You feel so anxious around people that your heart starts beating out of control. You feel beads of sweat all over your body. Your face turns red and you are sure everyone is staring at you. You try to speak, but your voice cracks and you can’t say a word. These are all symptoms of social anxiety disorder, according to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America.
Students are often in situations where it can be hard for them to deal with anxiety, said Meredith Coles, director of the Binghamton Anxiety Clinic.
“Students are expected to participate in numerous social situations in order to succeed academically, socially and interpersonally,” she said. “Consequently, students are prone to encountering the effects of a social disorder.”
Typically these fears onset in mid to late adolescence, said Casey Schofield, a clinician in the BAC. “This suggests that the prevalence of such fears in college students is especially high,” she said.
Coles said the disorder becomes chronic if students don’t seek help for it.
“People tend to delay seeking treatment,” she said. “The impact becomes increasingly negative without treatment.”
Social anxiety disorder, Coles said, affects about 8 percent of the population. About 15 million Americans have the disorder.
This disorder is characterized by an excessive fear of negative evaluation, which results in significant interference in a person’s life, Coles said.
“People with social phobias are so worried about looking silly that they become distressed,” she added.
People with SAD, Coles said, also tend to focus on negative feedback or threatening information.
According to Coles, the biggest question for people to ask themselves is if they are not living the life they want to be living because they are worried about being embarrassed.
“If someone is avoiding doing things for this reason they may have a social anxiety disorder,” Coles said. “People with this disorder tend to avoid things that make them nervous.”
The No. 1 situation, Coles said, where people may experience the effects of SAD is giving public speeches.
“Generally people don’t have a lot of practice at it and perceive the outcome as important,” she said. “When you feel there is a lot riding on a situation, anxiety tends to build.”
Another situation, Coles said, is the process of socializing.
“Students might experience anxiety when asking a professor for help, dating, joining clubs or making friends,” she said. “People put a lot of weight on the opinions of others and they want to be judged positively.”
The good news, according to Schofield, is that anxiety is very treatable if the individual is ready and willing to make changes in his or her life.
There are two treatments that are generally used for SAD.
One of these treatments, Coles said, is medication.
“The most frequently used medications are selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, which are also used to treat depression,” she said. “When patients take the medicine they report feeling less worried about what people think.”
The other is cognitive behavioral therapy.
“This therapy teaches the patients to look at what types of thoughts or behaviors are prolonging anxiety and change them so that the situations are less stressful,” Coles said. “They teach you how to face your fear.”
Coles said in order to counteract social phobias, students should practice doing the things that make them nervous, as long as they are objectively safe.
“Practice questioning your thoughts,” she said. “Are you positive that everyone in the room will laugh at you?”
Schofield agreed. “An individual’s anxiety response will decrease with time if the individual faces, rather than avoids, the feared situation,” she said. “For example, if a scary movie is watched 15 times in one week, by the 16th time, that anxiety response would be significantly decreased.”
When anxious, Coles said, we tend to predict bad things are going to happen.
“Think more realistically and evaluate the evidence from both sides,” she said. “If a friend says you did a nice job, take in the positive feedback instead of dismissing it.”