Causes of Social Anxiety

Firstly in our look at the causes of social anxiety, let us think about the symptoms. If you are a lifelong sufferer then you will know them well; there is the sweating, racing heart and general feeling of panic.These are the kind of feelings that we generally associate with situations of danger, but clearly social situations do not normally provide risk to life and limb. However, if you consider that most of us also experience such symptoms when faced with the prospect of public speaking, then it becomes less surprising.

While these symptoms may not seem to make a great of sense, there is a reason for them. They are rooted in a part of the brain known as the "amygdala". The purpose of the amygdala is to monitor situations that may be a threat to your safety. However, this is quite a primitive of the brain; it does not analyze and think through situations. It's job is to remember situations that have presented danger in the past and trigger certain physiological reactions. The body's response is associated with the flight/fight response - the amygdala is telling the body there is danger and this triggers adenalin. Your brain and the associated physiological response are telling to either fight against the situation you are faced with or run away as fast as you can.

Those people who suffer from social anxiety have amygdalas that have mistakenly labelled social situations as a dangerous. This response is generally as a result of genetic factors. Whilst this kind of response may have proven useful in the past when living in tribes, but in modern life it is more of a hinderance.

One of the most important points here that you need to understand is that your brain was different from the beginning, even if you did not experience social anxiety symptoms from the beginning. Because of your genetic predisposition to see situations that could involve embarrassment, humiliation, or shame as dangerous to your very survival, your amygdala began to label certain social situations as threats that require the fight or flight reaction.

A common pattern is that a social anxiety sufferer may become aware of a particular symptom in a particular social situation. When faced with a similar situation then the amygdala will remember this and trigger an anxiety reaction, which just amplifies the symptom that the sufferer originally became aware of. This anxiety can then become the focus of every similar social interaction.

This does not mean that sufferers are faced with a life sentence. In fact there are ways in which you can train your brain to react differently helping you to overcome your social anxiety.