Shy Smile Support Site for people with Social Challenges - How to help someone with Social Phobia

How can I help someone overcome social phobia? Your shy friend will probably always receive false brain messages of worthlessness. You cannot help them overcome those feelings, but you can help them better deal with the feelings. You are helping already, by showing that you care.

The shy person probably feels that he or she is worthless and will always be a social outcast. They may feel totally at ease in their own home but almost certainly won't feel at ease out in public, or possibly in anyone else's home. Wherever there are one or more people outside the social phobic's family, he or she will feel judged.

Please don't ask them to 'Just relax' because they don't know how.

Don't tell them 'Please don?t worry' because worrying is not something they CHOOSE to do, but something which happens for them. You don't decide to breathe, breathing happens to you. Worry thoughts are much the same - they just happen to us, we don't choose for them to happen.

It hurts a shy person when someone tells them not to be silly.

'There's nothing to be frightened of' may be true, but it doesn't help when fear runs in your veins like blood runs in other people's.

When you're out in public, don't tell them to 'Just enjoy yourself', because they can't, and asking them to, will just be heard as 'You're not normal'.

Think of the animal or insect which you fear most, whether it be spiders, bees, dogs, piranhas - and imagine that every time you walk down the street you have to walk through dozens and dozens of what you fear most. You might put a foot wrong and be ridiculed or attacked by them : That's what social phobia feels like.

The anxiety is all consuming, and out in public the person feels painfully exposed, as though their every move, word and action is being scrutinized and is of paramount importance. It would be so much easier to avoid social situations altogether.

The need to be alone is intense, and it is often better to grant the shy person plenty of alone time and particularly recovery time, after a difficult time.

Even when they're around their partners, best friends and closest family, they often may feel pressurized and long for peace and quiet. They may think people are talking about them behind their backs and very often will be thinking that you think negative things about them. They spend a lot of time in your head, wondering what you're thinking about them - wondering what the world in general thinks about them - and jumping to negative conclusions about what people think about them.

They often lose track of conversations due to anxiety and shyness, because they're so worried about what the other person thinks of them.

If your shy friend has a medical problem, please offer to go to the doctor with them, because almost any authority figure, including a doctor, will be terrifying to a shyster. They worry more about what the doctor will think of them, than whether they will get well again, and they may not remember the doctor's advice due to their anxiety levels.

Be supportive, go places with them. Tell them it's ok to be afraid and ok to blush, but it's not ok to have a life and only live half of it. Help them live within their limits and respect their boundaries for peace.