Weekends can be a stressful time for those of us with social anxiety- we want to have friends, be loved, and in the know (FOMO is real!), and yet we don’t. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to live completely free of my social phobia and attend parties with classmates, crack jokes over drinks, and heck, maybe even be the life of the party one day. However, as it stands today, even just typing those words completely paralyze me. I know I am capable of one day achieving my goals (or so my therapists says), but right now, I can only take it one day at a time. So, for those of you early on in your journey to manage and overcome social anxiety, I’d like to share some tips for what helps me during some especially stressful times of the week, the weekends:
- Don’t go on social media late on Sunday nights. Just don’t. If you’re like me, you could lose hours on Instagram wondering why this person liked that post and not that one, or why my crush isn’t reciprocating my likes after a week of liking his posts, or whatever it might be. It feels so real in the moment. But when I step back and take an honest look at the situation, the only thing that is real is the time I’ve wasted wondering what other people are thinking as they are analyzing me and my social media. This especially hits home on Sunday nights before school. Sometimes I literally cannot sleep the whole night after being in a spiral of social media speculation during the evening, which only ends up ruining my Mondays, which can end up ruining most of my week. I’ve decided that at the very least, I’m going to stop checking social on Sunday nights. This has proven to be an effective hack and I hope to continue this habit.
- Try going to the mall and do a few social challenges. With the support of my therapist at first, I decided to go to our local mall and do a few “challenges,” activities where I would strike up a conversation with a stranger at the food court, at a store, or wherever. At first, this terrified me. ….And, it still does. But over time, especially as I reflect back on my journal entries after doing the exposures, I can tell I am getting better with each attempt. One important thing to keep in mind when doing exposure therapy for social anxiety is understanding if you’re taking a more graded approach vs “flooding,” which the APA defines as “using the exposure fear hierarchy to begin exposure with the most difficult tasks.” My therapists and I have taken a more tiered approach, allowing me to increase the difficulty of my social interactions over time. This is my preferred method but it may take some trial and error on your part with your therapists. (And, if you haven’t figured out by now, I am a fan of everyone using a therapist for managing social anxiety!)
- Find your activity. Every weekend, it is important for me to make sure I go out to our local pool. Not just because working out has proven to reduce anxiety, but because I was finding that my self-esteem was actually quite poor and I needed to feel like I was really succeeding at something. While I want to say I could find time and solace during the week to engage in a lot of extracurriculars, I just wasn’t ready to engage in team sports or anything where I would be the center of attention. Instead, I found that I had a real knack for swimming, enjoyed doing it, and found that it was something I could do on my own with no pressure while I built up my emotional strength doing other activities like the mall social challenges. Perhaps one day I’ll be in a place where I could actually be on a real swim team, but for now, I look forward to my weekly swims alone at my apartment’s pool.
These are all very personal activities that have helped me cope during the weekend, a time when I often find myself upset for not having friends to enjoy Saturday and Sundays with. These three ideas are things that have helped me manage the loneliness while building up my confidence and reducing my anxiety. You may have totally different activities that work for you, but I would encourage you to seek out what those activities are no matter what. No matter how severe your social anxiety is, the best thing you can do is find a therapist who can help you take the first step to manage it and not put so much pressure on yourself as you’re on your way to overcoming it. One way to do that is by finding leisure activities that increase your confidence and lift your spirits, just as I have.
By: Jennifer Morrison, Anxiety In Teens Contributor