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| by Martin M. Antony, PhD and Peter J. Norton, PhD |
 Excerpt from The Anti-Anxiety Workbook: Proven Strategies to Overcome Worry, Phobias, Panic and Obsessions By Martin M. Antony, PhD and Peter J. Norton, PhD VIEW BOOK! Anxiety can isolate us or seriously hamper the relationships we do have. In their workbook, psychologists Martin M. Antony and Peter J. Norton offer a toolkit to understand and overcome fears, worries and obsessions to help readers take back their lives. The following excerpt helps overcome anxiety about social situations. Social Life Anxiety can be a very isolating condition. You may fear being around others; sometimes it just feels better to stay home, where you feel safest. This may be the saddest and most ironic thing about having an anxiety disorder because social support is one of the strongest protective barriers against psychological and emotional problems. The only way to feel more comfortable around people is to practice it. But what if you don’t have many friends or opportunities to socialize? Here are some helpful pointers for developing new social supports and reconnecting with old friends. Making New Friends and Social Supports As anybody who has moved to a new city can tell you, it can be hard to make new friends. It’s becoming much rarer these days for neighbors to come over with a casserole or to have a complete stranger strike up a conversation with you at the coffee shop. New friends don’t just show up when you need them. You have to actively seek them. Tip 1: Put Yourself in Places Where Potential Friends Might Be. Strong friendships usually grow out of shared interests. Occasionally you may come across two friends who are very different, but this is rare. We don’t know too many animal rights activists who are friends with hunters, do you? It can be very hard to maintain friendships when two people have very different values or interests. Shared interests could be a common love of cooking, playing sports, quilting, gardening, reading crime novels, singing, or anything else that can help forge a bond between two people. What are some activities or hobbies that you would enjoy doing, even if you weren’t doing them with a friend? Create a list of things your enjoy doing before continuing. Look over your list. Can you think of places where you could put into practice some of these activities or hobbies? Are these places that might put you amid people who share your interests and hobbies? Carol’s story provides a good example of how this can be done. Carol was a 35-year¬old woman who had had panic attacks and agoraphobia for much of her adult life. Because of her anxiety and panic attacks, she had always found it difficult to go out and to be around people. Even in college, she usually stuck to herself and stayed in her dorm room. As a result, she had no close friends and almost never went out on dates. She eventually worked up the courage to overcome her anxiety and began sessions with a cognitive-behavioral therapist. After about 3 months of therapy, she was virtually free from panic attacks and much more able to go out to crowded or busy places. Next, she wanted to start working on building up friendships, which she had avoided for most of her life. Carol’s therapist encouraged her to generate a list of things she would enjoy doing. The first idea that Carol wrote down was “cooking.” She enjoyed watching cooking shows on TV, and she often fantasized about how nice it would be to host a big dinner party. Carol was a fairly good cook, even when she was cooking only for herself. She thought it would be fun to have a friend who shared this interest. So Carol and her therapist started thinking about places she could go that would put her around people who also enjoy cooking. She remembered that several of the gro¬cery stores in her area offered cooking classes. So did two stores where she sometimes shopped for cookware. After a little searching, she also found adult education programs that offered a number of classes for cooking different styles of food. Finally, much to her surprise, she discovered that not far from her own neighborhood was a dinner club: every month a different person would host a dinner party for the other club members. Carol started by signing up for one of the adult ed cooking classes, where she learned to cook Chinese food. Though she didn’t make any friends that time, she did have fun cooking and being around other people. After taking a few more classes, she started to get to know some of the “regulars” who also enrolled in multiple classes. Eventually, they decided to put their new cooking skills to the test, and Carol invited a few of them over for a potluck dinner. Carol had a very nice time and felt that these people were becoming her good friends. Buoyed by this experience, she went to the community center and signed up for the neighborhood dinner club. She later said that this was one of the best experiences of her life, as she made friends with many of the people and families in her area. Now Carol goes running in the morning with a small group of these neighbors, including an attractive single lawyer who recently moved into a condo down the street. Tip 2: Allow New Friendships to Grow Naturally. Like any relationship, friendships take time to develop. Occasionally you may hear of two people who became best friends almost instantly, but that’s pretty rare. More commonly, friendships grow over time. An interesting way to think about friendships is to look at them like a pyramid. Your best or closest friends would be on the top of the pyramid, and casual acquaintances at the bottom. Notice how much larger the bottom of the pyramid is than the top. It’s typical to have a lot of people we consider casual acquaintances, fewer people we consider friends, even fewer who are close friends, and fewer still who are our best friends. In most cases, friends move up the pyramid one step at a time. Allow people you meet to start as acquaintances. As you get to know some of them better, you might start to consider them friends. Eventually some of them may become good friends. If you and the other person are lucky, that person may become one of your closest friends. This process usually should go one step at a time. Forcing someone up the pyramid too quickly can backfire. That’s what happened to Stewart, who enjoyed someone in his new group of card-playing friends so much that he started calling him several times a week. His new friend didn’t have enough time to grow into a close friend and felt bombarded by the constant calls. Now they don’t see each other much at all. Reconnecting with Old Friends Sometimes people say that they used to have many friends but, when their anxiety problems flared up, the friendships started to dwindle away. This isn’t uncommon. As anxiety starts to limit what you can do or where you feel safe going, it creates fewer and fewer opportunities to spend time with your friends. Maybe your friends accommodated your anxiety for a while, but eventually they found it hard always to have to plan around your fears. Maybe you felt ashamed about your anxiety and simply stopped calling old friends. Whatever the case, it’s not too late to try to rebuild those friendships. Reconnecting has an advantage over meeting new friends. When trying to make new friends, you might find that you don’t have anything in common with them, you don’t like them, or your views or beliefs are not well matched. But when rebuilding an old friendship, you already know that the two of you are compatible as friends. Keep in mind, however, that rebuilding friendships has some similarities to making new friends. You may find that old friends come back lower on your pyramid than they were before. Give the renewed friendship time to grow, just as you would with new friends. The Anti-Anxiety Workbook Proven Strategies to Overcome Worry, Phobias, Panic and Obsessions By Martin M. Antony, PhD and Peter J. Norton, PhD Reprinted with permission of Guilford Press www.guilford.com
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Monday, 08 February 2010