Russ is a man of a thick personality and a taciturn voice.
He has severe social phobia, hides in his room all day, has no friends, usually only interacts with his family, and no one has visited him for several years.
Years of solitude have made him forget how to communicate with people, and the people around him have slowly become accustomed to his silence.
And her arrival completely changed Russ' life.
She is a life-size sex doll that Russ ordered from online.
Russ frantically fell in love with the doll, talked to her, told her jokes, and helped her take care of her life.
He pushes his girlfriend shopping in a wheelchair and is accepted by the kind people in the town.
In the end, Russ gradually built up a sense of trust in himself and others, said goodbye to his "wife", and truly integrated into society.
This is the story told in the 80th Academy Awards-winning film "The Love of a Sex Doll".
Although the film sets a warm and healing ending, it pushes the theme of "social phobia" to people.
Every adult lives in society, is social, and feels that the proportion of people with social phobia is very small?
Wrong!
Many of us have the impression that people who have no half-cent relationship with social phobia are deeply troubled by it.
Huang Zhizhong, the "god of debate" of "Strange Story", once admitted in an interview that he had severe social phobia when he was a child.
The most painful moment is to introduce yourself in class.
Standing up he was silent and could not say a word. The whole class looked at him, and gradually everyone began to whisper, until finally the teacher said impatiently, "Sit down."
From the moment he stood up to the time he sat down, he didn't say a word.
It wasn't until he accidentally bumped into the debate team that he began to learn how to talk to others and slowly stopped worrying.
The goddess Jiang Shuying has participated in many TV series in recent years, and she shines brightly and confidently on the screen.
But what is unexpected is that such a bright and beautiful goddess on the outside is actually a little girl who is afraid of socialization and is not confident.
She won the speech title in "Tell My World" and bravely told her social-fearing mental journey.
When filming, he would repeatedly wonder what the director's look meant, was he not good enough? Is the lighting engineer blaming him for this?
This feeling of worry and anxiety is infinitely magnified by her, becoming less and less confident, more afraid of communicating with people, afraid of letting others see her bad self.
There is a heart-wrenching short film on the Internet called "Life with Social Phobia", I don't know if you have seen it.
People with social phobia are afraid of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, afraid that others will not like them;
When they see others, they will be nervous and dare not face each other;
Highly sensitive, any sentence of the other party will make him ponder for a long time;
Where there are many people, they will be very uncomfortable, and they will be nervous and panicked when they go on stage;
There may be a lot of words online, but once you arrive offline, it is easy to be embarrassed by the cold field in an instant;
I don't know what to talk about when I'm partying, and it's not easy to catch the stems thrown out by others...
In short, people with social phobia can stay alone, they will choose to stay alone, and contact with people will make them feel great pressure.
In the Handbook of Anxious Personality Self-Help, social phobia is defined as follows:
Social anxiety is a special kind of anxiety, which is an uncomfortable emotion such as fear that arises when a person is in a social situation that is likely to be evaluated by others.
Typical of social anxiety is overly nervous about how others will perceive themselves.
People trapped in social anxiety are afraid that they are not good enough in the eyes of others, and even assume that others will reject and judge themselves, their ideas are often too paranoid, and their thinking and judgment of the situation are more negative.
Social phobia is actually a grossly underrated problem, and it is the third most mental illness.
Most people with social phobia have two more common coping styles when faced with social phobia:
01, Avoidance
If you can hide, you can hide, and if you can hide, you can hide.
They try to keep themselves as away from social situations as possible, and even when they are in social situations, they try to avoid talking to others.
In the "Handbook of Anxious Personality Self-Help", the author Anna M. Williamson is a well-known television presenter in the UK.
She works regularly at work gatherings, and these social situations are her inner fear, as she describes in the book:
"I stood awkwardly in the corner of the room and picked up my spiritual sustenance, the phone, to make myself look like I was busy with something else than a poor man without a companion, and I felt stupid, and it must be like that to others."
02, forced
Although such people have severe social phobia and are very reluctant to interact with people, they will force themselves to socialize, and they feel that forcing themselves to participate in more social interactions can slowly improve.
However, in hindsight, it is often found that such socialization will make them tired inside, and then produce a deeper sense of frustration, will be more resistant and avoid social, and it is easy to enter the vicious circle of "social fear - avoidance - compulsion - frustration - more fear - complete self-denial".
And social phobia can seriously affect a person's life.
At work, because of social phobia, we will miss many opportunities: watching those colleagues who are not as strong as us, talking in front of the leader, while people with social phobia can only sit silently in the corner, afraid to show themselves;
Emotionally, the same is true, in the face of the girl who has been in love for a long time, people with social phobia are afraid to take the initiative to invite. Even if they pluck up the courage to take the first step, the date often ends in an awkward cold;
People with social phobia often lack friends, and it is not that they do not desire friendship in their hearts, but they do not know how to interact happily and harmoniously with friends. They long to get closer, but they are afraid to get closer, and eventually they close themselves in their own little world.
The suffering of social phobia, people who have not experienced it, do not understand.
Many social phobia patients, childhood did not have a happy original family, the elders are not good at talking or ignoring this aspect of the cultivation, or commanding children to learn interpersonal communication, from an early age to let children have resistance and fear of social interaction.
And if social phobia is not terminated in our generation, it is likely to affect our children and become intergenerational trauma.
The American Association of Social Anxiety Disorders has released data: about 7.9% of people worldwide suffer from social anxiety disorder, an average of 13 out of every 100 people.
In China, this proportion will not be low, how should people with social phobia heal themselves?
01, use "cognitive reconstruction therapy" to alleviate our social anxiety.
The so-called cognitive reconstruction is to reconstruct our cognition of social interaction.
We need to realize that what we think doesn't equal fact.
There is a well-known focus effect spotlight effect in psychology, which is a manifestation of people overestimating the attention of those around them to their appearance and behavior.
The focus effect means that humans tend to see themselves as the center of everything and intuitively overestimate how much others pay attention to us.
The reason why we have social anxiety is because we care too much about the other person's opinion of us, and we are worried that the other party will have a bad evaluation of us, but in fact, this is just an illusion given to us by the focus effect.
You have to remember that not so many people pay attention to you, and whether the outside world's evaluation is valuable or not is not linked.
02, use more positive words to give yourself hints.
"I don't need to be perfect and make everyone like me."
"It's normal to feel anxious, and everyone gets anxious. ”
Say something similarly positive to yourself to hint at yourself.
There is a saying that when a lie is repeated 1,000 times, it becomes true.
When we keep giving ourselves positive cues, our hearts will believe it's true, cognitive shifts will be made, and our behavior will naturally change.
03. Build your own GROW model before socializing.
In the Handbook of Anxious Personality Self-Help, the authors propose the GROW model.
Take out a piece of paper and carefully write down your answers according to the GROW model.
G stands for Goal.
What is your purpose in attending social events?
Where do you want to stay? What kind of feeling do you want to have?
Write down your goals with positive expressions, such as I want to enjoy the event and be proud of myself.
R stands for Reality.
Look at the actual situation you are facing from another angle.
Write down all the fears and doubts you may have, try to be honest and tell the truth.
How do you feel about the goals just listed?
O stands for Selection.
Imagine and write down what you want to do in social situations.
What strengths do you have to help you achieve your goals?
What resources do you have, and what people have done to help with these activities?
Can you come up with any other way to help you achieve your goals?
W stands for will.
It's time to cheer yourself up and realize how strong you are.
How much do you want to achieve this goal?
What does this mean for you?
Once the goal is actually achieved, what can it bring you?
Before each social event, carefully answer the above questions and build your own GROW model, which can make you clearer mind, stronger inside, more focused, and get through the difficulties.
epilogue:
You're not alone, you and I. When you are afraid of helplessness, I hope that my words and videos can bring you strength, I am Tina, willing to accompany you on the road of life, brave and optimistic to go on.
(About the author: Tina, master of Zhejiang University, TV media reporter, signed author of the public account [Youshu] and [Mizuki Digest], the contracted tutor of the public account [Ten Point Reading], the signed contribution expert of the female platform [Grapefruit], the creator of tens of millions of explosive articles, welcome to pay attention to @Tina psychology)