Welcome back to the Anxiety Slayer podcast. I'm Shan Banderleak here with my longtime friend and co-host

in Angasivier. This week we're talking about how to care for yourself if you suffer with social anxiety.

We'll also discuss holiday season challenges and first responder series course offering designed to support all who suffer in

the social settings. Welcome back in Nanga. Tayshien. I'm incredibly grateful that we're having this conversation today and the timing just couldn't be better.

Social anxiety is, well, it kicks into pretty high gear during the holiday season. That's for sure.

Yeah, it certainly does. It can really bring a lot of nervous anticipation about

social invitations that we might not feel at all comfortable with.

And let's begin today by discussing the question that we hear most about social anxiety.

Yeah, the thing we hear most in our group and other messages coming into us is, does anybody else feel this way?

Is it just me that gets anxiety attacks at a crowded event or am I the only

one who can't eat in front of other people? These kinds of questions are what really

concern people with social anxiety. Is it me am I alone what's wrong with me

and our answer is no you are not alone and you are not the only one. Social anxiety is common and it's becoming increasingly more common in our loud and fast society

and with social media driven certain expectations that we're all facing.

As a matter of fact, social anxiety is the third most common mental health challenge in the United States,

affecting over 15 million American adults.

Yeah, so there's comfort in knowing that we're not alone, but we can do better than that.

We can start learning how to care for ourselves, how to calm social anxiety,

and EFT tapping and bark flower remedies are two very effective ways to do that and to address personal challenges like the things we really dread and I certainly used to

dread in my youth at social events shaking going red, feeling hot, worrying that people are going to notice, fear of speaking in front of others,

not feeling comfortable making eye contact, concerns about feeling judged, or just simply feeling like you want to run out the room

which is something I have done on a number of occasions. That just made me think of a time

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