We’ve all experienced a feeling of timidness when meeting new people or preparing for a big speech. For the nearly 15 million Americans who live with social anxiety disorder, those feelings can become all-consuming and immobilizing.
Social anxiety is an “intense anxiety or fear of being judged, negatively evaluated, or rejected in a social or performance situation,” according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Over a third of people with social anxiety disorder delay reporting their symptoms for a decade or more, the group says. Often, they assume the anxiety will just go away in time.
Because the symptoms can look like just a bad case of nerves, it’s all too easy to misunderstand social anxiety. We asked two experts to dispel some common misconceptions about the disorder. Here are a few things about social anxiety that many people get wrong:
1. Social anxiety is different from shyness.
Shyness is more of a character trait, whereas social anxiety is an interruption in the flow of your daily routines, said Victor Schwartz, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at New York University’s School of Medicine.
“When extreme shyness interferes with functioning or impedes someone from making progress in their life, then it’s a problem,” noted Schwartz, who also serves as chief medical officer at The Jed Foundation, a nonprofit suicide-prevention organization. “If it’s not interfering with your functioning then it’s likely not social anxiety.”
All humans are bound to experience feelings of discomfort, uncertainty, or shyness when stepping into a new social situation for the first time, explained Kevin Caridad, a therapist and CEO of the Cognitive Behavior Institute in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania. He noted that social anxiety can have a particularly strong impact on a person’s social life.
“People with social anxiety will stop going to social events, avoid hanging out in larger groups or won’t go to the store,” Caridad said. “They don’t leave the house or can’t get a job because they have these thoughts and beliefs that are very distorted.”