 As somebody who used to struggle with crippling social anxiety, I get a lot of requests, a lot of requests from my clients as well as my social media followers. People ask me, Chris, how do I deal with this social anxiety? So in this video, I'm going to give you my three best tips for dealing with social anxiety and you're not going to want to miss them. So stay tuned. What's up, everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution. Social anxiety was the bane of my existence and I had it for years and I want to just start out by saying like, this is something that takes time. It takes a lot of time but hopefully with these tips that I give you, they are very small steps that you can start taking. They are very practical steps that you can start using right now and I promise you, if you do what I tell you to do over time, it will get better. How do I know this? I am living proof. Back in the day, I would not be able to have a YouTube channel. I would not be able to do all the public speaking that I do because I was always stuck up here worried about what people were thinking about me. Do I have something on my face or do I look okay and all this other stuff? So here it goes. Here are my three tips to help you with your social anxiety. Tip number one, realize that nobody cares about you. You are not that important. Now, some of you might be like, oh my gosh, Chris, what? My mom said I'm so special. No, you are special. I love you. You're amazing. But one of the aspects of social anxiety, like for me, for example, whenever I would go out in public, I was always worried that anytime I heard laughter, I thought it was about me. Anytime people were upset, I thought it was about me. Here's a good one. When you're out on the road and you hear somebody honking, be very mindful because the first thing we often think is like, what did I do wrong? We are often trapped in our own heads thinking that everything that is happening is about us. I had to start realizing that I am not that important. Not everybody is looking at me and judging me because I'm just one of the seven plus billion people on this planet and half the people out there are worrying about themselves even more than I'm worried about what they're thinking of me. So when you're out in public, like remind yourself, remind yourself, like, I am not nearly as important as my brain tells me I am. I will also link a video up in the info card that I made for my fellow YouTube creators and I talk a little bit about the brain science and why we get stuck in our heads so much thinking that we're so important. Tip number two is a little bit of exposure therapy. I will frame this by saying one of the best things to do for your anxiety for your social anxiety is to start getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. So me, for example, when I was working on my mental health, I just started saying yes to things because my social anxiety may be very introverted, but like introverted as well as isolative. And I'm going to do a video about the difference between those two. But anyways, I would isolate and that would fuel my depression. So like it's this vicious cycle. So I was always telling people, no, like, hey, Chris, do you want to come out with us for coffee? Do you want to come to this dinner? Do you want to come to this party? Like, I couldn't because knowing that I'm going to go there and not know what to say, am I going to sound stupid? I don't know anybody there or they're going to judge me and all these other things. Like I would just tell people, no. So what I started doing was a little bit of exposure therapy. The one thing that I did every single week, I was with a large group of people and they would say, hey, we're going out for coffee afterwards. Do you want to come? I always said no. I started saying yes. And I started going out there with them for coffee and there would be 20, 30 of us, right? And I would stand there awkward, silent, stuck in my own head. And it was so uncomfortable. But like I just kept doing it. Like I did it every single week and the anxiety got less and less and less. And before too long, these people knew who I was and I was able to start having these conversations and my anxiety was going away because I realized like, oh, wow, Chris, you can actually have conversations with people and it's okay. I'll never forget. I was listening to a podcast where this guy was talking about his social anxiety and he works for this big company and they go to a lot of conferences and whenever they go to a conference and they're doing some kind of speaker panel, he tells his boss that he wants to be on it. He forces himself to be out in the forefront because he needs that exposure therapy. On a scientific level, what this is doing, it's actually shrinking your amygdala and it's helping you manage your anxiety. The amygdala, for those of you who don't know, is a part of the brain that actually triggers the anxiety. So when you're exposing it to that, your brain is actually rewiring its neural pathways to understand that this situation is not a life or death situation. It is uncomfortable, but it's not life or death. So your brain starts to change the way that it reacts to these situations. So start saying yes to things. Go out there, go to company Christmas parties, holiday parties, go to your friend's house for dinner. All the things that you say no to, start saying yes. And yeah, it'll be awkward. It'll be uncomfortable, but I promise you, you'll get through it. And finally, tip number three, practice mindfulness. Ah, you thought you were going to get out of this video without me telling you about mindfulness and meditation. This is a great one. This actually kind of goes into tip number two. So mindfulness, definition, paying attention on purpose in the present moment without judgment. So one of the things that I do, because trust me, I still have some of this social anxiety, but what I do is I just watch what's actually happening in my body as well as in my mind. I start to realize that my body reacts to the emotions of other people when, for example, when we're at a dinner and two people start arguing, I start to notice what that kind of uncomfortable feeling within me is when somebody says something that I disagree with, I can kind of feel that anger rising and going. And then I just sit there with that nonjudgmental mindset and I'm just like, huh, that's really interesting. So you can actually do a meditation practice while you are in these social situations that in itself is mindfulness, is just paying attention to the anxiety coming and going. And one of the benefits to this when you do this with a purpose, you start to recognize as you continue to go to these social situations how they are getting less and less and less like every time that you do it. So it's really incredible. Like I'll be honest with you. The other night I went out to a family dinner with my girlfriend's family and I was socially anxious before I went there. It was with her aunt, her aunt's boyfriend, never met this boyfriend before and my head starts going crazy. What am I going to talk about? Is he going to ask me about my job? Should I tell him? What have you asked me if I'm in sobriety and all this other stuff, all these crazy things. But I practiced mindfulness at this dinner and it made it a very interesting situation and I was able to get a little practicing for myself. So what I want you to do, here's what I want you to do in the comment section below, if you struggle with social anxiety, I want you to leave your best tip for anybody who struggles with social anxiety. Leave a comment down below. All right. But if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you are new here, I don't know what you're waiting for. Click that little round subscribe button because I'm always making videos to help you out with your emotional health. And to the left of me right here, click or tap on one of those thumbnails if you want to check out some other videos on this channel. Thanks for watching everybody. I'll see you next time.