Welcome back to the anxiety slayer podcast. I'm Shan Banderleak here with my longtime friend and co-host Ananga Sivir. This week, we're talking about how to care for yourself if you suffer with social anxiety. Welcome back, Ananga.

Hey, Shen. 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 just 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 with

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 barkflower 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 when in my prior professional life, I often had to teach groups of

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