Dealing With Social Anxiety Disorders
Social anxiety disorder and shyness share plenty of characteristics. If you’ve spent most of your life thinking that you’re just shy, how do you know if what you have is something a whole lot more serious? Or, as a worried parent, how would you know if your child’s fear of strangers or his inability to make new friends at school is more than just shyness? At the same time, if you do find out that it’s more than just a case of shyness, how do you deal with it – with natural anxiety treatments or with medication?
You have all the reasons to ask questions and be worried. This is because social anxiety disorder , which is also know as SAD, is usually just dismissed as extreme shyness. Symptoms of this condition usually start at childhood, but plenty of those who have SAD don’t receive treatment for a long time.
SAD or Just Shy?
There are numerous symptoms that can distinguish SAD from shyness, and these include the person’s intensity of fear, his level of avoidance to the object and the impairment that the fear does to the person’s daily functioning.
For example, a shy person may be nervous when giving a speech. A person with SAD may worry about giving the speech for a long time before it happens. At the same time, he may also lose sleep because of his anxiety, and may experience intense symptoms such as shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, sweating or shaking. Read more…
