What are your go-to safety behaviors? Have you tried challenging yourself to reduce them? What happened if you did?
Mine are talking too much and making jokes. As a result, I don’t come off as someone with social anxiety since people assume I’d be quiet and shy. But on the inside, I’m very much anxious. This has gotten much better with practice, especially the talking too much. I forced myself to stay quiet even when it was uncomfortable. Still working on not making too many (inappropriate) jokes when anxious.
I tend to be quiet around new people but then I feel like I’ve already “branded” myself as the quiet one and when I get comfortable enough to have a conversation, i might still not talk because now it feels like too big of a jump from not talking to talking a lot.
Usually with alcohol I can skip the analyzing step but then there might be a point when I get overwhelmed and I’ll just zone out, as if I’m just observing the conversation like a ghost or a fly in the wall.
Holy shit, I check off like 11 out of 13 of these…
Ehhh? Some of those seem accurate, but there’s a whole lot of stuff just down to personality and the people you’re talking to that’s left out here. For example, being quiet is not inherently bad or anxiety-inducing, for some people it’s quite the opposite - and how people act depends a lot on who they’re with, be it friends or authority figures or what have you. Nice idea! But this is a massive generalization of a post that just leaves me going ehhhhhhh
Safety behaviors are a big thing in social anxiety. Nothing is wrong with being quiet per se. We are talking about staying quieter than you normally would because of social anxiety. So, burying your true personality traits - aka masking - with safety behaviors.
