My personal experience is thru weight loss and fitness. The more fit I became the more confidence I acquired the less anxiety I had. Get to the gym, eat healthy, it definitely works. 🏆
Great perspective. I find that a super helpful piece, if you can do it. LOTS of direct and indirect psych benefits to exercise, and certainly some for diet. Doing a deeper dive into food and psychological health is on my list for the future
With social anxiety we do not know how to handle someone's criticism. So problem are toxic people who feel entitled to be intrusive and comment our appearance. We are not the problem here. We need instruction what to do when someone is mean and rude. What to say. How to react. What to do. What to say - Mind your own business. How to react - You are being rude. And end the conversation. What to do - expose ourselves and deliberately look stupid, wrong and what we think others will label about us as unacceptable, again and again.
yeah basically be present more :) ! just do your thing. Leveling up on my wardrobe and being aware of it sometimes triggers social anxiety but overtime i got used to it, and if someone approaches me complimenting on my new favorite skirt or earrings im like "OMG THANKS
I was toxically shamed since my inception - but unfortunately - I didn't know what it was. I'm painfully self-conscious among people, especially when I interact with them. I have social anxiety, and when I'm about to meet some people, I almost faint (it's similar to a panic attack). I can't make eye contact without making me self-conscious and awkward. I would love to be social, but something within doesn't allow me. I struggle with 'what to say' - whatever I say to people feels forced. Excessively forced. Talking on the phone makes me uncomfortable until I ease into it - it takes about thirty minutes (and sometimes one hour) to become comfortable. I don't understand what's wrong with me and how I ended up there. Both of my parents abandoned me. My father was a violent alcoholic (I was harshly beaten by him for no reason), and my mother was anxious and depressed; she was very distant emotionally. Sometimes I feel like giving up - that toxic sense of shame is so powerful and persistent (I can't explain it).
You speak as if you are one of us; the socially anxious and awkward people. I am so glad your channel popped up on my feed. You speak on my level and not like an intimidating observer looking at me through a microscope. Thank you.
When I focus on other people around me, sometimes it makes me more self conscious depending on the situation. For example, when I walk down the street and focus on people walking towards me (maybe because that means I look at them and am therefore anticipating them looking back), compared to walking down the street and ignoring the people or being in my own world. Or if i walk past a bar where people are drinking outside, looking at the people can make me feel less self conscious if I see that nobody is noticing me, or more self conscious if I see someone looking at me or anticipating that they will (I'm quite tall), in which case I can just pretend people aren't there and feel less self conscious. But in conversation if I try to focus fully on what people are saying then I get less self conscious. So it's not always simple to know what to do. But one thing is for sure...if I force myself to do something that make me a bit uncomfortable (like looking at people walking towards me) then over time I get used to it.
Soon I am planning on going to the gym for the first time. I've struggled with social anxiety for a long time and the thought of going makes me want to curl up into a ball! Thank you so much for this, I'll probably be listening to it again before I go!
It worked for me! I lost weight got fit ate wholesome food and acquired confidence. It takes time, do not give up, make your self go ever day. The more you go, the more comfortable you’ll be at the gym! Daily habits 💪🏼🏆
I have noticed people eye balling me in public Id look away and id then look back and they'd be still observing me likeI was a freak it unnerves me and makes me very self conscious , I've also seen groups of people sitting at an other table in a cafeteria laughing and looking in my direction like as if they were talking about me and mocking me it makes me very uncomfortable ,
I’ve been doing exposure therapy for a few years.Ive been going to Lowe’s hardware store with my therapist for 2yr.We just walk around and try to make me okay being around people in public.He wonts me to take the next step and ask for help looking for something.I understand you have to move up and expose yourself.But I feel my guard up and i feel if I let it down than am opening up to let someone judge me .Than if that happens I get mad at myself for letting myself open up ..You need you guard to protect yourself.You never know what could happen.I love your thoughts!Thanks !
"You need you guard to protect yourself." Yep! You got it. Social anxiety is message from within - that we prepare ourselves how to deal toxic people who causes our social fears in the first place. To deal with them in proper, functional, healthy manner, that we never learned in our toxic environment full of invalidation and hatred. Social anxiety is not hallucination - it is repetition of trauma - and we expect to be attacked again - so our mind tries to tell us that we learn how to guard and protect ourselves. Not all people are kind, nice, healthy, sensitive and friendly like us. There are predatory types of personalities out there that appear kind, nice, healthy, sensitive and friendly but this is only a mask for them to hurt others, since they are toxic and sick. I tried exposure for 20 years as CBT instructed me - and I was left with people pleasing issues, being pushover and fawning - since CBT never instructed me how to deal with toxic people. CBT only explained to me that if I meet toxic person - that fears that I fear are illusion and that I must expose to bullies and somehow magically fear will be gone. In reality - I was exploited and taken advantage, humiliated and toxically ashamed by toxic people - and I never retort to them since I was being told by CBT that this humiliation is my delusion, that it does not take place. That I am too sensitive and I have to take it like a man. I was humiliated, I was laughed and mocked for the way I dressed, how I looked, my appearance, I was accused of untrue actions, since people jump to conclusions too quickly - and I never retort, I never had self-advocacy, I never confronted them - since I was being told by CBT that fears that I feel are illusion and that toxic people do not exist. So CBT ought to be banned, it is wrong therapy intended for paranoid delusional disorder. CBT is not intended for people who are in the contact with toxic people. If Johnny Depp had listen to CBT, he would be broke now, and he would lost the court - since he would explain to himself that abuse from Amber was hallucination and that fears he feel around her must be ignored and stifled down. Instead he did the correct thing: he cut contact and he documented the abuse. HE did the right steps when in situation with toxic person. CBT does not explain what to do when we cannot cut contact with toxic person. How to endure situations when we are trapped with someone who is hysterical and dangerous - ignoring our fears we feel around such person is totally wrong approach.
@@ranc1977 I’ve been working super hard on exposure therapy.But I’ve been struggling with it.So this is so helpful!Thanks for the feed back!So appreciate it!
@@shannonwilliams5546 The idea about Exposure comes from Second law from thermodynamics where it is states that objects left in isolation are prone to distortion. "if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state." This is also commonly referred to as entropy." In psychology - if person is without human contact - he will start to hallucinate and create his own world, similar to Robinson Crusoe or Tom Hanks stuck on that island after airplane disaster where he imagined doll to be living creature. That is why CBT will try to instruct us to expose. However life is never simple. And life does not work with general rules, unfortunately. Trauma messes this part up. There is toxic shame - that people can manipulate us into mental imbalance. There is abuse that people can manipulate us into distortion: Long term exposure to narcissistic abuse causes brain injury. And also - people will tend to respond to abuse in unhealthy ways : which is called safety mechanisms. CBT presumes that we will magically heal ourselves and start to love ourselves and start to defend ourselves if we expose ourselves to toxic people. Nope, It will make things worse. Social anxiety is our brain reaction to trauma and abuse: that we 1) feel fear from anxiety and 2) that we isolate ourselves from the source of pain and hurt. Similarly if you burn your fingers - you will avoid the object that burned you. This is totally natural and normal behaviour. We are dealing here with trauma. Social anxiety is part of Complex Trauma. Exposure will help only after we healed the trauma: that we do not react anymore to triggers. And from social anxiety perspective: this means that we will heal when we figure out how to recognize, deal and manage toxic, difficult, hysterical people in healthy, functional and proper manner. Currently, our strategies, knowledge and reactions to toxic people are incomplete. They are missing data. This causes us to feel social anxiety: we have no idea how to handle toxic people in healthy manner. For example, I was on Twitter since 2009. I had only a few months ago learned that I can and that I am allowed to use block and mute button. Before that I was convinced if I block people - that this means I am having social anxiety (as instructed by CBT) and that I am not man enough to handle all people - so I must not block anyone - to show that I am masculine and strong, as instructed by trauma and toxic people. This is what we need in real life. To find out options that are healthy - that are available to us - but due to wrong instructions we do not use them to protect ourselves.
Really good video! Isn't looking at your phone in these kind of situations considered a safety behavior? I find myself pulling out my phone when I feel awkward in public, and that usually doesn't help at all :D
Keep your safety behaviours. Unless we learn how to retort to toxic people in functional and proper manner, it is ok to have our old safety mechanisms. Without them we will break apart and create new neurosis and new trauma, new fears - and we will never have courage to go back. Problem are toxic people, we are not the problem. We have toxic shame inside us and thus we do not have self worth. Without self worth we do not know how to handle toxic people. It is viscious circle. If we convince ourselves that we are the problem and that our anxiety is hallucination - we will add up to our toxic shame and we will never build self worth, where self worth is our immunity. Self worth means that we accept ourselves as we are, with all our safety mechanisms. Unless we love and accept ourselves - we will stay stuck in hiding and not exposing ourselves. When we love and accept ourselves - we will cut contact with toxic people and we will learn how to retort to them - and with time we will naturally shed off safety mechanisms. This is the process that other kids went through in their developing years. With trauma - we are stuck in development, we were arrested in trauma year - and we are stuck - because we do not know how to handle trauma: toxic people. We do not know how to recognize them, how to retort to them nor how to handle them. The more we educate ourselves about trauma and toxic people and ways how to deal with them, our anxiety will diminish.
the beginning of the video was great, toward the end it became a bit of a contradiction. if you’re self conscious, your method is to not process yourself but other things including people around you. So if someone watched your video, and took your advice of processing other things than themselves, they’re watching other things maybe including you, which means they’re paying attention to you now, which indulges anxiety because now I’m noticing they’re indeed looking and watching me instead of focusing on themselves. So your answer is to judge other things? I don’t judge anybody else, not even for a second. I’m not gonna look around the room and see “who’s the happiest.” Because they might not even be happy in reality. That’s judgement. That’s judgement.
Please my fellow socially anxious let me just tell you the truth, forget about all this fancy techniques for you to heal from... you just need confidence, self love, self understanding and mastery. It all starts with you looking inward being honest with yourself, cause I think deep down we know what the problem is, identify it and work on it... Peroid
hey doctor, I was wondering your thoughts on “best seller” books on social dynamics like “the art of seduction”, “the 48 laws of power”, and “how to win friends and influence people” I read these when younger. But now that I’m in college, I realize that none of these claims are empirical. So it’s possible for a lot of it to be pseudo psychology I’m curious to know what advice or tips are BS and which merit truth would appreciate a video on this (lots of average joes interested in social dynamics read these books)
"I’m curious to know what advice or tips are BS and which merit truth" You are totally correct. With social anxiety we do not have self worth inside us. So we have external reference locus of control - which means we trust other people, we distrust ourselves. So we are prime targets for Machiavellians who claim some cure for some need that we struggle with - so we are easily swayed and manipulated by crooks and toxic people. We lack philosophical discovery from Socrates that there is not truth at all. This means, we need to develop self worth - so that we have our own truth - collected by all evidence around us. And then judge what is truth - with the cost of being wrong and mistaken and making a fool of ourselves.
Trauma. It depends how to heal it. social akwardness can be divided in 3 totally separated entities that CBT unfortunately lumps all into one: Shyness: when we feel fear in social situations, but fear wears off naturally as soon as we enter social situation and we are never neurotic or hysterical about what happened ever again until next event. Social anxiety: we feel fear in social situation but fear does not wear off. We ruminate before, during and after the event. Social anxiety disorder: 1% of people have this: if is fear of any social situation, including the safe ones where there is no danger at all - for example with children in kindergarten, or with some universally known figure to be the safest and kindest person in the world. This is connected with Paranoid delusional disorder. Many people google their shy and anxiety feelings - and google tells them that what they feel is social anxiety disorder - and CBT instructs them to ABC Model where you are being told that if you are abused - that your own thoughts are creating the abuse and that toxic people do not exist. That you are hallucinating the abuse. And if you feel fear when someone is violent, criminal and dangerous - that your feelings are illness, delusion, illusion and hallucination. So they will instruct you to "heal" this "sickness" by exposing yourself to dangerous and sick people. That is why CBT ought to be banned. You heal anxiety by education. You learn that anxiety is Freud and Jung discovery about autonomous entity inside us called unconsciousness. Which means that we have brain that help us process reality on deeper level and help us to be protected by toxic people. Our logical mind cannot detect someone being manipulative. But our deeper parts of brain can pick up cues and clues of someone being manipulative. Deeper part of brain cannot communicate this message to us by voice. Instead it uses emotions, such as fears and anxiety. So we have to learn to take anxiety as communication method. It is not something to ignore or stifle down or to label as sickness and reject it. In social awkwardness this message is: learn how to detect toxic people and how to retort to them. There are predatory personalities out there. With social anxiety we were exposed to these people in our past - and our brain learned the lesson how to detect these bullies in the future. IT tries to give us this message by fears that we feel in social situations. So we can trust ourselves - we can accept our anxiety and look out for toxic people and confront them in healthy, proper, functional manner - which may include cutting contact with them. When we reject our social awkwardness - we will destroy our self worth and we will ignore our unconsciousness, our ability to protect ourselves from within. This is highly unhealthy and damaging to our psyche, it can lead to mental illness an neuroticism if we deny ourselves permission to have emotions and feelings which are not chirpy and happy all the time. Toxic shame make us believe that we are stupid and that we cannot trust ourselves - and this way we never develop self worth. Toxic people use toxic shame to control us and to destroy our self worth - and this way they can exploit us. As result - we will feel social awkwardness - it is deep chunk of ice of our mind that is healthy and that cannot be destroyed by toxic people. It is our inner GPS, it is our soul, it is our super -ego, it is spiritual part of us inside us. We listen to it what it has to say, and we will be mentally healthy and balanced. Social awkwardness is attempt by our brain to make us learn about psychology and philosophy how to have healthy life without drama and without toxic people who are creating drama and chaos.
My personal experience is thru weight loss and fitness. The more fit I became the more confidence I acquired the less anxiety I had.
Get to the gym, eat healthy, it definitely works. 🏆
Great perspective. I find that a super helpful piece, if you can do it. LOTS of direct and indirect psych benefits to exercise, and certainly some for diet. Doing a deeper dive into food and psychological health is on my list for the future
My anxiety centers around being unattractive and being judged for my looks. I spend hours every day thinking about my looks or looking in the mirror.
With social anxiety we do not know how to handle someone's criticism. So problem are toxic people who feel entitled to be intrusive and comment our appearance. We are not the problem here. We need instruction what to do when someone is mean and rude. What to say. How to react. What to do.
What to say - Mind your own business.
How to react - You are being rude. And end the conversation.
What to do - expose ourselves and deliberately look stupid, wrong and what we think others will label about us as unacceptable, again and again.
Come on it’s not that deep. Who gives a f*ck? Do you think life is only about looks!? This comment makes me mad.
yeah basically be present more :) ! just do your thing. Leveling up on my wardrobe and being aware of it sometimes triggers social anxiety but overtime i got used to it, and if someone approaches me complimenting on my new favorite skirt or earrings im like "OMG THANKS
I was toxically shamed since my inception - but unfortunately - I didn't know what it was. I'm painfully self-conscious among people, especially when I interact with them. I have social anxiety, and when I'm about to meet some people, I almost faint (it's similar to a panic attack). I can't make eye contact without making me self-conscious and awkward. I would love to be social, but something within doesn't allow me. I struggle with 'what to say' - whatever I say to people feels forced. Excessively forced. Talking on the phone makes me uncomfortable until I ease into it - it takes about thirty minutes (and sometimes one hour) to become comfortable. I don't understand what's wrong with me and how I ended up there. Both of my parents abandoned me. My father was a violent alcoholic (I was harshly beaten by him for no reason), and my mother was anxious and depressed; she was very distant emotionally. Sometimes I feel like giving up - that toxic sense of shame is so powerful and persistent (I can't explain it).
Dude I feel you. Im 16 and I started feeling like these a few years back
I'm so sorry for you bro. But I've actaully blasted through this. I wanna share some of the things I've done to help me blast through it.
You speak as if you are one of us; the socially anxious and awkward people. I am so glad your channel popped up on my feed. You speak on my level and not like an intimidating observer looking at me through a microscope. Thank you.
When I focus on other people around me, sometimes it makes me more self conscious depending on the situation. For example, when I walk down the street and focus on people walking towards me (maybe because that means I look at them and am therefore anticipating them looking back), compared to walking down the street and ignoring the people or being in my own world. Or if i walk past a bar where people are drinking outside, looking at the people can make me feel less self conscious if I see that nobody is noticing me, or more self conscious if I see someone looking at me or anticipating that they will (I'm quite tall), in which case I can just pretend people aren't there and feel less self conscious. But in conversation if I try to focus fully on what people are saying then I get less self conscious.
So it's not always simple to know what to do. But one thing is for sure...if I force myself to do something that make me a bit uncomfortable (like looking at people walking towards me) then over time I get used to it.
Soon I am planning on going to the gym for the first time. I've struggled with social anxiety for a long time and the thought of going makes me want to curl up into a ball! Thank you so much for this, I'll probably be listening to it again before I go!
It worked for me! I lost weight got fit ate wholesome food and acquired confidence. It takes time, do not give up, make your self go ever day. The more you go, the more comfortable you’ll be at the gym! Daily habits 💪🏼🏆
I have noticed people eye balling me in public Id look away and id then look back and they'd be still observing me likeI was a freak it unnerves me and makes me very self conscious , I've also seen groups of people sitting at an other table in a cafeteria laughing and looking in my direction like as if they were talking about me and mocking me it makes me very uncomfortable ,
great video, thanks for posting, but cmon, the example of yelling FIRE at a library going unnoticed in amerika? lol
I’ve tried this technique. It’s very difficult. I just want to remove myself from the situation.
I’ve been doing exposure therapy for a few years.Ive been going to Lowe’s hardware store with my therapist for 2yr.We just walk around and try to make me okay being around people in public.He wonts me to take the next step and ask for help looking for something.I understand you have to move up and expose yourself.But I feel my guard up and i feel if I let it down than am opening up to let someone judge me .Than if that happens I get mad at myself for letting myself open up ..You need you guard to protect yourself.You never know what could happen.I love your thoughts!Thanks !
"You need you guard to protect yourself."
Yep!
You got it.
Social anxiety is message from within - that we prepare ourselves how to deal toxic people who causes our social fears in the first place. To deal with them in proper, functional, healthy manner, that we never learned in our toxic environment full of invalidation and hatred.
Social anxiety is not hallucination - it is repetition of trauma - and we expect to be attacked again - so our mind tries to tell us that we learn how to guard and protect ourselves.
Not all people are kind, nice, healthy, sensitive and friendly like us. There are predatory types of personalities out there that appear kind, nice, healthy, sensitive and friendly but this is only a mask for them to hurt others, since they are toxic and sick.
I tried exposure for 20 years as CBT instructed me - and I was left with people pleasing issues, being pushover and fawning - since CBT never instructed me how to deal with toxic people. CBT only explained to me that if I meet toxic person - that fears that I fear are illusion and that I must expose to bullies and somehow magically fear will be gone. In reality - I was exploited and taken advantage, humiliated and toxically ashamed by toxic people - and I never retort to them since I was being told by CBT that this humiliation is my delusion, that it does not take place. That I am too sensitive and I have to take it like a man.
I was humiliated, I was laughed and mocked for the way I dressed, how I looked, my appearance, I was accused of untrue actions, since people jump to conclusions too quickly - and I never retort, I never had self-advocacy, I never confronted them - since I was being told by CBT that fears that I feel are illusion and that toxic people do not exist.
So CBT ought to be banned, it is wrong therapy intended for paranoid delusional disorder. CBT is not intended for people who are in the contact with toxic people.
If Johnny Depp had listen to CBT, he would be broke now, and he would lost the court - since he would explain to himself that abuse from Amber was hallucination and that fears he feel around her must be ignored and stifled down.
Instead he did the correct thing: he cut contact and he documented the abuse. HE did the right steps when in situation with toxic person.
CBT does not explain what to do when we cannot cut contact with toxic person. How to endure situations when we are trapped with someone who is hysterical and dangerous - ignoring our fears we feel around such person is totally wrong approach.
@@ranc1977 I’ve been working super hard on exposure therapy.But I’ve been struggling with it.So this is so helpful!Thanks for the feed back!So appreciate it!
@@shannonwilliams5546 The idea about Exposure comes from Second law from thermodynamics where it is states that objects left in isolation are prone to distortion.
"if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state." This is also commonly referred to as entropy."
In psychology - if person is without human contact - he will start to hallucinate and create his own world, similar to Robinson Crusoe or Tom Hanks stuck on that island after airplane disaster where he imagined doll to be living creature.
That is why CBT will try to instruct us to expose.
However life is never simple. And life does not work with general rules, unfortunately.
Trauma messes this part up.
There is toxic shame - that people can manipulate us into mental imbalance.
There is abuse that people can manipulate us into distortion:
Long term exposure to narcissistic abuse causes brain injury.
And also - people will tend to respond to abuse in unhealthy ways : which is called safety mechanisms.
CBT presumes that we will magically heal ourselves and start to love ourselves and start to defend ourselves if we expose ourselves to toxic people.
Nope,
It will make things worse.
Social anxiety is our brain reaction to trauma and abuse: that we 1) feel fear from anxiety and 2) that we isolate ourselves from the source of pain and hurt. Similarly if you burn your fingers - you will avoid the object that burned you. This is totally natural and normal behaviour.
We are dealing here with trauma.
Social anxiety is part of Complex Trauma.
Exposure will help only after we healed the trauma: that we do not react anymore to triggers.
And from social anxiety perspective: this means that we will heal when we figure out how to recognize, deal and manage toxic, difficult, hysterical people in healthy, functional and proper manner.
Currently, our strategies, knowledge and reactions to toxic people are incomplete. They are missing data. This causes us to feel social anxiety: we have no idea how to handle toxic people in healthy manner.
For example,
I was on Twitter since 2009.
I had only a few months ago learned that I can and that I am allowed to use block and mute button.
Before that I was convinced if I block people - that this means I am having social anxiety (as instructed by CBT) and that I am not man enough to handle all people - so I must not block anyone - to show that I am masculine and strong, as instructed by trauma and toxic people.
This is what we need in real life.
To find out options that are healthy - that are available to us - but due to wrong instructions we do not use them to protect ourselves.
you’re doing great, keep at it
Really good video!
Isn't looking at your phone in these kind of situations considered a safety behavior?
I find myself pulling out my phone when I feel awkward in public, and that usually doesn't help at all :D
Keep your safety behaviours.
Unless we learn how to retort to toxic people in functional and proper manner, it is ok to have our old safety mechanisms.
Without them we will break apart and create new neurosis and new trauma, new fears - and we will never have courage to go back.
Problem are toxic people, we are not the problem.
We have toxic shame inside us and thus we do not have self worth.
Without self worth we do not know how to handle toxic people. It is viscious circle.
If we convince ourselves that we are the problem and that our anxiety is hallucination - we will add up to our toxic shame and we will never build self worth, where self worth is our immunity.
Self worth means that we accept ourselves as we are, with all our safety mechanisms.
Unless we love and accept ourselves - we will stay stuck in hiding and not exposing ourselves.
When we love and accept ourselves - we will cut contact with toxic people and we will learn how to retort to them - and with time we will naturally shed off safety mechanisms.
This is the process that other kids went through in their developing years. With trauma - we are stuck in development, we were arrested in trauma year - and we are stuck - because we do not know how to handle trauma: toxic people. We do not know how to recognize them, how to retort to them nor how to handle them.
The more we educate ourselves about trauma and toxic people and ways how to deal with them, our anxiety will diminish.
the beginning of the video was great, toward the end it became a bit of a contradiction. if you’re self conscious, your method is to not process yourself but other things including people around you. So if someone watched your video, and took your advice of processing other things than themselves, they’re watching other things maybe including you, which means they’re paying attention to you now, which indulges anxiety because now I’m noticing they’re indeed looking and watching me instead of focusing on themselves. So your answer is to judge other things? I don’t judge anybody else, not even for a second. I’m not gonna look around the room and see “who’s the happiest.” Because they might not even be happy in reality. That’s judgement. That’s judgement.
Please my fellow socially anxious let me just tell you the truth, forget about all this fancy techniques for you to heal from... you just need confidence, self love, self understanding and mastery. It all starts with you looking inward being honest with yourself, cause I think deep down we know what the problem is, identify it and work on it... Peroid
Unfortunately self love is really hard to do. And the fact that idk what makes me hate myself this much makes it even worse
I have no clue what the issue is
hey doctor, I was wondering your thoughts on “best seller” books on social dynamics like “the art of seduction”, “the 48 laws of power”, and “how to win friends and influence people”
I read these when younger. But now that I’m in college, I realize that none of these claims are empirical. So it’s possible for a lot of it to be pseudo psychology
I’m curious to know what advice or tips are BS and which merit truth
would appreciate a video on this (lots of average joes interested in social dynamics read these books)
"I’m curious to know what advice or tips are BS and which merit truth"
You are totally correct.
With social anxiety we do not have self worth inside us. So we have external reference locus of control - which means we trust other people, we distrust ourselves.
So we are prime targets for Machiavellians who claim some cure for some need that we struggle with - so we are easily swayed and manipulated by crooks and toxic people.
We lack philosophical discovery from Socrates that there is not truth at all.
This means, we need to develop self worth - so that we have our own truth - collected by all evidence around us.
And then judge what is truth - with the cost of being wrong and mistaken and making a fool of ourselves.
What causes social akwardness and how to heal it...?
Trauma.
It depends how to heal it.
social akwardness can be divided in 3 totally separated entities that CBT unfortunately lumps all into one:
Shyness: when we feel fear in social situations, but fear wears off naturally as soon as we enter social situation and we are never neurotic or hysterical about what happened ever again until next event.
Social anxiety: we feel fear in social situation but fear does not wear off. We ruminate before, during and after the event.
Social anxiety disorder: 1% of people have this: if is fear of any social situation, including the safe ones where there is no danger at all - for example with children in kindergarten, or with some universally known figure to be the safest and kindest person in the world. This is connected with Paranoid delusional disorder.
Many people google their shy and anxiety feelings - and google tells them that what they feel is social anxiety disorder - and CBT instructs them to ABC Model where you are being told that if you are abused - that your own thoughts are creating the abuse and that toxic people do not exist. That you are hallucinating the abuse. And if you feel fear when someone is violent, criminal and dangerous - that your feelings are illness, delusion, illusion and hallucination. So they will instruct you to "heal" this "sickness" by exposing yourself to dangerous and sick people.
That is why CBT ought to be banned.
You heal anxiety by education. You learn that anxiety is Freud and Jung discovery about autonomous entity inside us called unconsciousness. Which means that we have brain that help us process reality on deeper level and help us to be protected by toxic people. Our logical mind cannot detect someone being manipulative. But our deeper parts of brain can pick up cues and clues of someone being manipulative.
Deeper part of brain cannot communicate this message to us by voice. Instead it uses emotions, such as fears and anxiety.
So we have to learn to take anxiety as communication method. It is not something to ignore or stifle down or to label as sickness and reject it.
In social awkwardness this message is: learn how to detect toxic people and how to retort to them.
There are predatory personalities out there. With social anxiety we were exposed to these people in our past - and our brain learned the lesson how to detect these bullies in the future. IT tries to give us this message by fears that we feel in social situations.
So we can trust ourselves - we can accept our anxiety and look out for toxic people and confront them in healthy, proper, functional manner - which may include cutting contact with them. When we reject our social awkwardness - we will destroy our self worth and we will ignore our unconsciousness, our ability to protect ourselves from within. This is highly unhealthy and damaging to our psyche, it can lead to mental illness an neuroticism if we deny ourselves permission to have emotions and feelings which are not chirpy and happy all the time.
Toxic shame make us believe that we are stupid and that we cannot trust ourselves - and this way we never develop self worth.
Toxic people use toxic shame to control us and to destroy our self worth - and this way they can exploit us.
As result - we will feel social awkwardness - it is deep chunk of ice of our mind that is healthy and that cannot be destroyed by toxic people. It is our inner GPS, it is our soul, it is our super -ego, it is spiritual part of us inside us. We listen to it what it has to say, and we will be mentally healthy and balanced.
Social awkwardness is attempt by our brain to make us learn about psychology and philosophy how to have healthy life without drama and without toxic people who are creating drama and chaos.
Super unhelpful