If you actually take the time to look at any forums or blogs with people who suffer from social anxiety or shyness, you can often find a few common things among them:
They are usually the ones who stay cooped up inside their own homes for days unless there is really a need for them to go out.
They are the ones who would rather spend their whole day watching TV or browsing the net than just to step out of their house for a walk.
If you still do not get what I am trying to say, it is just simply this – staying cooped up at home is actually one of the major reasons why people suffer from social anxiety or shyness.
The Main Cause of Depression and Low Self Confidence
Everyone probably knows by now that beliefs can cause feelings, be it negative or positive ones. Feelings such as nervousness, depression and insecurity are caused by your beliefs and thoughts.
Most socially anxious people actually suffer from beliefs that cause them to think that they do not value themselves, even though they do not really notice it. These are further reinforced over time by the type of actions they take, such as staying cooped up inside their home the whole day.
Why does staying at home the whole day actually helps to reinforce the negative belief that he or she is not a valuable person at all?
Firstly, if you stay cooped up at home the whole day, you would not be bothering much about your looks at all. And this reinforces the belief that you do not take good care of yourself and value yourself.
Secondly, if you have not gone out at all for the past week, you would be further reinforcing the belief that you are of no value to other people. What this means is that you actually feel that no one values you at all outside of your own home, and this is a very serious and negative trap you should try to get out of immediately.
As you can see, staying cooped up at home is actually one of the major problems and causes of social anxiety.
How to value yourself more
If you still do not believe me, then you just need to think of the opposite side of the spectrum – how you would actually be acting if you really valued yourself.
Let us just consider that if you value the pet you have at home, such as a dog, what would you do? You would probably buy the best food there is for him, play with him regularly and take him out for a walk whenever you are free and so on.
And for yourself, it’s not any different at all. When you really value yourself, you will take all sorts and all kinds of actions to take good care of yourself. What all these can mean can be just simply being healthy, exercising regularly, maintaining your personal hygiene, bathing and brushing your teeth regularly. All of these would be greatly required if you constantly go out on a regular basis.
When you start doing all of these, you would be instilling in yourself a new set of beliefs that you are a valuable person and have something to offer to other people. Compared to a person who stays in the basement the whole week playing computer games and eating junk food, would these 2 types of persons have different beliefs? Of course they would!
Of course, there is completely nothing wrong with stay at home. The main difference here is that whether you are still valuing yourself even if you stay cooped up at home the whole day. It is just that it is a lot easier to take the correct actions if you try to start going out on a regular basis.
If you have been staying cooped up in your own home for months and feel overwhelmed just by thinking about social interactions, then you might want to check out this 2 simple methods you can use to cope with social anxiety.
Or if you really want to get rid of social anxiety, then you can start by going back to the article for the Cure for social anxiety.