Hi everyone!

I can’t quite believe this, but I wrote the bulk of this post about two years ago, when I started my current job as a research assistant! I have Social Anxiety Disorder, and I’ve been having to revisit much of this advice myself lately with a bit of flare-up. I hope this helps you guys❤️

Starting a new job has got to be one of the most anxiety-inducing things in the book. The feeling of being inferior, the uncertainty, the desire to be perfect…it all combines to make an already challenging adjustment even more uncomfortable. Social anxiety is difficult to speak openly about for me because I have internalised a lot of shame about it. It feels scary having to admit to people who perhaps may not know me so well how I can sometimes struggle saying hi to someone in the corridor, or not knowing the ‘right thing’ to say in a conversation, or worrying excessively about a random interaction I have with a colleague. I thought I was managing it alright until I ended up dissolving into a panic attack during a meeting. I’m two years into my job now and I still have times when the social anxiety is heightened and I feel extra uncomfortable! Social Anxiety Disorder is so difficult to live with – I won’t wax too lyrical about how many tears and distress it can cause (that was another post…here!).

The thing about anxiety is that it tends to come in waves; I hit a good patch for a while in the summer and I was trying to cling on to that! That can tend to make ‘dips’ feel very deep because of that internal pressure to hold things together! Clearly, I have been needing to do some thinking about that shame and what I know I can put in place to make the anxiety easier to manage at my workplace. I have lots of tried and tested techniques from past therapy but it’s the implementing them that’s a challenge…it is so difficult but taking things slowly and gently is always the way to go. I thought I would share some tips and suggestions for taking small steps in managing social anxiety at work as I navigate it all myself! I hope they help you or someone you know too! Without further ado, here are some things you can try.

Letting the emotions in and acknowledging them. Letting them out too.

I think it’s important to start with this one. When feeling socially anxious, my instinct can be to try and push the feelings away as far as I can. However, all that does is alienate them from me and reaffirm that internalised shame. Letting emotions in can be difficult, especially if you’re quite deeply entrenched in avoidance. Short, factual statements may help. ‘I am feeling shaky’ or ‘I am feeling overwhelmed’ – whatever you are feeling, try and admit it to yourself. This might feel like a tiny step, but the impact is acknowledging your feelings. It’s that one step closer to acceptance. Acknowledgement can then lead to some sort of action. Pushing the distressing emotions away doesn’t allow you to deal with them – it is a kindness to yourself to allow them, and even let them out if that feels like it might be needed. Needing to cry can feel very vulnerable, especially in the workplace. But sometimes, you need to! Crying is natural and can be a release. I am trying to think of it less as a sign that I’m spiralling and more as a necessary step in coping with the situation and anxiety. Even if it happens in front of a colleague (guys, I have cried in front of very important people), try to remember those factual statements about how you are feeling and allow them to counteract the shame.

Being open and honest about your needs. What can you manage at the moment?

Okay, so let’s remind ourselves of a few things. Any type of anxiety has a profound effect on your concentration, energy and emotional resources. Of course we’re going to include a fight/flight/freeze/flop diagram here. This is one by the fabulous Creative Clinical Psychologist, Dr Juliet Young (@creative.clinical.psychologist) . Anxiety activates our sympathetic nervous system, which responds in either fight, flight, freeze or flop. Social anxiety particularly is prone to the avoidance (flight) and freeze, but can bring out the others too! Looking at this, I think us socially anxious folk ought to ask ourselves some questions. Are we expecting too much of ourselves in this moment? Are we being too hard on ourselves? Can we really complete this task when our bodies are in hyperarousal, trying to figure out whether to run, fight, freeze or become completely passive? Chances are, the answers are yes, yes, no. If you’ve managed to even ask yourselves those questions, huge well done, because I find that so hard to remember! Perhaps a way to remember it is to have a post-it note on your computer screen, or on your pinboard; it could be an ambiguous picture of a human body or a stick figure – all it needs to do is remind you to reassess what you can manage, set smaller targets and go from there. Honesty with yourself is the theme here – because if you aren’t honest with yourself (and I am very aware that I am sitting here typing this and probably not being very honest with how I’m currently feeling), you won’t be able to allow yourself the things that will help.

Think about your personal rules in the workplace and whether they need adjusting.

We all have some personal standards and rules that we aspire to in lots of different settings. Our workplace tends to be where we set ourselves pretty stringent codes to work by. For me, some of those things are being smiley and enthusiastic all of the time (‘always switched on’), never stumbling in a meeting or with a supervisor, being sociable and talkative etc. etc. The universal truth is…no one can be like that 100% of the time! As socially anxious people, we can really strive for perfection: to abide by our rules. We don’t give ourselves any of the leeway that we would happily give anyone else. I think I’ve learned more and more over these last couple of years of working that it is so much more of a struggle to maintain energy and what I think is enough enthusiasm throughout a workday than simply allowing the natural peaks and troughs of energy to flow through me. This idea is definitely something more you can do to work towards managing your social anxiety in advance of it getting too overwhelming. Small changes in perspective can help with the negative self-talk that comes through if we feel like we’re not abiding by our rules.

Shifting focus.

In keeping with the idea of shifting perspective – when the social anxiety is bubbling away, shifting focus helps. With my psychologist hat on, one important finding about social anxiety is that people who experience it tend to have very self-focused attention, which means they are highly aware of how they are presenting or behaving, or how others are perceiving them. Shifting that focus away is challenging, but not impossible! Sometimes, I try and do a 5-minute desk yoga video. Or a mindfulness exercise. Here’s a picture of me in a place I like to visualise myself in. I particularly struggle with beginning to shake quite a lot when I’m anxious, especially my hands, so I also like to do manual tasks that will keep my hands busy. This could be making a hot drink, having a tiny soft toy on your desk to stroke (or a stim toy!), putting some hand cream/nice smelling hand-sanitiser (an excuse to hit The Body Shop people!) on – you could also do some simple activities like filing paperwork, printing, stapling – any administrative tasks that don’t require too much mental effort and can keep your hands busy. Other classic shifting focus activities can be some simple breathing exercises. You can find lots to pick from here. My personal favourite is imagining a birthday cake with a hundred candles in front of you, and you have to blow out every single one.

Expand the thoughts out creatively.

Lots of people find that being creative really helps them when they feel anxious. I like doodling on an office whiteboard, scribbling a quick stream of consciousness in my poetry notebook, or just doing a quick mindmap on a piece of paper. I brain dump all the thoughts in my head, sometimes even illustrating them (with my very poor drawing skills). That in itself can make me smile. It’s a quiet activity to help get the negative thoughts out and also contend with them. On paper, do they really sound true? With my cognitive-behavioural gloves on, is there really any evidence to suggest that, or am I again, being too hard on myself with standards that are set impossibly high?

Try not to overprepare or rehearse too much.

Don’t get me wrong, if you have to give a presentation or want to bring up a point in a meeting, you want to know what you’re saying. But I have been reading lots of posts about dealing with social anxiety at work and lots of them suggest practising or preparing what you’re going to say to feel more confident. Personally, my experience with social anxiety is that the act of rehearsing something too much or scripting all of my points perfectly in advance actually makes me feel more nervous and doubtful. That always has a snowball effect of feeling worse and worse with that self-focused attention. I think there’s maybe a peak of when preparation and rehearsal is useful and then it goes downhill. With social anxiety, the last thing you want to do is feel underprepared, but being overprepared actually perpetuates the cycle because you’ll never trust yourself and that you can do challenging things. This one is hard in practice, but I’m finding myself trying to do it more with this Maya Angelou quote in mind: “Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.”

Accepting and utilising support at work.

At the start of this post I acknowledged how difficult I find it to open up about my social anxiety. But some recent situations have proven to me how biting the bullet to accept support can make managing it so much easier. Accepting support doesn’t have to be breaking down to a colleague (and it definitely can be too!) – it can be saying yes if someone offers to make you a hot drink (instead of thinking that would be burdensome), or if they offer to help you out with a task. Repeat with me…it is alright to accept kindness from others. Let’s all put that on our post-it note, shall we? Utilising more formal support pathways at work can feel very exposing and scary – but like all of this, you can take it one step at a time. Speaking to your supervisor/line manager about it could open the door for more practical support. For example, I have a system with my supervisor where I message her to let her know if I’m not feeling so good at the office and when she can, she grabs me for a quick chat so we can problem-solve. My previous supervisor also had a great suggestion: she advised me that if I was feeling particularly anxious, I could go for a 15 minute walk in the park right by our office. We had a chat about what I already do that calms me down, and talked about how my writing helps as well as having the flexibility to work from home if it really is just feeling too much. I have also worked out that working 8am to 4pm is better for me than 9-5 because I have the chance in the morning to fully settle in and reduce my nerves before anyone else turns up. However, you may not have that kind of relationship with your supervisor/manager, so perhaps look in your employee policies or handbook for the support pathways that your employer provides. They are there for a reason!

Give yourself permission to be authentic.

This is potentially one of the hardest things to do as someone with social anxiety. It is pretty natural to slip into a bit of a work ‘persona’ but actually feeling and acting yourself can be so challenging when your negative thoughts constantly tell you that your authentic self is not good enough, or likeable enough, or smart enough etc. etc. I also find that actually knowing who your authentic self is a universal journey in itself. The point is, using those strict rules on your behaviour pushes that true self down and reinforces the negativity even more. For me, being myself means being lovably awkward, goofy, enthusiastic and sometimes a bit quiet and introverted. It’s a good marker of when I’m socially anxious, because that self feels very distant from me. Try to think about what makes you who you are and how you can utilise that to slip into that self from time to time. Bit of a fun example, but my best friend and I send each other memes about our mental health regularly, because we have the same sense of humour and it makes us laugh, as well as acting like a bit of a check-in. Sometimes, I lean into my awkwardness with humour (I once went on a Lidl shop with someone I didn’t know at all for a party and laughed about it being an awkward bonding activity), and sometimes I allow myself to be spacey and artsy and creative like the main character I am forever trying to emulate. Remember that you’ll have different levels of emotional resources at different times – so your self is fluid! It’s a journey.

Be gentle and compassionate with yourself.

Acknowledge journey and progress. Reflect on the fact that you are constantly doing challenging things. I think I need to remind myself how far I’ve come, and that one panic attack isn’t a catastrophe. I used to have to write post-it notes with conversation pointers and have stress dreams before I met up with friends, so I think we can say the current me has definitely made progress. I’m actually getting a bit emotional writing this because it’s reminding me of how absolutely terrible things once were. I’m trying to be gentle with myself and acknowledging that I am struggling, but I must also try to step away from proving that I’m alright and effortless and enjoying it all…I’ve got to do things because I feel up to them, or I can sense that I’m going to enjoy smashing the challenge. Being compassionate with myself is always going to be the way to go – trying to practise that!

Building yourself up.

We’ve got to be our own biggest fans, and our own biggest cheerleaders. Affirmations get a bad rep in media and film, but they truly have so much power! All it takes is finding a few that genuinely feel like a good fit for you, and then keep them at the tip of your tongue! It doesn’t have to make sense, be particularly wise or anything – one of mine is simply ‘you got this babes’ in a Gemma Collins accent. Let them give you a spark of energy to hold on to. Another thing we can do to be cheerleading ourselves is to recognise when we are catastrophising and gently taking ourselves by the arm (you can tell I love imagery); jumping to a negative conclusion is going to send us down physically and emotionally. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, babes’ in a Gemma Collins accent. If we really want to get our pom-poms out, we can start challenging ourselves with small steps. I am beginning to try and eat together with colleagues at least a couple of times a week, despite it being a very very anxiety-inducing situation for me. A support worker from my mental health team actually helped me be my own cheerleader by embodying it herself – she came in to help me sit in the kitchen and tolerate the anxiety of eating there, feeling so vulnerable. I had a cry with her when we walked out, feeling massively proud. I am also working on more honesty and authenticity in particular. I’m trying to conserve my energy and be tired when I am tired, rather than jumping into a bouncy, funny version of myself to ‘keep the mask on’. It’s a work in progress – I want to be authentically bouncy and funny when I really am feeling it naturally. You can try building up comfort with small interactions. We’ve got to remember that everyone at work is not there to pass us on an official sociability test. We don’t have to answer to them or ask for an indication of how well we have performed socially. What we can ask for feedback on is our actual work! Growth in your role will give you more self-esteem and a feeling of self-worth too.

This was really quite emotional to write. I hope this helped spark a few thoughts and gave some practical ways you can give this being socially anxious at work thing a go. Happy Autumn, and see you soon!

Love,

SS xx