Social Anxiety Disorder
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What is Social Phobia?
Definition
Social phobia, also known as social anxiety disorder, is not the same as simple shyness. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines social phobia as “intense, irrational and persistent fear of being scrutinized or negatively evaluated by others”. A sufferer’s greatest fear is of looking ridiculous in front of anyone else.
Most people have had at least a touch of social fear affect them. Perhaps you have cornered the one person you know at a party, to avoid speaking to strangers. You may have had the experience of a conversation going dead for a moment after you speak. It is an uncomfortable feeling. You may have felt a twinge of fear that others think you boring, or silly. This is the fear that plagues a social phobic.
Social phobia is a specific type of anxiety disorder. It is one of the most prevalent mental disorders in the West, affecting at least five percent of the population, and perhaps as many as thirteen percent. Only substance abuse and depression are more common, although many social phobics suffer from those afflictions as well.
It appears that slightly more women than men suffer from social phobia. However, these figures may be skewed. Men are more likely than women to disguise their social phobia with alcohol abuse. Alcoholism may be picked up and treated, while the underlying social anxiety remains.
Manifestations
The most common manifestation of social anxiety is a fear of meeting new people. Sufferers fear that they will have nothing to say, or that they will say something very foolish. As such, they can often appear boring, stand-offish and uninterested in conversation, when in fact they would very much like to participate.
A stronger form of the disorder means that sufferers are afraid of meeting with a group of people, even if all are friends. A lively conversation may be in progress around them, which the social phobic wants to join in. However, the sufferer will spend all their time weighing up whether it is worth opening their mouth. They may decide that all they have to contribute will be dull, foolish or irrelevant. (Ironically, many sufferers report judging other people in a group to their own harsh standards.) Occasionally, they may come up with something that they deem worthy, but have spent so long deciding whether to say it that the conversation has moved on.
In some cases, a social phobic becomes afraid to leave the house. They fear that every passer-by is judging them, secretly laughing at them or snubbing them. At this level, the disorder can be thought of as egotistical, as the sufferer believes themselves to be the center of everyone’s attention.
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