5 Simple Tips To Help Manage Social Anxiety

After Leaving Lockdown

- Himshikha Shukla

Since your social calendar has been blank for the last few months, filling it back up can feel liberating — but it can also cause anxiety.

The change from having a highly social work and personal life to nothing at all can be really detrimental to a person's mental health, and may cause many people who are normally extroverted to feel like they are becoming introverted and not wanting to mix with others.

We are not gathering experiences that disprove our worries; there's no gradual exposure [to our worries]. Normally when you are being social in a regular way, you are having some of your worries disproven. You're getting used to them. You have a chance to try different things and see what helps with your worry, but now that we are all on our own, jumping back into the unknown poses its own set of anxiety.

As you begin to socialize in person more, the following simple tips can help put your anxiety at ease.

EASE BACK INTO IT

For those who live with social anxiety, slowly enter into a social life. This will help them to ease into situations that were previously uncomfortable. As quarantine ends, the auto avoidance will also end, necessitating their introduction back into situations they deeply fear. That's not a leap anyone should take all at once.

Start by connecting with those in your closest inner circle. That circle is your comfort space, and people you feel most like yourself with and can be honest with and who you trust.