The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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People with social anxiety, how have you managed to cope or manage it? I've had it since 12 years old, I'm 25 now. The biggest impact for me has come from consistent sleep and exercise. Went from having hard time calling customer support and going to public places with a lot of people to having a slightly increased heartbeat when talking to people I'm not familiar with. I've also tried meditation, but couldn't stay consistent with it. I know some people swear by CBT, thinking of trying it out next.
2 things: The first was realizing that I was approaching the world with the mindset that everybody hated me and thought I was a loser. I decided to pretend instead that everybody was my friend, and surprise surprise, people respond to that and I started to believe it myself. I flipped that switch when I was 17, and it still serves me well.
The second is less inspiring - an SSRI. I started taking if for panic and found it did wonders for my social anxiety also.
Oh trust me, I've had similar realization long time ago too. I think it did help me a bit, but my current problems come from physical social anxiety symptoms. I can come into a social situation with confident mental, but my physical symptoms still present themselves and it turns into a positive feedback loop. Increased heartbeat --> sweating & shaking --> 'oh my god, i hope they don't notice i'm a fucking wreck' --> more sweating & shaking. That's why I think sleep and exercise has made such a big difference for me, my physical symptoms have reduced significantly.
Meds will be my last resort. Really don't want to be hooked on something for the rest of my life
Oh yeah, the physical stuff is the worst. I blush at the drop of the hat, and when I was a teenager I would just start shaking when people talked to me. That's where the meds really helped.
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