goal – Learn to Live Blog

Upcoming Talk on College Life and Social Anxiety

Dr. Russ Morfitt — Sat, 08 Feb 2014 04:50:40 +0000

What do you really want out of life and what is getting in the way?

I’ve been invited to speak at Normandale College in the Twin Cities to address the ways that social anxiety problems can interfere with finding success in reaching one’s life goals.

Starting college is one of those life transitions where areas of vulnerability appear. Students with debilitating social anxiety experience the academic and professional world with dread, leaving dreams unfulfilled. Some of the most difficult situations for social anxiety sufferers hardly register for those who don’t suffer from social anxiety:

· Where do I go for class? What if I have to ask for directions?

· Will I have to introduce myself?

· Will they think I don’t belong there?

· Will I have to speak in front of the class?

· What if I have a question about an assignment…or the right book?

· What if I arrive late and everyone stares?

· What if there is no seat…what would I do?

· What if it is all just too overwhelming?

These situations and many others pose formidable barriers to success for many an academic career. I will be sharing information about the high frequency of social anxiety problems, the ways to detect it in yourself or others you care about, and the solutions for it, so you can address it or point another in the right direction.

If you’re in the Twin Cities on the 11th, we’d love to see you there. Here are the details:

Tuesday February 11^th

1:00-1:50pm

College Services Building

Room C2018

700 France Ave S,

Bloomington, MN 55431

Common Mistakes with Self-Evaluations & New Year’s Resolutions

Dr. Russ Morfitt — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 21:10:02 +0000

This post is part two of a three-part series. Be sure to read part one on Setting an Effective New Year’s Resolution & Proper End-of-Year Self-Evaluation.

There is a great deal of variation in the accuracy of our end-of-year self-evaluations, which can strongly impact the success of our New Year’s resolutions. Research suggests that many of us are prone to a self-serving bias, which means that we may give ourselves too much credit for successes, and blame failures on factors out of our control (see What’s the worst that could happen?). The average level of self-serving bias, appears to vary somewhat by culture. North Americans tend to be especially guilty of it.

My work focuses on helping people with anxiety and depression. For many of these people, the bias is reversed – they are more likely to blame themselves when things go wrong, focus on what they view as personal flaws, consider those shortcomings as deeply entrenched, and consider the situation as permanent. In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy we help people with social anxiety problems examine their own tendency to create excessively high standards and their inclination to declare it a disaster if they don’t live up to those standards.

In the first post in this series I mentioned that perfectionism can be a problem for many people. Sometimes people with very high standards will compare their lives to a composite of the best qualities and accomplishments of the people around them. They may believe that they should excel professionally at the level of their very-successful relative, have children who excel at athletics as much as the children of their most-athletic friend, have a home as clean as their tidiest neighbor, and be as socially skilled as their most poised acquaintance. All those accomplishments and attributes are seldom found in one person, but some driven or anxious people put pressure on themselves to achieve all of them.

Many of us do ourselves great harm by aiming for an idealized version of every part of our lives, rather than realistic goals of the things that are most important to us. If we have set a New Year’s resolution to complete our education this year, then we may want to ignore whether or not our house or apartment is as clean as we would like. By setting small, realistic goals, we are able to build our sense of accomplishment and our confidence heading into the next goal.

In the next posts we’ll look at how to avoid feeling depressed after a particularly poor self-evaluation and how to set realistic New Year’s resolutions.

Five Tips for Dealing with Social Anxiety During the Holidays

Dr. Russ Morfitt — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 16:57:03 +0000

The holiday season can be both a blessing and a curse, especially the latter for those suffering from Social Anxiety Disorder. I am brought to tears by the stories my patients have shared with me, stories about being the only one missing at family gatherings, missed opportunities with a loved one before they passed, and the myriad consequences people experience by avoiding the holiday dinner. I wanted to share five quick tips based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that might help reduce your social anxiety at the next family holiday. For more tips, watch my video on Dealing with Social Anxiety: Holidays, Birthdays & Social Gatherings.

1) Choose a clear holiday gathering goal: What would make this holiday different? Is it simply attending? Talking to my cousins after dinner? Or staying for the entire meal? Whatever it is, make it small and measurable.

2) Identify someone else to encourage: With social anxiety we think everyone is looking at us. But what would happen if we shifted our focus from self-protection (trying to avoid or cope with this perceived judgment) to helping encourage someone else? By taking on the role of a giver, we give ourselves something to feel good about.

3) Expect to feel nervous: We can anticipate that we will feel uncomfortable and just let that nervousness be present. In our Program, members struggling with social anxiety learn that the road to success goes through uncomfortable situations that we deliberately seek out for ourselves. Many of my favorite experiences involve cheering others on as they bravely face their fears, expecting to feel nervous, only to have their anxiety fade when they don’t back down from it.

4) Smile: People find that smiling at others requires them to make eye contact and to be generally less cautious. When we smile at someone we are less likely to give off the message that we want distance. That’s good because our efforts to maintain social distance only reinforce our fears of judgment by others.

5) Negative reactions are not the emergency: There is a difference between positive thinking and realistic thinking. We benefit far more from realistic thinking that reminds us that most worries never come true. We benefit from telling ourselves that “I have bounced back from worse” or “if they are that judgmental then they can keep their opinions,” or by asking “Will I really remember this in ten years?” It’s realistic messages like these that prepare us to deal with our social anxiety and the “worst that could happen.”

May we all enjoy the freedom of a holiday spent with family and friends this year, free to be ourselves and to be ok with that.