123RF.COM

Social anxiety can lead to a person missing out.

Her mother, Sarah*, said Lucy turned down most invitations, not because she didn't like her friends, but because social gatherings made her too anxious.       

"If she's invited to something she goes into total panic because she knows she's going to have to deal with a crowd of people, so then I get tears and anxiety and panic attacks that are quite severe sometimes." Sarah said.

Sometimes Lucy's whole body shook as the anxiety took hold.

READ MORE:
* Anxious teens need to face their fears, not be saved
* My anxiety is called Walter
* Paralympic champion Liam Malone opens up on his teenage battle with anxiety
* Six ways good parents contribute to their child's anxiety

"She actually said to me she sometimes feels like she almost leaves her body and I guess that's her coping mechanism to try and deal with what's going on." she said.

Sarah said social anxiety held her daughter back in many ways, preventing her from trying new activities.

"She will sit back, afraid of people watching her so it's a self-esteem thing. She feels people might laugh at her."

However she said Lucy often watched other, younger children trying new things and felt frustrated that she couldn't bring herself to join in.

"It's quite a crippling thing and I don't know if people know how crippling it is, the anxiety."

Clinical psychologist Catherine Gallagher told the RNZ parenting podcast Are We There Yet? that social anxiety was often driven by perfectionism and a fear of criticism or rejection by others.

"Underlying it are often fears that something is wrong with us or we will do something wrong, such as make a mistake, go red in the face or perform poorly."

People with social anxiety then worried that these mistakes would be exposed to others and they would be judged negatively, she said.

"Our worry brains can tell us we need to be perfect or flawless or, to the other extreme, we're destined for an epic You-Tube-worthy fail and there's no in between."

"So anxious brains are often black and white brains - we're either on fire or it's a complete disaster."

 Lucy's experience of turning down invitations and then worrying that she wouldn't be invited to anything else was a "lovely example of anxiety", she said

"You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't."  

She said the anxiety stemmed from a primal alarm system that triggered a "fight", "flight" or "freeze" reaction and normally occurred when someone was threatened.

That heightened sense of danger meant anxious people often went into a social situation on edge

"So [] we're thinking about things like: no one's going to talk to me, or they'll think I'm boring or what if I say the wrong thing, what if I trip up?"

And, ultimately, these worry thoughts altered the way people acted.

"So we can seem less engaged, look awkward or be over the top as we try to cover our anxiety or we can actually just avoid the whole thing in the first place and opt out of situations."
 
This meant many young people didn't expose themselves to social situations where they would actually build up the skills and confidence to manage those experiences better.

Tips to help your socially anxious child

- Build a solid understanding of what anxiety is and validate and normalise your child's struggle with it.
"The feeling is real. It feels dangerous. The challenge is the situation is not dangerous and that's the bit the child has to work through with support from Mum and Dad." Gallagher said.

- Don't always leap in to "rescue" them or answer questions on their behalf.
Children needed to learn to negotiate their own way into a social situation and to cope with its ups and downs.  "If they pull out when they're most anxious then those situations remain dangerous" she said.

- Encourage your child to face their fears by exposing them to social activities while they are feeling anxious, rather than waiting for the anxiety to subside first.
"They need to do life, do these things while anxious."

- Find activities that have "scaffolding" such as a group that is led by an adult. This can allow the child to engage with others without having to take the lead or engage in free play.
In a school setting, socially anxious children might find it useful to have a "job" such as a library assistant where they can talk to others without having to ask to join a game.
"Integrating yourself into someone else's play or into a game, that can be quite tough."         

 - Don't allow your child to avoid anxiety inducing situations by staying home from school or other activities.
"You're supporting them to be at school even if it's through tears and distress." Gallagher said. And, when they return, focus on the things that went well, rather than any perceived failures.

- Limit the time spent talking about worries. "Only allow so many worry questions a day or set aside a short worry time so it doesn't leak into every moment." (And make sure the worry time is not just at bedtime as it can start the child on a train of thought that's difficult to get out of.)

- Help your child to distinguish between a worry and a genuine problem such as bullying. "Most children, when they learn this distinction themselves actually then start to be more robust about how they do deal with social situations and also they have the confidence that they don't need to come to Mum and Dad to fix it."  

- Plan for anxiety and have realistic expectations for your child.
"Because if Mum's and Dad's expectation is that I should be able to go into this situation and be awesomely comfortable, that might not be the case", Gallagher said.

However if the parents expected the child to get anxious and validated those feelings by accepting that the situation would be hard, the child would be better equipped to handle it.
"So we actually expect anxiety to turn up. We come up with a plan for it so the child goes into that situation much more realistically prepared for it and, typically, is going to manage it a lot better."

*Not her real name

Hear more on RNZ's parenting podcast Are We There Yet?
 

 - Stuff