Anxiety is too much now

What most people seem to fail to realise is that social anxiety is not always just irrational anxiety. Many times it is incurable in itself; instead, whatever is causing it must be 'cured'. Now unfortunately this is not always possible; for example if you're ugly or have an inherently bad personality (not saying you do) then there's not much you can do, your anxiety is pretty justified. The only solution would be to ignore such negatives, which is not particularly easy and doesn't really do anything to rectify the problem to be honest.

I imagine there's a bit more to what the counsellor is trying to do than simply encouraging you to socialise? Most competent counsellors/psychotherapists working with depression and anxiety will be using a more or less structured programme based on CBT techniques. So it would also include positive self-talk, mindfulness, calm breathing and so on - is that what you are trying?

You say that negative thoughts about yourself overwhelm you; I bet *everyone* with social anxiety could reel off a hundred things they hate about themselves. But also that if you met or knew them, you would wonder how on earth they could believe such nonsense!

For me, the most helpful realisation was that this way of thinking is part of a disease process. Just like *everyone* who gets the flu virus has a high temperature and aching joints, *everyone* who gets depression and social anxiety has negative thoughts about themselves ("I'm ugly", "Everyone hates me", "My teeth stick out like a rabbit" "This is never going to get better, I am going to die in a ditch with no-one at my funeral....." blahblahblah.) Once I thought about negative thoughts like they were a foreign virus that does basically the same thing to everyone who catches it, that made it easier to use the CBT techniques. For instance, I realised that the slightly cringey positive self talk phrases I was told to use didn't have to be *true* exactly, it was a treatment like antibiotics are the treatment for chest infections....I just did what I was told like I would if I was taking a pill every four hours. It helped me realise that there was nothing "special" about me personally any more than there is anything "special" about a person who gets chickenpox or arthritis. The negative thoughts that pretended to be about me personally are a cheat - in reality they are as generic and stereotyped as any other symptom of an illness.

So I would encourage you try thinking about it like that - the negative thoughts aren't about you personally, they come as part of a whole "disease" package that everyone who gets depression and anxiety gets. Sorry - does that make any sense at all?

We are all going to die. There is absolutely nothing that can be done to 'cure' or rectify the situation so anxiety is pretty justified. It's good to acknowledge this but in the meantime, it's reasonable to seek coping strategies to minimise the anxiety.

That helps a bit actually, thank you. I've been trying to just accept it and deal with it without putting too much pressure on myself to achieve certain things.
I've only really chatted with my Counsellor. I've done on breathing exercise and a sense thing where I'm too busy thinking about 5 things I can see, 4 I can touch etc that I'm not thinking about people judging me. That hardly lasts though and otherwise it's just been trying to be more social at work with a thought log on it and now trying to get me to join a club/have a hobby.
I've tried to explain how I'm stressed all the time, have these thoughts all the time that I can't relax and that I'm ugly, fat and boring but she doesn't really say anything and thinks that going to a club will improve my confidence, make me feel better and things will improve.
I don't see how that will work and change my views on myself. I managed to pluck up the courage and go to a Convention thing I wanted to go to and that was difficult but while I tried to celebrate the achievement I just made I was still plagued Walking about feeling ugly and fat. Which spoilt the experience slightly. That's not going to change.
I realise I have to make the changes but I need help with that and I'm paying a lot of money and I just don't see how it's going to change.


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Irrelevant comment because what I said actually applies to that situation - most people manage to ignore the fact that 'we are all going to die' because it is not something that directly affects us every day. Social anxiety however does affect those affect every day. So the causes of it are not easy to ignore.