zeus123

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About zeus123

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  1. I know well the 'poor me' thought process. I've had to deal with it many times myself and I know how easy it could be to get caught up in it. It feel so good to think those thoughts! I always thing of the song that goes, "nobody knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows my sorrow". I have a suggestion for getting past this thought process. How? By realizing that it is instinctual. Now I will state up front that this is theoretical. I don't know for sure that this is something that people do instinctually. The reason I think it is instinctual is because, well, first of all, it feels good. Instincts usually carry a feeling with them. Like having sex. It feels good. After dealing with my social anxiety all my life and studying psychology and neuroscience and getting bullied at work for years I have come up with a theory about what social anxiety it. I have realized that when people see me, they see a loser. This got me to thinking, could there be such a thing as a loser, biologically speaking? I think there is. As humans we wage social battles to see who will end up where in the social hierarchy. If we win a lot of battles we are on our way to being the alpha. If we lose battles we are on our way to being the omega, or the least important person in the group. I suppose the brain has evolved to change based on the changing social roles that we play. This is somewhat disturbing to imagine, I admit, but it also could bring the opportunity to genuinely be able to cure social anxiety, by finally realizing what it is. You have to face your fear and begin to win social battles. This is easier said than done because all those brain changes make you want to avoid confrontation and make you automatically give in when there is some kind of conflict. But it can be done. And it makes it so much easier to deal with all the symptoms of social anxiety when you realize what is actually happening. Back to the feeling of 'poor me'. I think of this as a trap instinct. This is designed to keep you as a low status person permanently. By giving in to the good feeling that it provides, you are taking the bait.
  2. Hi all, My name is Jason. I'm 38 years old. I've always has really bad social anxiety. When I was younger I had really bad problems with remembering names and processing information in real time. It was as if the anxiety was shorting out my brain. About 5 years ago I started getting bullied at work. This happened to me over and over again at different workplaces, at least 4 different places over 4 years. I started to think that having social anxiety is a sign to others that you are a loser, and that as a loser, you are fair game for open attack. What I did was ignore my attackers, but then something interesting happened. More people joined in on the attack. This seems to me to be some sort of phenomenon. When one person starts attacking someone who has social anxiety, someone who is seen by the group as a 'loser', then that signals that others should jump in and start trying to stress out the loser. In my case, there was a reason why they were stressing me out. They wanted me to quit. They wanted me to leave but they didn't want to fire me. So instead they just started trying to stress me out to make my life miserable so that I would leave. During the attacks I started to see the social world differently than I ever had before. I started to realize that there was a social hierarchy, that there was a 'pecking order' so to speak among the various people I worked with. I had vaguely realized social hierarchies before, but now it was so much clearer. The way they were coordinating in attacking me made the whole group look like it was one giant superorganism. When I was younger I went into psychology and attempted a PhD in neuroscience, all in an attempt to understand what was wrong with me. I completed a bachelors in psychology but was unable to complete my PhD, largely because of the problems with processing information in real time and also because of the social problems (for example, I didn't network effectively when I was there). Therefore, when this group effort to stress me out started, and when I saw it happen over and over again at different locations, I began to think that there was something very important that could be learned from what was happening. I began to develop a theory that could explain what I was seeing. The theory I developed was that the brain changes based on winning and losing social battles. If you win social battles you become more confident and less anxious. You rise to the top of the social hierarchy and are ready for leadership. You tell other people what to do. If you lose battles, you start to become unconfident and anxious. Not only that but you develop self-doubt, guilt and shame. Therefore, to get rid of social anxiety you have to win social battles. The problem was I couldn't face my attackers when they were attacking me because my fight-or-flight would kick in and I wouldn't be able to talk, or I wouldn't be able to talk without getting really mad. So what I did was just continue to ignore my aggressors until this gradually went away. Eventually when my attackers would attack I wouldn't be so worked up that I couldn't respond. I started responding and in this way began to win battles. My social anxiety gradually went away, my confidence went up and my self-doubt and guilt largely went away. I am writing my theory along with some of my experiences at www.confidencedisorder.com. I feel like I have discovered something big, but I don't know yet if I am right or just grasping at straws. I would love to hear from other people to see if any of this rings true. Cheers, Jason