situations. This process has been found to be effective for many patients with social anxiety disorder.
When combined with psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy can also be effective. The idea is that your distorted expectations about social situations are the problem that causes your social anxiety. By replacing those expectations with more realistic ones, cognitive restructuring therapy helps you discover new ways of thinking about social situations. Cognitive restructuring uses logic and self-evaluation to identify your distortions and beliefs about yourself and others. Once you learn new, more accurate ways of thinking, those old, distorted thoughts will begin to fade away.
Another technique used in social anxiety treatment is called the hot-potato method. Basically, the social situation becomes a painful test for your social skills by forcing you to respond with the “wrong” kind of response. When you finally manage to overcome your fears and manage to remain calm in social situations, your cognitive behavioral therapy program may have done its job.
However, some people find that cognitive behavioral therapy isn’t working for them. This could be because they’re just not prepared to deal with the cognitive techniques used in this type of social anxiety disorder treatment. In order to work, these techniques must force the victim to face his/her fears and allow them to confront them. Because of this, many sufferers of social anxiety disorders find it extremely difficult to confront their fears and remain calm in the process. For this reason, many people with social anxiety disorder find that other forms of therapy are more effective. These other therapies utilize different methods of treatment and use psychological tricks to get the person to confront his/her fears.
Finally, you can choose to use a combination of all of these treatments to help treat your social anxiety disorder. In some cases, social anxiety disorder can be successfully treated using only cognitive behavioral therapy. In other cases, this treatment may need to be coupled with other approaches. For instance, you can use hypnotherapy to overcome your fears, or you can use meditation to calm yourself down during stressful social situations. Using a combination of these techniques can be a good way to cure your social anxiety disorder, as it can target the specific causes of your disorder and give you the tools you need to overcome it.
So which method of therapy will be best for you? Only you know what treatment method will work best for your situation. Using cognitive behavioral therapy will make progress towards healing your social anxiety quicker. CBT is one therapy that has a high success rate when it comes to treating social anxiety, even though it takes time to show results.