Posted by Maria3667 on November 21, 2008, at 18:59:58
In reply to Unmedicated Social Phobia and Confidence Surges, posted by Michael Bell on November 21, 2008, at 12:23:05
Hi Michael,
Well, my social phobia is rock solidly in place, no matter what. If someone compliments me, I always have this voice in my head saying 'they don't really mean it'... I'm a dunce, no matter what.
Something that does alleviate the symptoms a little is when I have a relatively fully booked agenda. This gives me occassions to look forward to... and hence avoid evenings of loneliness, which really aggravates the social phobia for me.
Take care,
Maria> I am curious as to whether other people on this board who have social phobia have had occasions where their confidence surges, all the social phobia melts away, you feel really good and you could say there is almost a hypomanic component to it. I'm not talking about med-induced hypomania. This used to happen to me before all the meds, although it was rare. I am not bipolar, and the confidence surges would not last long, maybe a couple hours at the most. Anyone else get this?
>
> Another thing I remember from my days of unmedicated social phobia is that if I thought that I accomplished some sort of social success (although this was very rare, being that the social phobia was so pervasive), even something as little as a conversation that went better than I thought it would, I would sometimes get a nice rush of pleasure as a result. However, since starting medication, I no longer get pleasure from socializing or even "social successes". Things are just kind of flattened. i wonder if I have lost the ability to feel social reward.
>
> I guess you could say I think social phobia has two major aspects to it (although there are other issues) - fear of people/social situations and a deficit in reward processing insofar as socializing is concerned
poster:Maria3667
thread:864427
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20081114/msgs/864531.html