Social anxiety is a difficult beast to tackle, and with an estimated 7.1% of adults experiencing the issue in the US, it’s always an important topic to discuss. In essence, social anxiety disorder (often abbreviated to SAD) is a condition in which everyday social situations cause an immense amount of distress for the individual.
Like most mental health problems, however, it’s often a lot more nuanced than that. In this article, you’ll learn about three symptoms that point to this disorder that you might not have heard of before.
Overthinking Past Interactions
Most people consider social anxiety to surround issues of the acute moment, as in, directly as the sufferer is in a social setting trying to communicate. In reality, though, the disorder can be just as distressing when they’re at home on their own.
One facet of SAD that many are unaware of is the person’s propensity to overthink past interactions. They may recall a previous social situation in which they perceived themselves as being ‘awkward’ or ‘stupid’, and play the scenario over and over again in their minds, building it up into a major issue.
The reality is that, in most cases, the sufferer’s perception of the interaction is drastically overblown. Slightly embarrassing situations non-sufferers would pass off are made much larger in the person’s head, causing significant distress.
Avoidance of Non-Verbal Social Cues
Another more subtle symptom of social anxiety is the avoidance, or sometimes misinterpretation, of non-verbal social cues. These are things like small facial expressions, eye contact, and body language. People with social anxiety can fixate on these minor aspects to the point that they become hyper-aware of them, and what many people can assume is someone just being shy, is actually an intense preoccupation with all small elements of communication.
This can manifest both as the person becoming hyper-aware of their own facial expressions and body language (as in how it appears to others), and the idea that the other person’s body language indicates something negative about them (again, that they are acting strangely or that the person thinks they are weird or awkward).
Shy Bladder Syndrome (Paruresis)
Shy bladder syndrome (also known as paruresis), is a condition where a person finds it incredibly difficult, or even impossible, to urinate in public toilets due to the presence of other people. What many don’t know is that the issue can have its roots in social anxiety; the same issues surrounding being scrutinized and judged during a social interaction are simply cropping up as a different variant.
As you can imagine, Shy bladder syndrome can be very problematic to deal with on a day-to-day basis, manifesting as a great deal of anxiety around going to the toilet. A variety of therapeutic measures are required to treat the problem in isolation, and naturally, things will improve as a person works towards addressing their social anxiety disorder as a whole.
Wrapping Up
Social anxiety isn’t an unsolvable problem, but as is the case with any problems of the mind, the first step is recognizing where the issue comes up and the many different forms it can take. Hopefully, this short article has illuminated areas of the social anxiety complex that you hadn’t considered, and will help you or your loved one on the journey to combatting it.
