Healing Social
Anxiety through Healthy Grief
Feelings of sadness are especially well
known to people who have suffered from years of social anxiety. Sadness has
been for many of us a frequent companion. For others of us, sadness may remain
buried at the unconscious level, packed away under the constant stress of
living with social fear; or kept at a distance by a life built around perpetual
avoidance. Whatever the case, unresolved grief is a major feature of the social
anxiety syndrome. This is hardly surprising since we are people who have experienced
a great deal of loss. Although individual patterns vary, we have all
experienced loss of one kind or another or we would not be in Social Phobic’s
Anonymous today.
Some of us have lost dear friends because
of the strain that social anxiety put on our relationships. Others may have
lost intimate partners for similar reasons. Or we may have been unable to even
initiate these relationships in the first place. Or we remain trapped in
unhealthy relationships for years, unable to separate ourselves from abusive or
draining individuals or situations because social anxiety has convinced us that
our choices are limited.
Many have lost jobs or may have remained
trapped in low-paying or otherwise unsatisfying work because our social fears held
us back. Others of us may have had to cut our education short because we could
no longer tolerate attending classes. Or perhaps we remained in school but learned
less because social anxiety preoccupied our minds instead of our studies. As
years passed many of us also suffered from physical exhaustion as chronic
anxiety took its toll on our bodies. Feelings of constant tiredness may have
then further limited our choices. Others of us may on the surface have all of
the trappings of a normal life— but have lost the ability to take pleasure or
satisfaction in any of it because social anxiety has stolen our peace of
mind. Being able to go through the
motions means very little if our emotions always trouble us; draining the joy
from significant relationships, vocations or life events.
This leads us to the painful reality that
most of us have lost not only what was, but what could have been. We carry
unresolved grief not only for that which we once had; that which we were never
able to have; we grieve our own lost opportunities and our own unrealized potential.
Given that feelings of loss and sadness are
constant features of social anxiety, how then could they be of any use to us? Isn’t
grief just a symptom of the problem? The answer lies in the problem of control.
Control in its various forms is the invisible engine that perpetuates social
anxiety. As we struggle to control our
fears, they paradoxically get worse. As we struggle to control our performance,
our performance suffers or, at very least, our critical thoughts about
ourselves go wildly out of control in response. The desire to control social anxiety is certainly
understandable, after all feelings of anxiety are terrible, or at least we have
come to think so. In any case we desire to control our feelings because we
truly are suffering.
Yet many of us have been dogged by sadness
for years with no letup of social anxiety. Surely, we protest, long experience
has therefore shown that sadness has no real use at all. The problem lies in
our unwillingness to feel more fully. The reality for both feelings of sadness
and anxiety is that one level or another we constantly resist these feelings,
and this resistance is also a form of control.
Making room for healthy grief is one way
out of this control trap. This is because sadness is the letting go emotion.
For example-- when someone we love dies-- we feel sadness, because sadness is the
hearts way of letting go; And letting go more than anything else is the
antidote to control.
It is important to note that working with
sadness is not the only way to let go, direct work with faith and spirituality
can also be very effective, but may also involve dimensions of sadness in the
process as well.
So
if sadness is the letting go emotion, then how do we use it to good effect? If
it was of little use to us before, how can we turn it into an asset and make
good use of it now? Understanding the
issue of control is again a key to this riddle. If we try to force sadness to
work for us, this will also backfire and make our social anxiety worse. So will
wallowing in grief. Wallowing is merely a way of tightly holding on which is
just control in a new disguise. So if we can’t force sadness and if wallowing in
sadness is also a form of control then how can sadness be of any use to us at
all?
In SPA we find that remaining open to
sadness when it presents itself can make all the difference. Rather than
forcing it or holding on to it, we try to remain receptive to it. In the
process we allow sadness to do what it needs to do rather than what we think it
should do. Here we open the door, but allow sadness to walk through on its own
accord and according to its own timing.
“But wait”, we say, didn’t we
join a support group in the first place in order to learn how to be happy? Who
wants to be sad all the time? Surely this is heading in the wrong direction!
Yet we find that being open to sadness is the key to allowing it to pass
through and out of us. We find that sadness, whether conscious or unconscious,
was another emotion in which we were perpetually stuck and that by embracing it
more fully we are then able to allow it to flow more naturally. The truth is
that sadness is a part of every life, as is fear, and that developing the habit
of welcoming these feelings is actually how our emotions return to their proper
balance in our lives.
Some practical tips for welcoming sadness:
1)
Learn to
view sadness as a positive, not a negative.
2)
Don’t try to
force sadness, but remain open to it when it naturally arises.
3)
Once we
realize the healing benefits of sadness, we take time for it and make space for
it in our lives.
4)
We embrace
sadness not in order to hold onto it, but in order to more fully let it go.
5)
Going
through our sadness brings healing, releases anxiety and increases our capacity
to feel joy.
6)
Avoid self
pity, which is mentally obsessive. Learn to recognize healthy sadness which is
more of a feeling, is more in our bodies than in our heads, and involves less
thinking than self pity. Sadness and grief are often deeper than everyday
crying. And may or may not involve tears.
7)
Learn to
express sadness in safe places such as in groups, or privately to friends in
SPA, or to sponsors or cosponsors, or through journaling, drawing, painting or
music.
8)
Holding on
to sadness is another form of control. Surrendering control must accompany
sadness in order for it to become a healing force. But no one else can
determine when we are holding on and when we are not; we can only know this
internally and only through time, practice and experience. Plus there is no way
to learn anything without making mistakes.
9)
Working with
sadness should be balanced with the other tools of recovery in the program
(working the 12 Steps, daily study of SPA literature, journaling, vision work
etc…).
10) What defines balance is
different for each of us and also varies over time.
Remember, working with sadness, as with all
SPA tools, is optional. We are each free to use those tools that we like and
disregard the rest!
INFO ON ACCESSING SOCIAL ANXIETY ANONYMOUS TELEPHONE SUPPORT GROUPS (AND ALSO LOCAL SUPPORT GROUPS)
FAQS: ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT SOCIAL ANXIETY ANONYMOUS
Social Anxiety and Trust: How To Heal This Part of Yourself and
Eliminate Social Fears
Social Anxiety and Positive Thinking: How To Enhance This Tool Even Further
Recovery Round Two: For Those With
Social Anxiety Who Are Already In Other 12 Step Programs
Social Anxiety And Shifting: How To Get Better and Better at Moving Out Of Social Fear
Healing Social Anxiety Through Dream Work:
Learn How To Reclaim Your Dreams For a Better Life In A Non-pressuring Way and Learn Also How The Very Act of Healthy Dreaming Can Begin Healing Social Anxiety!