The Problem with Social Anxiety and the Internet

     What I am talking about here is not how the internet causes social anxiety (SA). Actually the fact that I had to explain that and that most people would expect me to write about that is part of my point. Type social anxiety into a search engine and you will see tons of content telling you all about it. What are its symptoms, how is it diagnosed, what are its causes, examples of other people who struggle with it, etc. If you think about it, if someone is looking up information about SA they probably understand it better than they would care to. The last thing most people want when they are trying to find information about this is to see the countless iterations of essentially the same information. What is much harder to find are actual solutions.

So much content that is given about SA is about different theories of why this is something people struggle with, usually from an evolutionary perspective, and all of the many different ways it can affect people. Not to mention driving home the ramifications of living a life in fear and how depressing that can be. Even books on the subject that you can buy do many of these same things, wasting chapters chanting the same mantra that those of us with this condition have heard many times over. The other song that we hear are the benefits of cognitive behavioral therapy, SSRI’s, and the necessity to see a licensed practitioner for any real help. So what the person who is looking for support usually receives is essentially a detailed explanation of what is wrong with them, a mentioning of what might help them, and then told to go pay to speak with someone else. Then, in my experience, speaking with most licensed counselors and psychologists becomes essentially fruitless not to mention expensive. Don’t get me started on medication.

It should be noted, this is not 100% the case. There are  the programs being sold on the internet in the form of video series claiming to have some secret method to overcoming SA but you need to pay first to really learn it and they could be totally illegit. Or you might get some advice from someone who shares their experience with SA and how they overcame it. Then there  are the SA forums, where you either get the occasional motivational quote, people who want to lament over it, and the aforementioned gurus that have a video series to sell. 

What you may be thinking now, is how is this blog post any different than what I have been describing? Aside from pointing out the shortcomings of the many resources available, I do want to talk about practical solutions that people can try. I know it is just another resource being thrown unto the giant pile that we have already. But the goal of this blog going forward will be to focus primarily on answers to social anxiety. Hopefully, I will have people who will send me questions to help spur me to come up with new topics we can discuss. So while the rest of the internet is talking about what is wrong with us we can talk about what we are going to do about it.