1. Understanding Social Anxiety

Before tackling social anxiety, it’s important to understand its roots. Social anxiety often stems from a fear of being judged, embarrassed, or rejected by others. This fear can be overwhelming and lead to avoidance of social situations, which in turn can reinforce the anxiety. Recognizing these patterns is the first step toward managing your anxiety.

2. Challenge Negative Thoughts

Social anxiety is often fueled by negative and irrational thoughts. These might include thoughts like “Everyone is judging me” or “I’ll make a fool of myself.” Challenge these thoughts by questioning their validity. Ask yourself, “Is there evidence to support this thought?” or “What would I say to a friend who had this thought?” By reframing these thoughts, you can reduce their power and impact on your emotions.

3. Practice Deep Breathing and Relaxation Techniques

Physical symptoms of social anxiety, such as rapid heartbeat, sweating, and shallow breathing, can exacerbate feelings of panic. Learning and practicing relaxation techniques can help you manage these symptoms. Deep breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, and mindfulness meditation can calm your body and mind, making it easier to face social situations.

4. Gradual Exposure to Social Situations

Avoiding social situations only strengthens social anxiety. Instead, try gradually exposing yourself to the situations that trigger your anxiety. Start with less intimidating scenarios and work your way up. For example, begin by making small talk with a cashier or attending a small gathering of close friends. As you gain confidence, gradually increase the complexity and size of the social situations you engage in.

5. Develop Social Skills

Building social skills can enhance your confidence in social settings. Practice active listening, maintain eye contact, and use open body language. Engaging in hobbies or activities that involve social interaction, such as joining a club or taking a class, can also provide opportunities to practice these skills in a supportive environment.

6. Set Realistic Goals

Setting small, achievable goals can help you build confidence and reduce anxiety over time. Start with goals that are challenging yet attainable. For example, aim to initiate a conversation with a coworker or attend a social event for a specific amount of time. Celebrate your successes, no matter how small, as they are important steps toward overcoming social anxiety.

7. Seek Support

You don’t have to face social anxiety alone. Seek support from friends, family, or a mental health professional. Talking about your experiences with trusted individuals can provide relief and understanding. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a particularly effective treatment for social anxiety, as it focuses on changing negative thought patterns and behaviors.

8. Practice Self-Compassion

Be kind to yourself as you work through your social anxiety. It’s important to recognize that progress may be slow and that setbacks are a natural part of the journey. Practice self-compassion by treating yourself with the same kindness and understanding that you would offer to a friend. Celebrate your efforts and achievements, no matter how small.

9. Limit Alcohol and Caffeine

While it might be tempting to use alcohol as a social lubricant, it can actually worsen anxiety over time. Similarly, caffeine can increase feelings of nervousness and agitation. Try to limit your intake of these substances and focus on maintaining a healthy lifestyle, including regular exercise, a balanced diet, and adequate sleep.

10. Focus on the Present Moment

Social anxiety often involves worrying about past or future events. Mindfulness practices, such as focusing on the present moment and engaging fully in the current activity, can help reduce these worries. When you catch yourself ruminating on past interactions or fearing future ones, gently bring your attention back to the present.

Conclusion

Dealing with social anxiety can be challenging, but with persistence and the right strategies, it is possible to build confidence and improve your social interactions. By understanding your anxiety, challenging negative thoughts, practicing relaxation techniques, and seeking support, you can take significant steps toward a more fulfilling and socially active life. Remember, progress may be gradual, but every step forward is a victory. Be patient with yourself and celebrate your achievements along the way.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan and Ada, Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, counseling for teenagers, and adults.  He can help with anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, relationship problems, and more.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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Is there some significance to our dreams?  Actually, yes.  However, from my experience dreams are not about wish fulfillment as Freud postulated.  Our dreams represent an unconscious attempt to work on concerns we are having at the present time. 

One of my clients has been having nightmares lately after a stressful life event. The fact that he kept having nightmares with the same themes was becoming distressing on its own. We decided to try to do some dream analysis to try to understand what the dream was really about so he could put it aside and stop stressing about it. Doing this work made me want to write an article about it, so here goes.

Why Do We Dream?

When we are stressed, our brains tend to work on the problem even during sleep.  Sometimes we will dream about something rather ordinary that doesn’t have any big meaning other than representing our mind continuing to think about an event that happened.  Other times, and especially if we have a dream that repeats, such as a nightmare, it is our brain’s way of processing an event to make sense of something that happened.  Quite often, when the issue is resolved in real life, the dream goes away as well.

What Do Dreams Mean?

Much of our dream content is symbolic so if you want to understand the meaning of your dream, think about the imagery in the dream– objects, colors, places, people and figures in the dream often represent specific things that have unique meaning to us.   Sometimes the symbolism can be from something we are not even consciously aware of.  For example, when I was a child, my parents had been arguing a lot and it was very distressing for me.  I had a nightmare where I was surrounded by hundreds of scorpions and crabs.  I later learned that the crab and scorpion were my parents’ astrological signs, but I couldn’t have told you what their signs were if you had asked me at that time of the dream. Somehow, I knew this information unconsciously.

Quite often our dreams include shadowy figures who seem faceless, sometimes it could seem like a monster of some sort, chasing us.  Often, these figures don’t represent a specific person, but perhaps a situation we are dealing with at the time.  When we dream about specific people, the dream isn’t necessarily about that person but what they represent to us in our life.  For example, dreaming about your ex boyfriend may not be about them specifically, it may represent relationships in general and something you’re trying to understand about them.

What Can I Do with Dreams?

I’ve had clients who have nightmares (sometimes called anxiety dreams) that have the same theme to them, but often the content is quite similar from one dream to the next.  Although I’m no expert on dream analysis (are there any experts on this?), it can be useful to talk about the dream and do a little free association about the various things represented in the dream.  For example, one woman’s dream included a horse that was being neglected in a pasture.  She loved horses in real life.  When asked what color the horse was, it was brown.  This woman had long brown hair.  She came to realize the horse represented herself and that she was feeling abandoned or neglected in real life.  

Another person had a dream when they were a child that they were in a small rowboat in the middle of the ocean, on a stormy night.  Their mother was in the boat but they were the one doing the rowing.  In the dream, they stopped the boat and had to get out a huge ship’s anchor and throw it overboard while their mother sat in the back of the boat silently and not doing anything.  The dream went on but there was a lot of symbolism in the dream.  We talked about the possible representation of being on the ocean. Why was the child rowing and not the mother? What did the mother represent? Why was the anchor so large and what was the meaning of the child having to lift the anchor by themselves?  Lots of things to unpack in that dream.

Sometimes, there is action or inaction in our dreams.  We are running away from something, falling, flying, sinking, etc.  We’ve all had dreams about finding ourselves in class and then remember it’s final exam day and we forgot to study for it.  These dreams can represent a feeling of powerlessness we are feeling about a current situation.

How Do I Analyze My Dream Content?

One useful thing that can come from dreams is they can highlight something we’ve been struggling with in real life.  When we realize something has been weighing on us so heavily that we even dream about it, we can pay more attention to it in our waking hours.  For example, maybe you keep having a dream about running away from monsters but your feet are like cement. It may be you’re feeling overwhelmed about a situation and feeling you have little power to change things.  You might start to realize there is more you can do about it than you at first thought.

One problem with dreams is that they often fade from conscious thought rapidly once we wake up.  Keep a journal next to your bed. Write down as many details as you can when you first wake up.  The more you write, you’ll  remember other details from the dream.  Take each significant item from the dream and write down what thoughts come to mind when you think about it. 

For example, dreaming about a bee scaring you might make you think about the bright colors red and yellow.  Thinking about those colors might make you think of caution signs that are always those same bright colors.  You might decide the bee was meant to bring your attention to what was happening in the dream at that moment.  Dreaming about your childhood home could call to mind happier times, or perhaps stressful times, maybe something else.

Usually, when you hit on the correct meaning of dream items, you’ll experience a kind of “eureka” moment. If you do this enough, you may get some meaning that is useful to apply to your real life.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan and Ada, Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, counseling for teenagers, and adults.  He can help with anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, relationship problems, and more.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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Putting in effort matters in your mental health. Whether you have anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, low self-confidence, or something else. To feel good about yourself, about who you are, or where you are going, put in real effort.

I counsel people who are dissatisfied their jobs, social situation, relationships, or maybe their body or personalities. Quite often, people feel worthless but don’t actually do anything to make themselves more worthy. You can change these things for the better, but only with effort. Magical thinking doesn’t change it, telling yourself you’re a warrior, boss, alpha, etc. won’t turn you into one either. You have to start and actually do the work. The good news is there are some life hacks (behavioral hacks) to get help you start. You’d be surprised at how little effort it takes to become a better person. Notice I said become a better person, not think you’re a better person.

Tired of Being Anxious or Depressed?

If you’re tired of being anxious or depressed, boost your mental state just by getting up and doing something. You have to muster the effort to get out of the chair, off the couch, put your phone down, and start doing things that make a difference. Sometimes the smallest effort such as washing dishes, tidying up a room, or getting outside and going for a short walk is a great start to strengthening your mental health. If you do this, it’s probably a little more than you did yesterday. Start there and add something to it the next time, walk a little farther, clean a little more, read one more page of the book.

If you’re like me, you feel better on days you’re productive and getting things done than on days you “play” but don’t accomplish much. On days I don’t accomplish much, I go to bed thinking of the things I neglected to do. On the other hand, on days I get a lot done, I feel satisfied with myself and look forward to relaxing the next day because I’ve earned it.

Being Productive Improves Mental Health

I’ve seen this same effect with other people. I’ll use my son as an example. I make a point to have my son take on more responsibility around the house. Earlier this Spring I had him split some firewood for me. He went outside grumbling because it meant his video game was interrupted. It took him about 30 minutes to split the wood. When he walked back inside, he walked noticeably straighter and with more swagger. He put in the effort to do something hard and felt better for it afterward. More recently, I had him help me with some yard work. I gave him the more manly task of cutting down some saplings with a machete, which he did. Then on his own, he started pulling some bigger weeds in part of the front yard. When I told him he could take a break if he wanted, he declined. He said he was enjoying seeing the progress he was making. He felt good because he got stuff done and saw the progress.

If you want better mental health, try making improvements to yourself. There are no shortcuts. You have to expend effort. This can be mental or physical effort. It’s okay to start small and work your way up. First, figure out what you want to improve. Consider learning to do something new like play an instrument or learn to cook. I have clients who want to get in better shape so they are designing exercise regimens. The key though is to start really small with about one to three percent of where you want to end up.

Start Small for Better Results

For example, if you want to learn more by reading books, don’t try to read a whole book all at once. Start by reading one page a day and gradually add more pages per day. If you want to start exercising, you might need to start with two pushups in the morning before work or school, then gradually increase. And there are scientific reasons for doing this. I’ll explain below.

Pushing yourself to do too much too soon can burn you out quickly. You’re relying on sheer will power to do it and willpower doesn’t last. Doing too much too soon can lead to failing to reach a goal. This usually hurts your mental health. In addition, if you force yourself to do something like practice piano for too long at one sitting, your brain will register this as something unenjoyable and our brains don’t like to do things that we don’t enjoy. You can only force yourself for so long. We change best by enjoying the changes we make. This usually means starting small and slowly increasing the effort.

Even Things You Don’t Like

Even things we don’t like to do, such as homework, can be enjoyable for short periods of time (maybe only for 30 seconds). This is because we enjoy being productive more than enjoy the task itself. When you start the thing you want to get good at, start with small increments of it, and stop while it still feels good. Your brain registers this as a good thing that should be repeated. This makes it much easier to do again the next day. In essence, by doing the new thing and stopping while it still feels good, we develop a craving to do it some more, which means we’re looking forward to doing it at the next opportunity, rather than being glad the hard effort is over and dreading having to do it again.

There is a good book that explains this in detail called “Tiny Habits” by B.J. Fogg if you want more information and specific ideas.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, counseling for teenagers, and adults.  He can help with anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, relationship problems, and more.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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It’s hard for some people to say “No” because they don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, don’t like to make waves, or don’t like conflict.  In turn, the people who end up asking them to do things for them often don’t realize they are putting them in an imposition.  Other times, it may be a boss who makes you their go-to person for extra work because they know other people will make a fuss, but you won’t.  You end up with the crappy jobs that no one else wants.

Another situation where some people have trouble saying “no “is when it’s time to register a complaint with a spouse.  You may not want to cause tension or hurt their feelings so you keep your feelings bottled up instead of hashing them out.  Some people have a family history of avoiding conflict because of the dynamics of their family of origin.  I was definitely this way myself, so as a young man I avoided confrontations of even the smallest kind rather than pushing back and advocating for myself. I had to learn how to get comfortable with what felt like conflict.  The problem was, as an agreeable person who prefers harmony in relationships, how could I let people know I was irritated or hurt by their words or actions.  I had to try some things out and see what worked.  

I developed a few strategies that may help you. For me, properly “couching” things was the first step.  I wanted to bring up my concerns in as diplomatic a way as possible.  So one of my strategies is this:  When someone does something that I find myself hurt or offended by and need to talk about it, I start by saying, “There’s been something on my mind that happened between us and I realized I’ve been irritated about it and it doesn’t seem fair to you for me to be mad about something that I don’t even talk to you about.  Do you mind if I tell you what’s been bothering me?”  This usually goes pretty well.  Remember, it’s not really that the other person can’t handle the conflict; I’m dealing with my own discomfort of bringing something up.  This wording works to make me feel like I’m being diplomatic about it and easing into it gently, which makes it easier to bring up.

This approach also works well in work situations.  If you’re feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and under appreciated at work, you might have a conversation with your boss starting with, “I’ve been feeling overwhelmed with my work tasks lately and feel like I’m not doing the quality of work that I usually do.  I’m worried my attitude might be getting difficult and I don’t want it to affect the company or my department.  Can I talk to you about what’s been going on to see if you have some ideas I haven’t considered yet?”

This may sound absurd to people who are comfortable being direct and just telling people when they’re irritated but for those of you who struggle with it like I do, it can be a game changer.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, teenagers, and adults.  He can help with anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, relationship problems, and more.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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Therapy doesn’t work if you’re not going to try the ideas you get from therapy. If nothing changes, then nothing changes. So are you a failure if you go to counseling and don’t use the ideas from counseling? Not likely. Are you lazy? Probably no more so than average.

One of the reasons people don’t follow through with ideas from therapy is that you don’t have a specific plan to try them out. You think, that’s a good idea and I’m going to start doing that and see how it goes (sometime). From a behavioral standpoint, there are a few things that have to be in place for a new behavior to take hold. You have to set up a cue, or prompt, for when specifically you are going to do the new behavior. There also has to be a reward for doing the behavior. Some times we call this a reinforcement of the behavior. This can be just telling yourself you did a good job, or doing a little victory dance. It could be marking it on your calendar or starting a tally system where you make an “X” for every time you do it and keep looking at all the “X”‘s you made.

For some new behaviors you need to rearrange your physical environment to be frequently reminded of the new behavior you want to do. But if you don’t set up a reminder system, or prompt, you’re not likely to do the new behavior.

This is why after I help clients figure out what new behavior they are going to add that will help them get closer to a better life, I then ask them when specifically they are going to do it. Usually I want them to start it the same day as their appointment, not wait until tomorrow. I want to know specifically when they are going to start doing it. If they say, right after dinner, I want to know when specifically “after dinner”. When is dinner officially over? Is it when they put their fork down? Is it when they put the last dish in the dishwasher? Is it when they close the dishwasher door? You need a specific moment that prompts you to do the behavior.

For example, one of my clients wanted to started working out at home every day. He decided that it would be good to add it to his morning routine. Reflecting on his morning routine he recalled that he always drinks a glass of milk in the morning and thought after drinking the milk would be a good time to start. I pressed him about what the precise end of “drinking milk” was so he had a clear cue to walk to his workout area. He concluded that putting the glass in the sink indicated the end of this behavior so we figured out that he could “clunk” the glass down firmly to highlight the end of “drinking milk” and that was his new cue to walk to his weight bench. We next agreed that he would purposely drink milk and clunk the glass down when he got home from his appointment that day and then walk to his weight bench.

Doing the behavior the same day helped reinforce the new sequence for the next day. After he went to his weight bench he celebrated his success with a “woohoo!” to reinforce his success. Guess what? The next day he drank milk and remembered to clunk down the glass with vigor and walked straight to his weight bench. He was able to stick with the new habit by having a very clear cue to start the behavior.

If you’re not trying out good ideas from your therapy sessions, it may not be that you’re not motivated. It may be that you haven’t set up good and specific prompts to do the new behavior.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, teenagers, and adults.  He can help with anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, relationship problems, and more.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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In other cases, I’ve seen people have panic attacks just be getting in the car and planning to go to a store. The prospect of talking to people and possibly making a social mistake and being judged can bring on panic attacks.

What to Do:

Solution focused therapy can help you learn to manage your panic attacks. We start by helping you visualize what you’ll be doing when you’re calm under these circumstancesare not happening. Having a specific idea of what you’re trying to go for helps you plan for it. Next we help you find a very small but comfortable way to start moving toward the goal of no panic attacks. Sounds simple I know, but the trick is to find something so small it seems ridiculously simple, then build up from there.

Each time you face the situation that results in the anxiety attack you can work towards going a little bit further each time until you reach your goal. We can also apply some behavioral techniques that will make it that much easier to make it happen.

How to Get Started

For more information about how solution focused therapy works, contact me at 616-914-9874.

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, teenagers, and adults.  He can help with anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, relationship problems, and more.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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What to Do

One way I work with adults to provide counseling for anxiety is to help figure out things you can control in your life.  This can be as simple as cleaning up your room.  Once you do that you can say, “well at least I accomplished that”.  Sometimes the thing to do is get out some paper and make a list of things you have control of that will start solving the problem.  When you come up with things that can help, you realize you have more control and power than you thought.  For me, this gives me a sense of control and direction and I notice any signs of anxiety going down almost immediately.  

Many times, we face situations that seem to have dire consequences either way we go.  Anxiety can set in during these situations because we are virtually paralyzed by not knowing which option to go with.  Picking a direction and going with it often leads to the minimizing of anxiety.  For me,  it feels better to pick a direction and go with it than to deal with the anxiety of being stuck and stressing out between two courses of action.  I can always change direction if I feel I’ve made the wrong decision.  

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, teenagers, and adults.  He can help with anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, relationship problems, and more.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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Children and teenagers with social anxiety is a common occurrence.  It often shows up in early adolescence where kids have difficulty making friends, making connections and developing a satisfactory social life.  We generally describe these kids as shy but the problem can become more pervasive and problematic for many kids. Few things are more painful for parents than seeing their children be left out and struggling to make friends.

Kids and teenagers with social anxiety often feel quite lonely, isolated, and  sometimes ostracized.  This can in turn lead to depression and hopelessness because these kids often feel alone. This can make them feel like social “losers”.  Your teenager may want to make friends but suffer in silence as they struggle to find ways to do this.

What to Do:

Kids with social anxiety have a lot to offer but have trouble developing confidence and tools to engage with others.  These kids and teenagers often have great personalities with kindness, humor, and generosity as parts of their personalities.  We often describe these kids as kind, intelligent, loyal, and caring. However, their introverted personalities make it difficult to “put the mselves out there”.  They often have intense internal conflicts as they struggle to think of things to say to initiate interactions.  Then, they judge themselves harshly for not being able to think of anything. They may worry that peers are judging them harshly for their apparent social deficits.

Fortunately, counseling works wonders in helping kids learn to work within their strengths to develop self esteem and self confidence. It can help them learn to initiate basic interactions that make them more approachable to peers.

Solution Focused Counseling Can Help

Solution Focused counseling is a good fit for teenagers with social anxiety because it helps you find small ways to start interactions. And it keeps them within their comfort zones as they “stretch” themselves enough to begin the process.  

If you’d like to learn more about how solution focused counseling can help your child, contact me for a free consult.  

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, counseling for teenagers, and adults.  He provides counseling for anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, and relationship problems.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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How do you know if your child has anxiety?  There are a few signs that are common to teenage anxiety that I have seen in my counseling practice.  This can vary by age.  Older teens can show anxiety,  or hide it better, than younger teens and children.  Some of the signs I see are avoiding speaking up in groups,  avoiding social situations such as sleep overs, avoiding interacting with authority figures such as coaches, teachers, or aunts and uncles they are less familiar with.  Body language can also be a clue.  Anxious teenagers tend to hold themselves in such a way as to make themselves smaller.  They literally make themselves shorter by scrunching down their posture and tend to cover themselves almost as in a defensive posture. Think arms crossed over their chests and avoiding eye contact.  They don’t stand in ways that look assertive.  This may mean they don’t stand or walk with a confident air.

Anxious Behaviors

Anxious teens often decline invitations to do things with new groups of kids or go to places they are unfamiliar with.  They may say they are not interested in going to summer camps, joining activity based school clubs, or field trips because they get uncomfortable in situations where they don’t know what to expect or who they might have to interact with.  Anxious teens often don’t like to be called on in school or singled out even in good ways.  

Anxiety can be overcome with counseling.  The general strategy is to help the teen visualize what they will be doing differently when they are no longer anxious.  A counselor for an anxious teenager will help them develop a very detailed picture of themselves when they are more confident so they can see it themselves clearly in various real scenarios.

Next Steps

The next step is to help them identify very small, but do-able, things they can start doing differently.  This could be, for example, choosing to walk more confidently into the school building one day, even if they don’t do anything else differently the rest of the day.  Then the counselor would build on this one thing and add another positive behavior to it.  Pretty soon, the anxious teenager is noticing other times when they were more confident. They start seeing themselves gaining confidence and trying new things.  

If your have a child with teenage anxiety, counseling is a good idea.  It can help them overcome it more quickly and feel confident to try new things and gain new friends and experiences.  

Gary Watson is a Solution Focused Therapist in Grand Rapids Michigan.  He provides counseling for couples, counseling for teenagers, and adults.  He provides counseling for anxiety, depression, stress, college and work stress, and relationship problems.  For more information, please visit the website at www.turnaboutcounseling.com.

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