What is Social Anxiety Disorder?

For people with social anxiety disorder (or social phobia), social situations create feelings that are much stronger than feeling nervous or shy. These feelings of anxiety can be so extreme that it interferes with their daily life, school, family and social life. People with social anxiety disorder may often avoid feared situations. They worry that people are thinking about them in a negative way, or that their own behaviour will cause feelings of embarrassment or humiliation.

For some people the anxiety can lead to panic-like symptoms, which may include heart palpitations, blushing, trembling, nausea, faintness and profuse sweating. The anxiety usually triggers worrying thoughts about the feared social situations, such as:

"I look out of place"
"I sound stupid"
"I don't fit in"
"I'm making a fool of myself"
"I'm inferior to other more talkative people"
"People will notice that I am blushing and look nervous".

A person with social anxiety disorder recognises that their worries are excessive and unreasonable, however, they feel unable to change or control the feelings or behaviour. Living with social anxiety disorder usually has an negative affect on a person's self-esteem. People often experience feelings of inferiority, they are overly sensitive to criticism or rejection, and find it difficult to be assertive. It is also common for people to fear evaluations such as tests or exams.

For some people, social anxiety disorder may be selective - this means that they may have an intense fear of public speaking, for example, but be comfortable in other social or performance situations. These specific social phobias are focused on a particular area of anxiety and generally are related to worries about being judged on their performance.