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About Social Anxiety

About Social Anxiety

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How to Appear Socially Confident

September 24, 2018 by Arlin Cuncic, M.A.

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*This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive a commission if you choose to purchase through links I provide (at no extra cost to you). Please see my disclosure policy. If you need help finding a mental health professional, call 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visit BetterHelp to chat with a licensed therapist for an affordable price.

Tips to Build Social Confidence

Not sure how you can appear more socially confident? One way to do this is to practice your social skills. If you make the effort to practice your social skills, it will help you to appear socially confident no matter what situation you find yourself in.

But, don’t get overly serious about this. You don’t want to be perfect—rather, you want to feel confident that you know social etiquette and have practiced it enough times that you know how to handle various situations.

It’s okay to make mistakes. You’re trying out new skills and seeing how they work. You’re bound to feel awkward and like you don’t know what you’re doing, but over time that feeling will go away.

(*Note: We all know social anxiety can be hard to manage. This book on Amazon is the best I have found to deal directly with the problem. Listen for free with your 30-day trial of Audible.)

Step 1: Address Your Social Anxiety

If you have overwhelming social anxiety, you’ll need to address this first before you start to put yourself into social situations to become more socially confident. There are a variety of ways you can do this.

  • You could read self-help books and apply the strategies that you find.
  • You could see a therapist in person or choose online therapy from a provider such as Online-Therapy.
  • You could tap into energy psychology methods and see if they work for you.

Regardless of what you choose, it’s important to make sure that your anxiety is at least manageable before you start to try to boost your social confidence.

(Watch the video below to learn 7 psychology tricks ot build your confidence)

Step 2: Choose a Skill to Work On

First, choose a social skill that you’d like to focus on, read a description of how you go about it, and then put it into practice. Below is a list of the types of social skills you may want to practice.

Assertiveness:

  • Expressing your opinion
  • Standing up for your own rights
  • Handling rejection

Non-verbal behavior:

  • Speaking with a loud enough voice
  • Maintaining eye contact
  • Not standing too far away from people
  • Pointing your body toward someone when you are talking

Conversation:

  • Listening and asking questions
  • Sharing things about yourself
  • Joining a group in conversation
  • Ending a conversation

Meeting new people:

  • Introducing yourself to a new person
  • Introducing someone to another person
  • Making small talk
  • Asking someone on a date

Being in the spotlight:

  • Speaking up in a meeting
  • Volunteering to give a toast

Making friends:

  • Sharing things about yourself
  • Smiling and being friendly toward others
  • Showing interest in others
  • Sharing funny stories or jokes
  • Asking someone how their day is going

Awareness and empathy:

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  • The proven way to get past boring small talk
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  • Shift your focus away from yourself to becoming aware of how others are feeling

Step 3: Find or Create a Social Situation

However, you can’t practice social skills on your own. So, you’re going to need to seek out people to practice with.

Create a situation in which you have an opportunity to practice some social skills. The situation you create will depend on the social skill you want to practice. For example, you could sign up for a yoga or similar class if you want to practice meeting new people. If you’d like to practice being assertive, you could return an item to the store.

Once you’re in the situation, practice working on a social skill from one of the above categories.

Step 4: Do It Again

Quite literally, you’re just going to keep repeating this process for each of the different social skills. Over time, you should notice that you start to feel more socially confident as you begin to get more comfortable with various situations.

Step 5: Evaluate Your Progress

What you should notice over time is that your beliefs start to shift, such that you start to see yourself as a socially confident person rather than someone who is awkward and anxious.

Eventually, these new beliefs should start to feed your thoughts, so that you have fewer anxious thoughts overall. If you don’t notice this happening, it could be that you have underlying unresolved issues that are preventing you from making progress.

Do you ever feel like you are resisting becoming a socially confident person? Do you worry that people won’t like you if you become “that guy” or “that girl?” These are issues you will need to address in order to make progress.

That’s it! Go through the list above and start making progress toward becoming a more socially confident person. I believe that anyone can take positive steps in this regard, and you are no exception.

Related Articles about Social Skills

  • How to Decode Body Language

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How to Appear Socially Confident



Here are some of my favorite social anxiety tools

Thanks for reading! I hope you found some helpful tips. Since this site is about social anxiety, I wanted to also share some tools I use that I hope you’ll find helpful. Some of these are affiliate links, so if you decide to try them, I’ll earn a commission. However, I only recommend things I have used myself and would recommend to a friend or family member.

Online Therapy: For online therapy, I have personally used and like the service offered by Betterhelp. It's easy to get started from the comfort of your home. You'll even get a discount on your first month of therapy when you use my link.

Doctor Visits: For doctor visits, Web Doctors offers convenient online appointments.

Audible Subscription: I recommend a lot of self-help books on this site, but I actually prefer an audiobook subscription over print books! My favorite subscription service is Audible because it has all the best-sellers and they stay in your digital library forever (even if you end your subscription). You can sign up for a free trial and listen to your first two books for free.

Social Anxiety Masterclass: The Social Anxiety Masterclass is my signature course where I walk you through everything I know about how to manage social anxiety. If you're not ready to enroll in the course, be sure to subscribe to my email newsletter to hear about special deals!

Filed Under: Social Skills Tagged With: active listening, assertiveness, conversation skills, small talk, social skills

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Hi there, my name is Arlin. I help you stop worrying what people think so you can live the life you want. You can learn more about me here.

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