Stop Letting Social Anxiety Control You
Summary
TLDRThis video explores techniques to short-circuit social anxiety by engaging other parts of the brain beyond analysis and overthinking. Dr. K emphasizes the importance of utilizing body language, eye contact, and posture to tap into our natural social circuitry, as animals do without complex thought processes. He explains how standing up straight, making brief eye contact, and smiling can activate reassuring parts of the brain, helping to reduce anxiety. The video encourages practicing these techniques in low-stakes situations to build confidence and overcome social anxiety in a more natural and effective way.
Takeaways
- 🧠 Social anxiety often stems from overthinking and analysis in social situations.
- 🐾 Animals can communicate socially without anxiety, relying on non-verbal cues like body language and tone.
- 🔄 Our modern approach to social anxiety—using logic, analysis, and research—disables the natural circuits our brain uses for social reassurance.
- 👀 We can harness our senses, such as making eye contact and reading body language, to reduce social anxiety.
- 🌬 Slow breathing, especially with long exhalations, can physiologically calm the body by reducing adrenaline.
- 🦋 A more open posture, like standing with shoulders back, can help counteract anxiety and defensive body language.
- 👁️ Eye contact for brief periods (around one second) helps activate the brain's visual cortex to provide social reassurance.
- 😊 Smiling at others triggers natural empathetic responses, leading to social reassurance through mirrored body language.
- 📵 Over-reliance on phones in social settings blocks out these reassuring cues, exacerbating social anxiety.
- 💪 Practicing these techniques—open posture, eye contact, and smiling—in low-stakes environments can build confidence for more complex social interactions.
Q & A
What is the primary issue people face when dealing with social anxiety?
-The primary issue is overthinking and analysis, where the mind produces thoughts like 'What will people think?' or 'What should I say?' This analytical overdrive can lead to difficulty in engaging socially.
What is the traditional approach people take to overcome social anxiety, and why does it have limitations?
-People usually rely on rationality, logic, and reassurance to fight against their inner voice of anxiety. While this may help to some extent, it doesn’t address the core issue, which involves other brain circuits related to social perception and physiology.
Why does the speaker refer to animals when discussing social communication?
-Animals, despite not having language or the ability to analyze social situations, are still able to navigate social interactions successfully. They use their natural social and empathic circuitry, such as body language and tone, to communicate effectively, offering a valuable lesson for humans.
How does modern behavior, like phone use, contribute to social anxiety?
-When people are socially anxious, they tend to look at their phones, which isolates them from external cues like body language and eye contact that could offer social reassurance. This avoidance prevents their brain from receiving the data needed to calm social anxiety.
What role does the 'visual association cortex' play in managing social anxiety?
-The visual association cortex helps attach meaning to visual stimuli, such as recognizing smiles or relaxed body language, which can offer social reassurance and help calm the inner voice of anxiety.
What is one physiological technique mentioned to help reduce social anxiety in real time?
-Standing up straight, rolling the shoulders back, and taking slow, deep breaths with long exhalations can help reduce adrenaline and calm the body's physiological response to anxiety.
Why is making eye contact important when trying to overcome social anxiety?
-Making eye contact allows the brain to gather reassuring social signals, such as others’ relaxed or welcoming body language. Without eye contact, the brain relies solely on overanalysis and can intensify anxiety.
How should someone make eye contact in a social situation without feeling overwhelmed?
-The speaker suggests making eye contact for about one second at a time, especially during conversations. It’s also recommended to stand at a 45-degree angle in one-on-one conversations, which feels more natural and less intense.
What impact does smiling have in social situations for someone with social anxiety?
-Smiling can trigger a mirroring response in others, where they smile back. This creates a positive feedback loop, signaling to the socially anxious person that the interaction is friendly, which can reduce anxiety.
What is one practical way to practice these techniques in low-stakes situations?
-One can practice these techniques in everyday situations, like ordering food. Stand with good posture, make brief eye contact, and smile at the cashier. This helps build comfort and familiarity with these techniques in a low-pressure environment.
Outlines
🤯 Overthinking and Inner Struggle in Social Anxiety
The first paragraph introduces the concept of social anxiety and explains how overthinking dominates the mind in social situations. People often struggle with thoughts such as what others think of them, when to speak, or how to engage in conversation. Even if they can push past these thoughts and participate socially, there remains a persistent internal voice of doubt. This paragraph also mentions that some people try to overcome social anxiety by using rational analysis and self-reassurance but are still battling an inner critic. It ends by mentioning a resource called Dr. K's Guide, designed to help individuals take control of their minds.
🦁 Lessons from the Animal Kingdom: A Non-Analytical Approach
This paragraph contrasts human social anxiety with how animals interact socially. Animals don’t have language or analytical thinking, yet they navigate social situations successfully using their instincts and body language. The problem with people today is that they rely too much on logic and analysis to solve social anxiety, ignoring the social and empathic circuits of the brain that animals use naturally. The key takeaway is that people need to activate these circuits, such as body language and tone, rather than over-analyzing, in order to overcome social anxiety.
🧠 The Misconception of Social Anxiety as Just a Psychological Problem
This paragraph expands on the idea that social anxiety is not solely a cognitive issue but also involves physiology and perception. While therapy is helpful, it’s essential to realize that social anxiety also engages physical responses and perceptual cues. For example, animals rely on their senses—body language, tone, eye contact, and even smell—when interacting socially. While the example of using smell to reduce anxiety is used humorously, the underlying principle is that using multiple senses can deactivate the circuits that cause anxiety.
📱 Modern Society and Disconnected Social Perception
Here, the author discusses how modern behaviors, like looking at your phone when entering a room, prevent people from receiving socially reassuring signals such as smiles or relaxed body language. These social cues are processed in the brain’s visual association cortex, which helps us feel reassured in social situations. When we lock ourselves into screens, we lose access to these important signals. To counter this, the author suggests opening up to visual stimuli in social environments to activate the circuits in the brain that help reduce anxiety.
💡 The Role of Body Language in Social Comfort
This paragraph introduces the first of three practical steps to reduce social anxiety: standing up straight, rolling your shoulders back, and practicing slow breathing, especially with slow exhalation. These physical actions can counter the physiological effects of adrenaline that come with anxiety, calming the nervous system. The advice includes imagining cracking an egg between your shoulder blades to improve posture and expanding your lungs, which helps reduce panic and deactivate the amygdala, the brain's fear center.
👁️ Eye Contact as a Tool for Social Reassurance
The second strategy for reducing social anxiety is making brief eye contact. Although it may feel intimidating, eye contact helps the brain receive reassuring signals, countering the overactive analytical mind that feeds anxiety. A simple recommendation is to maintain eye contact for about one second during conversations. This brief eye contact, especially in group settings, provides enough feedback to the brain to feel more socially secure, without being overwhelming.
😊 Smiling to Activate Positive Social Responses
The third step involves smiling, which triggers a natural mirroring effect where others will smile back. This simple exchange signals to the brain that the social interaction is positive, helping to deactivate anxious thoughts. The author emphasizes that the smile should be brief—just a quick flash—to create a natural, reassuring feedback loop. The paragraph suggests practicing smiling, eye contact, and posture in low-stakes environments, such as when ordering food, to gradually build confidence.
🔄 Breaking the Cycle of Over-Analysis and Isolation
In this final paragraph, the author concludes by reinforcing the idea that humans over-rely on analysis to overcome social anxiety, which only worsens the issue. By using physical, visual, and empathic feedback like animals do, we can create more natural social connections. The author also humorously points out that animals and even insects manage to have complex social structures without needing all the intellectual tools humans use. The key is to stop staring at screens and to practice these techniques in everyday life to reactivate the parts of the brain that alleviate social anxiety.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Social Anxiety
💡Overthinking
💡Empathic Circuitry
💡Amygdala
💡Adrenaline
💡Visual Association Cortex
💡Social Reassurance
💡Physiology
💡Posture
💡Eye Contact
Highlights
Social anxiety often stems from overthinking, with individuals analyzing situations excessively.
Relying on logic and reassurance to overcome social anxiety only addresses the surface of the problem.
Social anxiety isn't just a psychological issue; it's also related to physiology and perception.
Animals, despite lacking language or analysis, successfully navigate social situations by using other brain circuits like body language and tone.
Humans often shut off circuits like the visual association cortex due to modern distractions like smartphones, which limits their ability to perceive reassuring social signals.
One effective way to reduce social anxiety is by focusing on using your body's physiology to calm down, such as adjusting your posture and breathing slowly.
Making brief eye contact helps activate the visual association cortex, allowing you to interpret social signals that can ease anxiety.
Smiling creates social mirroring, where others will smile back at you, helping you feel more relaxed and welcomed.
Simple practices, like standing tall, making eye contact, and smiling at strangers in low-stakes environments, can help rewire how you react in social situations.
Adopting an open posture, such as standing with shoulders back and head high, reduces adrenaline, which decreases the physical symptoms of anxiety.
The role of body language in social reassurance is critical, as it communicates relaxation and approachability without needing words.
Brief moments of eye contact, rather than prolonged staring, are enough to gather reassuring social feedback.
The more you use these circuits in everyday life, the more they can help reduce social anxiety in higher-pressure situations.
Short smiles, flashed naturally, rather than long or forced smiles, are effective in signaling friendliness and reducing tension.
By combining physiological techniques with active social engagement, people can short-circuit the analytical overdrive that fuels social anxiety.
Transcripts
today we're going to talk about how to
shortcircuit social
anxiety so if you're struggling with
social anxiety chances are you go into a
situation and you're kind of
overthinking things your mind is
producing all of these thoughts like
what will people think what will will
people like me or not like me what
should I say what should I not say
should I speak now should I speak later
should I wait how do I find an in into
the conversation and so your mind is in
kind of overdrive or analytical
overdrive and even if you're able to
overcome your social anxiety right you
can take all those thoughts and all
those worries and squash them way down
and then like engage in the social
conversation there's still this basic
problem because you've got this inner
voice and so you're fighting against
that inner voice in order to overcome it
with rationality and Analysis and
reassurance hey just a quick note a lot
of people will ask us what do I do next
and that's why we built Dr K's guide
It's a comprehensive resource that
distills over 20 years of my experience
both as a monk and as a psychiatrist and
it's designed in a way that's tailored
to fit your needs so if you're
interested in better understanding your
mind and taking control of your life
check out the link below today we're
going to talk about how to actually
disable that inner voice so that you
don't have to struggle or fight every
time you feel anxious in a social
situation we're actually going to start
by looking at how social communication
actually works and instead of turning to
a a success story of some kind of person
who was very very shy and then became an
alpha Chad we're actually going to turn
to the Animal Kingdom because here's the
Wild Thing animals don't even know how
to talk they don't I don't think that
they sit there and they struggle with
social anxiety in their head and use
analysis and watch YouTube videos and
like Google things and Wikipedia things
somehow animals despite having all none
of these tools can actually overcome
their social anxiety they're very social
creatures and so if we stop and think
about it what we realize is that animals
are using all of these different
circuits in their brain they're using
these the social circuitry empathic
circuitry they're reading body language
tone things like that and they're
actually able to communicate very
effectively and so what's the problem in
today's world the problem is that we
don't use any of those circuits right
when we're in a socially anxious
situation what are we actually doing
what's our approach to resolving our
social anxiety it's actually analysis
logic reassurance research on the
internet you're watching a video about
social anxiety in a room probably all by
yourself or on your phone this is the
way that you approach the problem and
now here's the problem with that is that
if we sort of think about what we find
socially reassuring it's actually all of
that other stuff it is that stuff like
body language and tone So today we're
going to talk about how to harness that
the other thing that we've got to touch
on is that we tend to think about social
social anxiety is a psychological
problem right the place that you feel
the suffering is in your head you have
all these thoughts have all these
worries maybe your heart is racing some
and so we also send people to like
therapists and we sort of think about
Psychotherapy as a treatment for social
anxiety and if you've got a disorder
that's actually a really good idea but
one of the things that we have to
understand is that anxiety and social
situations is not purely a cognitive
problem it's actually a problem of
perception and Physiology as well and if
we think about how animals become
comfortable in social situations they
use the full Suite of their senses right
they'll pay attention to body language
they'll pay attention to tone they'll
even make eye contact with each other
and a lot of animals will also use smell
and so that's what we're going to talk
about today how to use smell to overcome
your social anxiety so when you enter
into a room one of the most reassuring
things that you can do to disable these
parts of your brain is to sniff other
human beings and to raise your armpit
and allow other human beings to sniff
you actually we're not going to do that
at all that is a terrible idea don't do
that okay but in actuality there's a
really good principle there which is
that when we utilize our other senses we
can actually disable some of the
circuits that cause social anxiety the
next thing that we need to understand is
social reassurance so we feel socially
anxious and that largely comes from the
left hemisphere in the cerebral cortices
this is where all of our hyper thinking
comes from at the same time we get
activation of our amydala which is our
fear Center which is kind of in a
primitive part of the brain and so the
social anxiety picture is really a
combination of those two things hyper
analysis from our higher order brain
functions and A Primitive fear response
the interesting thing is that social
reassurance actually comes from
different parts of the brain it comes
from some of our ability to interpret
signals and different kinds of
perceptions and so what we really need
to do is recruit those parts of the
brain the challenge is that in the
society that we live in today those
parts of the brain tend to get shut off
and I'll give you all just a really
simple example so let's say I walk into
a party and I'm feeling really anxious
what are the signals that I could
perceive that would make me feel relaxed
if I saw other people looking at me and
smiling at me and like waving me over
they're like hey look it's Dr K Dr K is
here awwesome like hey man thanks for
coming
they can say all of those things but I
don't even need them to say it if I if I
walk in and I see other people and they
smile and they wave me over that will be
socially reassuring I may feel like I'm
on the spotlight for a split second but
it'll feel very reassuring and this is
the problem is what do we do when we
walk into a party and we feel socially
anxious we pull out our phones and we
start looking at our phone and now our
perceptions are locked into here and if
my perception is locked into here how am
I going to to get all of those socially
reassuring signals how am I going to see
that people despite being near me their
body language is relaxed or excited or
that they're smiling or they're trying
to make eye contact what all I'm going
to do is I'm going to be kind of locked
in over here and as my perceptions are
locked in over here I don't get any of
that reassuring feedback so the empathic
circuits of my brain aren't receiving
the kind of information that they need
so we have these parts of the brain
called for example the visual
Association cortex this is the part of
our brain that when we get visual
stimuli attaches meaning to it so like I
can look at things and my the visual
cortex kind of processes information but
then the meaning attached to that
information so for example like if I
come into my house and there's a bouquet
of my favorite flowers there that means
something to me because those are my
favorite flowers and then I'm going to
feel loved and cared for and I'll relax
a little bit more so the visual
Association cortex is really really
important for helping us feel reassured
the problem is that nowadays we're
always on our phone so we literally
don't turn that on and that voice inside
you that feels very very very socially
anxious that voice is actually disarmed
by some of these parts of the brain like
the visual Association cortex so if we
want to short circuit our social anxiety
what we really need to do is recruit
these other parts of the brain and sort
of really think about from a phys
physiologic standpoint how we can
disable social anxiety so there going to
be three things that we can do the first
thing that we're going to do is actually
stand up straight and roll our shoulders
back and breathe very slowly and
especially slow exhalation so this does
a couple of things so when we feel
socially anxious our adrenaline is going
to be higher as our adrenaline is going
to be higher it changes our pattern of
breathing and that adrenaline is
actually going to make us feel more
panicked so from a physiologic
standpoint we need to take a step back
roll your shoulders back and there's a
really simple exercise that I'll give
people which is try to crack an egg with
your shoulder blades so imagine that
there's like an egg and that you're
sticking it between your shoulder blades
and you're kind of rolling your
shoulders back a little bit to crack it
you don't have to hold it like that you
don't have to like walk into like a room
like walking like this but sort of do
that a little bit to counteract that
kind of hunched cell phone posture okay
so once you sort of do that you're going
to raise your head up so you're going to
sort of adopt a more open posture
instead of like hunched and defensive
and then the other thing that's that
that's going to do is sort of expand
your lungs from a mechanical standpoint
and as you expand your lungs from a
mechanical standpoint you can take in
sort of slow uh deep breaths but
especially slow exhalation is really
important it'll physiologically disable
that adrenaline and as we disable the
adrenaline we'll start to feel more
relaxed our amydala will start to shut
off and so as as our amydala shuts off
that voice inside you that is worried
will start to actually get short
circuited so that's number one so
shoulders back head up high and take
especially deep breaths with long
exhalations now that we have our
shoulders back and head straight the
second thing that we're going to do is
make eye contact now this may terrify
you because if you're feeling a lot of
social anxiety the whole point is to
avoid eye contact you don't know what
people think and you're like just over
here and you don't want to make eye
contact and it feels really terrifying
to make eye contact the problem is that
without eye contact our visual
Association cortex cannot get any
reassuring stimuli right like we don't
have any reason to be reassured because
we're blocking out those messages and
this is the problem is when we don't
actually have information or experience
or data our brain is left working with
the analytical portion so this is
essentially like Theory crafting without
ever playing a game so you're sitting
there and you're not actually getting
any data you're not getting any
information and your brain is going
through 6,000 iterations to try to
Theory craft your way to success but I'm
sure that you you all know like you
can't Theory craft your way to the top
of a ladder you can't watch porn to the
point of like Theory crafting to be good
at sex you can't watch like movies and
suddenly become like an amazing human
being Theory crafting only gets you so
far in the basic problem with social
anxiety is all we're left with is our
analytical portion because we're not
actually receiving data so we want to
make eye contact we don't want to make
eye contact for very long A lot of
people are wondering like okay how long
should I make eye contact what I would
sort of recommend is if you're in a
social situation you make eye contact
for one second at a time and then you
move on to something else and really
simple way to do this is that if you're
part of a conversation you just look at
whoever is talking okay and when someone
is talking what they're going to be
doing is automatically making eye
contact with everyone around them so you
want really brief periods of eye contact
if you're in a one-on-one conversation
you don't want to stand directly across
from them you usually actually ideally
want to be at like a 45° angle so you
can kind of look over it them while
they're talking and then you can like
look to like a neutral situation and you
want to sort of do this for like a 1
second period so it doesn't feel overly
excessive and you may sort of struggle
with this a little bit at the beginning
you don't have to count it'll actually
feel natural and your body and brain
will actually like take over on its own
so how long you want to look over here
okay you're saying this oh that's really
interesting as you speak you can kind of
like look to a neutral location Okay the
third thing that we're going to do is
smile so smiling is really really really
important the reason that smiling is
important is when I smile at someone
else they smile at me this is just
natural empathic mirroring right so if I
go like this right what are you doing
chances are if you're watching this
you're smiling too and it's cool how
that works and so let's think about that
from a social anxiety perspective when I
smile at someone else and they smile at
me and I am keeping eye contact what
does that do for my visual Association
cortex it relaxes me because hey this
person actually likes me I'm starting to
receive this kind of data now smiling
can also be pretty terrifying because
like we're not kind of used to it and so
what I would recommend is you do these
three things in neutral social
situations to get some practice this is
like a 30second kind of bit if even this
is a 15-second practice where let's say
you walk into a store shoulders back
head up high make eye contact with like
the person that you're ordering the
sandwich from you smile hey h how are
you doing today or hey how's it going
today I'd like to get a sandwich and
that's it you just practice that for
like 10 seconds what was that 5 seconds
and so you do that practice for like 5
10 you know 15 times it doesn't really
cost you very much there are no
consequences right because your socially
anxious brain is like what what are they
going to think what are they who cares
what they think you're never going to
see them again practice these things a
couple of times and as you practice them
then you can start to Institute them in
a in a social situation and as you start
to Institute them you are actually going
to take like 90% of your brain which is
what animals have and how they're able
to maintain healthy social situations
without language without analysis
without Google without even Dr K oh my
God how do these like Prides of of lions
and like packs of wolves how can they
socialize even ant colonies they don't
have any of the stuff and yet they're
able to form healthy social societies
and that's because we're not using all
of these gigantic parts of our brain
because we're like literally staring at
our phone the whole time so if you want
to sort of be more socially reassured
what you need to start doing is start
utilizing these parts of the brain and
the more that you can do that the better
off you're going to be there's one last
thing that I want to leave with y'all is
that when we smile we're also not
talking about smiling for a long time
okay so like here's like what we want to
do is like flash a smile so we want to
go like this we want to go hey how
that's a f one so let me try a real one
hey how's it going today right that's a
little bit fake but instead we don't
want to do like this kind of smile like
Hi how are you doing today right so we
don't want long smilees smile for like a
second or two flash a smile and then
then sort of cut it out okay and so let
us know how this works for you feel free
to like comment or subscribe and let us
know in the comments like does this work
for you not work for you practice it for
a while and let other people know hey
this is complete BS it's not working and
then we'll go back to the drawing board
and try to come up with something else
[Music]
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