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Helpful tips and personal stories. Exploring challenges and coping strategies around health and wellbeing when you’re feeling socially anxious, shy and not good enough. You are not alone.
What Dry January has taught me about drinking for confidence. I’ve always loved booze. Drinking has been a way of calming my feelings of social anxiety, giving me the confidence to speak to strangers and get up on the dancefloor at parties. But recently, I’ve been rethinking my relationship with my much loved social lubricant….
Remember how it felt at school, when a teacher would ask a question that you had no clue how to answer? So many of us have felt the sinking feeling of being picked despite our best efforts to appear invisible. (I’m talking shrinking down in seats, avoiding eye contact with the teacher- the best avoidance…
![How self-help books can help you with social anxiety [with recommendations]](https://quietconnections.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/How-self-help-books-can-help-you-with-social-anxiety-768x512.jpg)
An unexpected prescription for social anxiety When I went to see my GP, it wasn’t solely focused on social anxiety, but the feeling of anxiety overall. It was only upon describing my symptoms and experiences that we found ourselves discussing social anxiety specifically. As I’m sure we’re all aware, there’s no direct ‘cure’ for social…
Did you know there are three aspects of happiness? In order to feel truly happy, we have to fulfil each of these areas: Pleasure, Engagement and Meaning. Let’s briefly explore why each of these components are important to your happiness; what activities might look like in each area; and the kind of things that could…
I know so many people who have had experience of not feeling good enough and plagued with self-doubt and suffering low self-esteem as a result. Due to poor manual dexterity due to the Functional Neurological Disorder I suffer from, I thought I would put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and share my own…
Breathing. Pfft!! How could breathing possibly help with anxiety? I used to feel so annoyed that anyone would even suggest the idea of using breathing techniques. “This isn’t something I have any control over!” I’d think with a roll of my eyes, “Don’t people know how paralysing the fear is for me?” It’s going to take…
Have you noticed how so many of us live with a mindset that tells us “I’ll be happy when I’m… thinner/have a job/in a relationship/earning more (whatever ‘it’ is for you)”? Maybe we really will be happy then. Maybe not. The harsh reality is, if we’ve become so focused on the darkness in life, and…
I’ve not always been very compassionate towards myself. In fact, as an INFP personality type, self-hate, punishment and criticism is a speciality of mine. However, personality type aside, this is something that can plague every single one of us – I know this because, you have told me. I hear it everywhere I go; on…
There was a time not so long ago when all I wanted to do was change everything about myself. There was no particular reason for this, nothing I could pinpoint or put my finger on anyway. There was just a nagging self doubt that lingered relentlessly. I thought that if I changed the way I looked, changed my…
Talking about our self-doubt and our anxieties in social situations is still taboo. We tend to think we should be able to do certain things, like talk to strangers and speak up, just because other people seem to manage with ease. It can feel like we’re the only person struggling. Then there’s the stigma we experience when…
If you’re reading this, it’s my guess that you’re feeling pretty hopeless right now. I know what that’s like. In fact, there are a lot of us at Quiet Connections who have been there. And now you’re here, perhaps you’re hoping to find a solution that you can do all by yourself. Something that doesn’t…
If you truly loved yourself… As compassion, and more importantly self-compassion seems to be a running theme at the moment, certainly in my life, I finally got around to reading something that has been on my list for a while: a short but brilliant book by Kamal Ravikant called ‘Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends…