How
SPA Helps to Overcome Blocks To Social Anxiety Recovery: For Those Who Have Tried Other Approaches To Help Their Social Anxiety (even other 12 Step
Programs) with Limited Success
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Many of us come to
SPA / SocAA after having unsuccessfully tried many other approaches to overcoming our social
anxiety problems: We may have tried seeking help for our social anxiety from therapists of different schools, various self help methods for social anxiety and even other 12 Step programs with
little success. We may be frustrated, depressed or even cynical about various
methods as the result. In SPA / SocAA we are not opposed to any of the above-mentioned approaches. They do work for some people, but not everybody and we are happy to share that our approach offers an adapted 12 Step method that many have found to be very helpful—
What’s different
about our approach: SPA (Social Phobics Anonymous) is a non-pressuring 12 Step Program specifically focused to help social anxiety problems backed up by extensive experience and good results. Emotions Anonymous, a more general 12 Step program, also has a strong record of success in helping people with social anxiety problems and we recommend their program literature and their groups as
well—
Our primary mission
is to help our fellow social anxiety sufferer learn now to use the 12 Steps to
recover from social anxiety. We recognize that
what we have to offer is not going to be for everybody. Nevertheless what's
exciting about SPA / SocAA is that spiritual tools of recovery can empower and
amplify the effectiveness of other therapies that previously may not have been
working—
‘Spirituality’, as is
found in the 12 Step approach, can be a lubricant that unblocks and frees up
the effectiveness of many other self-help techniques for social anxiety:
loosening control issues that previously sabotaged our efforts, lifting the
mind out of negative outlook with the addition of trust or faith; softening our
resistance with inward and outward compassion and unraveling mental knots
through acts of service and a new sense of relationship with others along the lines
of spiritual principles. Spirituality, in this sense, need not be religious, but can instead carry other connatations relating to letting go of excessive control and moving beyond ones smaller sense of the world and oneself and one's purpose to good effect for reducing ones habitual social fears.
A
short list of principles that can stop self-sabotage, can help social anxiety
directly and can even enable other tools and therapies for social anxiety work more effectively—
1) Understanding that
spirituality is a powerful key to making all other self help and therapy tools
work. When not getting results, lubricate all other self-help or
therapy tools with spiritual principles and you may find that they work more
effectively for your social anxiety problem—or may finally work when they never worked before at all.
2)
Realizing that spirituality can be non-religious:
Enhancing faith in ‘The Good’ and learning to recognize the interconnectedness
of all things, and especially any act of service that causes us to move beyond
our personal problems all have benefits for the social anxiety sufferer
regardless of whether we have religious belief.
3)
Letting
go of control. We unconsciously try to control our
social anxiety with self help techniques rather than surrendering the need to control
first. Drop efforts and agendas designed to change others and learn to live in
the moment and go with the flow. Especially though a careful study of Steps One
Two and Three of the Social Phobics Anonymous / Social Anxiety Anonymous 12
Step program we learn how to make vital progress with this core social anxiety-causing
issue.
4) Taking a larger view and expressing this in actions towards others. Don’t just look for what’s in this for you.
Make kindness and even little acts of help (service or support) to your fellow social anxiety
sufferers a part of your life. Kindness to others, especially when we help people with Social Anxiety,
reflexively triggers self-kindness, something that social phobia sufferers are
distinctly lacking. Focus on service or being helpful (in healthy ways) when
dealing with non social anxiety sufferers as well. This will increase your
self-confidence and release you from excessive self-consciousness. Consistently
making efforts (on a daily basis) that help others can help to end the cycle of
self obsession that fuels social anxiety-- and is the best way to preserve the
recovery gains that one has already made. This need not be excessively time
consuming, yet can pay us back many times over in hours and days with reduced
social anxiety.
5) Honoring and being true to yourself. Learn to accept yourself in
totality and with unconditional love. Listen to your inner voice and try to
live more according to it. Allow yourself to dream in detail about the life you
really want. Set boundaries with others when needed. Speak up and even stand up
for yourself when needed. Be who you really are and live the life that you
really want rather than living according to what your anxiety wants or what
others want. Anyone of these things undertaken alone can help a little, but all of these things taken together can help social anxiety enormously.
6)
Manifest
outward and inward love in a balanced way. Becoming a
more loving person towards others will help you to transcend your fear.
Becoming more loving towards yourself will help you to heal your fear. Balance
is the key; extremes in either direction won’t work and may set us up for more
anxiety.
7) Faith
and Trust. Whether one develops a rational or a
spiritual faith, developing a deep underlying trust that there is more good
than we realize in the world, in ourselves, and in the Universe as a whole will
go a long way towards healing our fears.
8) Being present.
The present is the only place where never obsess. When we gently keep our focus
in the here and now we there is no worry and the cycle of negative thoughts are
gradually short-circuited. If we practice this long enough our discomfort loses
its power over us. Eventually, any new unpleasant thoughts and feelings will
tend to even tend to pass in and out rather than sticking around.
9) Make a commitment.
In our groups no one will ever pressure you to do anything. Pressure of any
kind, we have found, aggravates all anxiety problems, including social anxiety. Yet after attending groups for a while we come to realize that all other tools of recovery eventually fall into place and our recovery begins to manifest at it's own speed when we make a commitment to study and use of the 12 Steps on an
ongoing basis our first priority. Commitment works at two levels-- Day-long
(gentle) effort (throughout the day and in response to challenges) and
long-term (gentle) effort (long term meaning— spanning weeks, months and
beyond) can, in combination, help social anxiety a great deal. The principle of gentle persistence is the key to keeping commitment
on a healthy track. We are persistent but in a way that is compassionate
towards others and ourselves. We are only human and should not hold ourselves
to perfectionist standards as we try to gently keep our commitment to our use
of program tools (and support groups) on an ongoing basis. We will stray or
fall short of our own expectations many times and the principle of
self-forgiving gentle persistence can always bring us back to the path of
focused, ongoing effort.
This
is not a catchall approach. Rather than being a compromise of all-inclusion, we
see a 12 Step approach as being it’s own unique entity— an opportunity for a synthesis of the spiritual and emotional healing that stands apart from the
current division of spiritual healing paths on the one side, and psychological
self help techniques and therapies on the other. Rather than asserting the
supremacy of one approach over another, the SPA / SocAA proposition holds that adding spirituality in to the mix frees the social anxiety sufferer more effectively in the process. This
is a concept so compelling that there are now Social Anxiety Anonymous / Social Phobics Anonymous groups
in five states, and a couple of other countries with more to be added soon. And our telephone conference call support groups have regular International participation. So far, people from four continents, as well as the Pacific Islands, have received help by participating in Social Anxiety Anonymous / Social Phobics Anonymous support groups.
This
concept of a 12 Step Program for social anxiety program is not always
immediately obvious— people don’t always see the
entire picture right away. That’s fine— newcomers are gently reminded that
every group member is free to accept and use those tools of recovery that work
best for them and to disregard the rest. The 12 Steps and also
the related SPA / SocAA concepts are simply shared weekly in our groups.
Our idea here
is simple. First of all, the spiritual principles of the SPA 12 Steps laid out
alone can by themselves be a sufficient platform for a full recovery from any
anxiety disorder. This has been proven by 18 years of experience as various
other 12 Step programs have emerged to address anxiety problems of different
types—some even more crippling than Social Anxiety.
Steps
1, 2 and 3, which help to relieve control issues,
reestablish trust (an underlying feel of safety) and call for a
burden-relieving housecleaning process that is then carried out in Steps 4
and 5, all reveal exactly how an Integrated 12 Step Program for Social Anxiety Problems actually
works.
At it’s most
essential level we find that the 1 Steps, when worked gently but diligently, work all by themselves to relieve social anxiety—although many have also reported that they help to unleash and amplify the effectiveness of many other healing tools and concepts.
How can this be? To return to this concept, in a word, many call it spirituality. Others who do
not view themselves as spiritually inclined might call it ‘learning to trust
the good and go with the flow’.
In either case the result is the same—that
something ‘extra’ that makes many, if not all, other healing tools (no matter
what the therapy) work more effectively can be revealed if we further pry open
the definition of spirituality.
‘Spiritual’
has not one, but a cluster of meanings and we will list some of their various
shades and applications at greater length here:
Just to expand on the concept of spiritual / emotional
healing for social anxiety a bit more:
First,
spirituality refers to connectedness— something we social
anxiety sufferers are often starving for. Through reestablishing a sense of
healthy connection to both others, to the God of our personal understanding and surprisingly,
ourselves— we find that our social anxiety is diminished as we re-emerge.
Transcending
or moving beyond ones self-- All spiritual paths
call for their travelers to not only see, but also act beyond their own selfish
needs in the service of others. Service need not be great or dramatic—a simple
welcoming smile, a kind word or lending a supportive ear all make a good start.
Being willing to get a phone call from a suffering fellow social anxiety
sufferer can help not only the person in crisis but the person who offers an
ear as well. Helping to get the word out about the support group and carrying
the message about the tools of social anxiety recovery can also be a great
help. In all of these cases we free ourselves from the self-obsession that is
at the root of social anxiety and so short circuit the cycle of self-consuming
fears.
Honoring and being true to oneself— by developing
self-compassion as opposed to self pity, by learning to listen to our inner
voice to hear our real needs, desires and to even allow ourselves to dream in
detail of the life that we really want but have allowed the anxiety to convince
us that we can not have. The power of
living according to what we want instead of what our anxiety wants, (or what
others want), and the power of imagining the life of our dreams and then, when
we feel ready, taking steps towards those dreams. This shift in focus also
allows us to speak up for ourselves and to stand for ourselves when necessary.
Here also we learn to separate from others so that we can become centered in
ourselves for the first time.
The
secret of balancing outward love and inward love—
the two above sections, may seem contradictory but actually they are not. First
service to our fellow social anxiety sufferer heals us as we help others so and
so is actually a means of helping oneself. We are freed from the terrible
suffering of anxiety as we help our fellow social anxiety sufferer so in that
act—outward love and inward love are one and the same. Of course balance also
comes into play here—sometimes we can overdo service and get overtired or
distracted from the joys and responsibilities of our own lives. It’s important to remember that hurting
ourselves in order to help others is not our aim. Helping should be good for
both the giver and the receiver in order to have spiritual value and so reduce
our social anxiety.
The
reason why many self-help tools don’t work— Many an
excellent self-help book touts tools that frustratingly seem not to work for us. Many of us have had the experience of buying such books, using their techniques with success for short time, getting a few breaths of fresh air, and then having the anxiety return with a vengeance. Ones first reaction may be that the book must have been a fraud—surely the charlatan that wrote it was only after a buck, we fume. Or, alternately, we may berate ourselves for ‘failing’ yet again to ‘make the grade’. Surely if it is not the authors fault then it must be our fault that so far it just isn’t working. In fact, the problem may not be the book at all, but a single unadressed issue that blocks all progress: This hidden underlying issue is control. We have been trying
to use various tools of recovery to control our anxiety rather than bringing
ourselves into line with spiritual principles.
Adding spiritual principles to our recovery process actually help to eliminate
control while empowering us in healthy ways.
Strangely
we find in Social Phobics Anonymous that many self help tools actually can be
made to work where previously they could not— if we address
the underlying spiritual or ‘control-based’ blocks to our recovery.
Spirituality, rather than being a source of mere comfort actually can serve as
the lubricant that allows our stuck gears to start moving.
Many people
are shocked to find that if they do the spiritual work that everything else
falls into place. Suddenly other self help tools start to work where before
they didn’t— All because spiritual healing as derived from working the SPA
12 Steps and 14 Suggestions.
Faith
and Trust— As described in the Social Anxiety Anonymous 14
Suggestions (Also known as "Social Anxiety and Trust"), 'faith' also known as 'trust' is the underlying solution for all of
our fears. Moving forward with active faith (believing in and serving healthy love) can eradicate anxiety. Additionally, being gentle with oneself and others can have the same effect. Many tools of recovery fail to work simply because we are pushing ourselves ruthlessly to perform as we use them. Starting from a place of faith and
expressing love towards ourselves as we make the effort can make all the
difference in this regard. This is really a case where kindness can help to make all the difference with social anxiety.
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