What is Social Anxiety?

Social anxiety is a fear of social situations and interaction with other people. Social anxiety can automatically bring on many feelings such as self-consciousness, judgment, evaluation, and inferiority.

Social anxiety is basically the fear and anxiety of being judged and evaluated negatively by other people. This leads to the feelings of inadequacy, embarrassment, humiliation, and depression.

Many people get anxious when in new social settings. If a person becomes anxious in a social situations, then seems fine when they are alone, "social anxiety" may be the problem.

Social anxiety disorder also known as social phobia is a much bigger problem than we estimated in the past. Millions of people all over the world suffer problem every day. They can suffer from a specific social anxiety or from a generalized social anxiety.

In the United States, studies have shown that social anxiety disorder as the third largest psychological disorder in the country. This is after depression and alcoholism. Research has estimated that 7-8% of Americans suffers from some form of social anxiety at the present time. Research also has shown that the lifetime rate for developing social anxiety disorder is 13-14%.

People with social anxiety disorder usually experience great emotional distress situations such as:

1. introduction to other people

2. teasing or being criticized

3. Being the center of attention

4. getting observed while doing something

5. Meeting people of importance or in an authorities position

6. any social encounters, especially with strangers

7. having to say something in public or in front of others

8. relationships, whether friendships or romantic

There are other feelings that have been associated with social anxiety as well.

The physiological problems that accompany social anxiety include intense fear, racing heart, turning red or blushing, excessive sweating, dry throat and mouth, trembling, swallowing with difficulty, and muscle twitches, particularly about the face and neck.

The most common feature is Constant, intense anxiety that does not go away. People that suffer from social anxiety disorderunderstand that their anxiety is not rational and does not make any sense. Just because the person knows these actions are not right does not mean they feel they are not right.

With that said people with social anxiety's thoughts and feelings of anxiety continue and show no signs of going. Socially-anxious people have to "face their fears" every day. Only the appropriate therapy can help to get rid of or control social anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder is the largest anxiety disorder, and the one that people know the least about.

http://helpguide.org/mental/separation_anxiety_causes_prevention_treatment.htm