Social phobia, or "I'm afraid of people"
… It seems to them that everyone around is looking only at them, laughing at them. Coming to the store, they often feel that they have been choosing products for too long, they feel that everyone is looking at them and thinking: "What is he digging there for half an hour, like an old grandmother, some kind of brake!"
Social phobia is a frequent phenomenon in a modern big city. The strongest hindrance and great torment is fear, which becomes a constant companion of a person suffering from social phobia. Scary on the street. Scary in the subway. Scary at the blackboard at school.
At the sight of a company of people, such a person has a numbness and a desire not to mess with anyone. The thought of contact with them hits like an electric current, makes you go to the opposite side of the road. If he still has to pass by, then he does so only by pulling on himself a mask of inaccessibility or contempt. Sometimes he may even try to scare others. After such an "attack" he hopes that they will not realize that he is actually afraid, and such actions are only feigned, helping him to feel safe.
Visual vector
People say: "Fear has big eyes." Very accurate observation. They are especially "great" in people with a visual vector. It is the spectators who are able to cry bitterly from the overwhelming feelings, because someone else is hurt and bad. Crying from the inability to help, from the suffering of others. Only their eyes can "radiate" warmth, kindness and empathy for someone else's grief.
Often these same eyes cry for themselves, feeling sorry for themselves and empathizing with themselves, living in constant drama and continuous troubles. Such people have eyes always "in a wet place", but this is never worries about others.
These eyes perfectly distinguish colors, billions of shades, they love and get great pleasure from this contemplation, they notice new, bright, colorful images. In addition to this, nature also gives an inner ability to master the emotional colors of life, gives sensitivity and the ability to be filled with bright emotions.
It is the spectators who create and understand art, so they enjoy and tempt their exquisite taste. They are often said to have “smart” eyes, they “see through”, feel the emotional state of other people. Developed spectators are born connoisseurs and "therapists" of the soul.
Many spectators are able to fall in love already from school. They can "to death" experience unrequited love, saying that they love so that "even dying is not scary."
Girls have been dreaming of love since childhood. The spectator loves everyone at once, wants to embrace the whole world with his love. But this feeling of love is not given to them from birth, it develops in them only under certain conditions.
The problem can begin as early as preschool age
A person suffering from social phobia is scared when asked to tell about himself, the concentration of someone else's attention on him "burns" him, he is ready to burn out with shame … When asked to appear before everyone and talk about his scientific work or just about how he spent the summer, he has a feeling that fear is consuming him from the inside. At the same time, his face turns red, his heart jumps out of his chest, he drenches in sweat, and this becomes obvious to everyone, and not just to his deskmate. At least so it seems to him. At this moment, he realizes that he is completely unable to control his fear, as if he stepped on a ladder and feverishly ponders how not to be afraid of an airplane when images of its inevitable fall arise in his thoughts.
Our mind finds constant explanations and rationalizations for fear. Over time, the social phobia begins to fear more and more, increasing the range of their anxieties, as well as the time spent in a state of fear.
A fixed and constantly conscious fear can begin with a school name-calling or nasty thing said to such a sensitive child. For example, they hang a label on him, giving a nickname, and he begins to be ashamed of himself in something. The "good" comrades do not forget to remind him of this from time to time. In the end, he himself begins to think: "This is no accident" - and even believes that what they are talking about is terrible, nightmare.
People with a visual vector “make an elephant out of a fly”, emotionally inflate themselves, swing in their fear. Fear is their strongest emotion since childhood, they fixate on this feeling in a constant attempt to avoid it.
The fear of death is the root, that predestination with which such a person is born. This fear is incomparably higher than the instinctive mechanism of preserving life in any other person. This fear is of a different order and with completely different development prospects.
Even from school, we remember that fear is a mechanism for protecting and saving our own lives. We see a tiger, a wolf, a bear, a man with a knife, any potential threat to life - and the body reacts, mobilizing forces for salvation. This is a natural reaction. But if a person is afraid of everyone around, even small children, it turns out that he is constantly saving his life. This is unnatural.
Of course, in childhood, none of them will say: “I am afraid of people,” because this fear is normal for them and has a different color, it is not painful, not pathological. It is from these sensations, from this fear, that the child must pass into the state of "love", "love for a person." This is a gradual process of development, and there are many pitfalls in its path.
Visual children love to be afraid. They are specifically looking for this kind of thrill. They are the biggest fans of horror films. They also love to go to a dark forest or to a cemetery in company. This gives them emotional fulfillment, "rocks" their emotions.
As they grow up, they can learn to get out of their fears by developing love and empathy. It can start from love for nature, animals, then gradually moves on to love for people.
For a spectator, stuck in his childhood fears, fears become a serious obstacle in adapting to a team. What started out as a trifle grows into something more generalized. He is shaking with the thought that everyone is looking at him. It seems to him that everyone is looking out and seeing his shortcomings, seeing that he, for example, is awkward, ugly, fat. He imagines that other children are laughing at him. His inventive mind draws all sorts of pictures that move further and further away from the real state of affairs.
The importance of family conditions
Under favorable family and social conditions, the visual child quickly learns to empathize, compassion: he develops his feelings through a good emotional connection with his parents, through classical literature, first falling in love. Then the question never arises before him: "What if I am afraid of people?"
Under dysfunctional family conditions, the spectator never learns to experience the feeling of love, forever remaining in his fears. This can happen, for example, in families where the child's parents live in a sado-masochistic scenario with constant scandals and beatings.
In such a family, the child lives in constant fear of being beaten, afraid for himself, for his mother, with whom he has a close emotional connection. Situations at school add fuel to the fire. Often, children get stuck in a state of fear due to the bullying and ridicule of their peers.
In essence, the fear of people is the feeling that everyone is dangerous and will try to "eat" you.
The spectator "in fear" tells about this problem to parents or friends, trying to convince himself with them that he is handsome, smart, an order of magnitude better than everyone else. This brings temporary comfort, but as soon as he gets back into the "hostile environment", fears instantly overwhelm him with renewed vigor. He always finds a reason for himself to be afraid and nervous.
Those who are trying to help viewers cope with the fear of people are trying to create for them a rational picture of reality so that they see and realize that there is essentially nothing to be afraid of. Others are so busy with themselves that they do not pay attention to them and believe that all inner experiences are just a play of the imagination.
With his mind, the spectator understands and agrees with them, but fear from this does not go anywhere. Even standard psychological techniques do not help: the famous attempts to play situations in one's own imagination, where the patient is forced to experience positive emotions where they usually feel scared, unfortunately, do not work. The person is still in the already familiar state of fear and constant vain attempts to avoid it.
Passions run high over time
Due to the inability to experience other emotions, undeveloped visuals can get tightly stuck in a sense of fear. They already have nowhere to get away from this bright, strong experience; you cannot dismiss it like a fly. And no matter how it seems to them that they are trying to get rid of it and run away, in fact, they constantly find reasons to be in it, think about it, return it. He gives them the strongest experience of their life!
“Strange,” someone will think, “there are states of love, satisfaction, happiness.” Right! They exist when you know how to experience them, when your visual vector develops and fills from the very beginning. When you get healthy skills and knowledge in the psychology of communication with people, you get great pleasure from this contact. When the vector is not developed, it still requires filling. And he is filled as he can.
The fear of people grows like a spider web, linking more and more aspects of life where fear is present. It seems to them that everyone around is looking only at them, laughing at them. When they come to a store or a library, they often feel that they have been choosing products or books for too long, they feel that everyone is looking at them and thinking: "What is he digging there for half an hour, like an old grandmother, some kind of brake!" After such a hike, they run home, feeling protected only there. Their desire to take part in social life, to go out to people is reduced to a minimum.
Spectators "in fear" have a completely inadequate reaction to other people. They are unable to establish emotional contact with the interlocutor. Over time, fears grow, life becomes more painful. This can go so far that a person will be afraid to go out of the house to the store, not to mention the fear of flying an airplane. He is afraid that he will start to panic if they ask him about something, if he (God forbid!) Has to get in touch with someone …
People in such a state cannot fully work: let alone speak in public - they cannot make a report for two or three people without bringing themselves to a semi-faint state! They cannot speak on the phone, their face turns red, their heartbeat increases, and the brain is completely turned off at this moment.
When a person does not leave the apartment, this is already a condition that requires intervention. Often the increase in fear from the outside is explained as follows: "The person was normal, he worked as a teacher, but then his fears intensified and grew into phobias." This does not happen, in fact it means that his level of fear in the visual vector was already “on the verge” and then exacerbated.
These fears are inadequate
The fear of people is just the tip of a whole iceberg of problems, only a couple of frightened eyes remain above the water, and in the depths are hidden huge arrays of various fears in all their manifestations.
Verbalizing their sensations, such spectators say: "I have a fear of people, I feel strong anxiety, constant tension, I am nervous in the presence of others." Many people try to make a good impression, they are constantly unsure of themselves. In fact, it is the lack of confidence in one's inner and outer beauty (“beauty” is the key word of the viewer). They are afraid that people will notice their strange behavior and tension.
Spectators are the first to go to doctors, psychotherapists and psychiatrists. They are fed antidepressants and other drugs in an attempt to rid them of their fear. There are a great variety of techniques. One of them says that we have fears of what we do not know. Therefore, if you systematically expose yourself to your fears in a lower dose, constantly increasing the load, you can get rid of your fears. A person who is afraid of a gas stove gradually first tries to just look at a slightly warm stove, then cook eggs on the smallest fire … Fear crawls away, but does not go anywhere. More often than not, he simply switches to another object - and now the person is calmly frying eggs … but he is afraid to ride the subway, descend on an escalator, or is faced with the problem of how not to be afraid of an airplane.
It is very important to realize and understand that there is fear as an internal state, and not as separate concrete manifestations of social maladjustment, which the viewer is trying to explain to himself in one way or another. It is necessary to trace and realize all the manifestations of the visual vector in your "I". It is important to understand what the normal development of the visual vector is, how people with a healthy state of the visual vector think, feel and feel.
Coming to the doctor, the spectators "in fear" often hope that they will be prescribed some kind of exercise medicine that will remove the inner discomfort, remove all their fears. They don't realize that their problem goes much deeper. Often they do not understand at all what normal, healthy manifestations look like. For them, a healthy self is the same self, only without fear of people.
The fact is that fear in their case is the main emotional content in the visual vector. The ways in which he learns to receive this fear are also vital. Even if you remove one specific fear, such a person will return to his usual ways of filling and receiving pleasure, switching to something else. In another way, he simply does not know how.
This issue can be resolved only through serious work on oneself, through defining the very essence of one's problem. The awareness of how we fill our life through the emotion of fear, the ability to differentiate internal sensations and understand the states in the visual vector make it possible to get out of fear in sensations, in thoughts, and in actions! Join free online lectures of the training "System Vector Psychology" by Yuri Burlan to learn more. Register here.
