Let me offer you a potential metaphor that you might find helpful in reducing & eliminating social anxiety and panic attacks.
Helpful Metaphor
When you turn on your television, you don’t just watch whatever is shown to you. Today’s savvy viewers speed through commercials, browse Netflix titles, or only watch previously recorded programming that suits their tastes.
So why would you or anyone, accept whatever thoughts you find in your mind?
Get selective!
How do thoughts get into the mind in the first place? Through a lot of ways, the primary of which is your senses – eyes, ears, and feelings. Everything you’ve ever learned and experienced (which can produce unwanted feelings of social anxiety) now functions like filters, and you automatically respond to life through them.
Get Serious
The next logical consideration is that you’re not the same person as you once were, and these filters require updating. Just like computer programs, our learnings and experiences program us, and they occur by happenstance, so we need to filter out obsolete thoughts, beliefs, and expectations. We can replace them by deliberately creating new, more relevant programming that works in our favor and not against us.
Intrigued? Let’s talk. Create your first appointment here.