Social anxiety disorder can stem from a variety of reasons and understanding the causes can help with overcoming social anxiety and shyness.

The following are some of the causes that lead to social anxiety.

Causes of Social Anxiety Disorder

Genetic Causes – People with a close relative suffering from social anxiety disorder are likely to have it too.

Psychological Causes – Some people have a mental conditioning that does not allow them to be comfortable in social situations and even experience aggressive symptoms of reaction. They might harbor feelings of low self-worth and may panic greatly in such situations.

Past Social Experiences – In most people who suffer from SAD, the social experiences that they have had in their past life play an important role. Social anxiety patients might have suffered from uneasy situations with their peers or at school. Submissive methods might have been used in their behavior modification such as using corporal punishment to train them or using comparison or humiliation techniques by their parents or teachers. They might have had some social accidents before, such as being called on stage to say something and failing at that. Such past social experiences can leave indelible marks on children and grow with them as they grow, developing into social anxiety disorder.

Treatment of Social Anxiety Disorder

1. The treatment of social anxiety disorder depends on the causes of that precipitate this condition. The following are some approaches to help overcome social anxiety and shyness.


2. In cases where a parent and a child may have SAD, counseling both of them together could help them overcome the phobia. The combined counseling will help both parties to be support systems for each other, mainly because they live in the same house and may experience similar situations most of the time. Methods such as joint hypnosis therapies can work quite well at overcoming social anxiety due to genetic causes.


3. Hypnotic counseling works most efficiently when the SAD is due to psychological causes because it can create a positive outlook in the mind of the person and help them face social situations better.


4. Some medications such as antidepressants and painkillers are used to treat the evident symptoms of social anxiety disorder such as palpitations, hyperventilation, shivering, etc. However, medications are usually short term remedies and cannot be looked upon as long term modes of treatment for overcoming social anxiety permanently.


5. Lifestyle changes are suggested by experts in most cases. This includes taking a proper diet at the proper times and exercising and relaxing the body adequately.


6. With social anxiety that stems out of past experiences, the impact on the current life of the individual can be diluted through proper counseling and therapy. Once again, hypnotic therapy works quite well in such situations. It helps people overcome their nerves about facing people and makes them more confident in such situations.


7. Another method that is in widespread use in treating such social anxiety disorder is cognitive behavior therapy, which has some degree of success but is usually not an absolute mode of treatment.