Social Anxiety Disorder

Wikipedia has a terrific article about social anxiety disorder or SAD. It explains everything you would want to know if you think that might be something you or someone close to you has. "Social anxiety disorder (SAD), also known as social phobia, is an anxiety disorder characterized by a significant amount of fear in one or more social situations causing considerable distress and impaired ability to function in at least some parts of daily life. These fears can be triggered by perceived or actual scrutiny from others." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_anxiety_disorder

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How to Criticize Someone Without Hurting Their Feelings

In all of the years I've worked as a psychotherapist this is one issue that cuts across sexes, age, status, wealth and just about everything else. If you "stuff" something, meaning you don't tell the other person what you're thinking or feeling for fear of upsetting them, there will eventually be some fairly serious consequences to you like major depression or anxiety, or drinking too much or self-soothing with food, etc. or to the other person in the form of out of proportion anger or an emotional blowup from you. Something that might have been a manageable issue if was handled right away gets "stuffed" and over time more and more unsaid issues combine into a not very pretty picture. The point being that not being able to say what you think to another person because you're afraid to hurt them or make them mad will have consequences to you and to them. Most people just don't want to hurt the other person's feelings, an admirable idea, and they don't know how to say something critical in a way that the other person will hear without getting upset. This is an interesting article containing tips about how to criticize in...

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The Value of Sadness

This is a very interesting talk that resonates with my observations over more than than twenty-five years as a therapist, that humans don't seem to grow emotionally without some form of pain or anxiety. So, when you're struggling with something it's likely that you're also growing. The talk also discusses sadness as opposed to anger or violence bringing people closer to each other. In my office I educate people to say what they need to say coming from the place of sadness or pain and not from anger, which is adrenaline dumped into the body as a way to get out of pain. Sometimes that's important but when attempting to communicate strong emotions with another it's pretty useless. Follow this link for the entire talk by Courtney Stephens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8li-3pRrA5Y

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