Social Anxiety Polite Quotes

I had blundered again, obscurely, and rather than go on worrying over my behavior, I decided to just give in and dislike Alice. ~ Michael Cunningham

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Well, if I weren't so insecure, I would have had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to spend every day of my life getting really good at seeming confident. ~ Hank Green

Half of life is lost in charming others.
The other half is lost in going through anxieties caused by others.
Leave this play. You have played enough. ~ Rumi

Today's humans do not need terrorists to disrupt peace in the world – they are doing it themselves quite well. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Phones are neither good nor bad, they are just lifeless machines that were invented to serve humankind, yet humankind, with their everlasting stupidity have turned this communication marvel into psychological suicide. ~ Abhijit Naskar

A recent invention, vocal language may date back only ca. 200,000 years. As human primates, we have not fully come to grips with the prolonged, face-to-face closeness required for speech. Speaking to a stranger, e.g., stresses our autonomic nervous system's sympathetic (i.e., fight-or-flight) division, which a. speeds our heartbeat, b. dilates our pupils, and c. cools and moistens our hands. The limbic brain's hypothalamus instructs the pituitary gland to release hormones into the circulatory system, arousing our blood, sweat, and fears. ~ David B. Givens

But the greatest human problems are not social problems, but decisions that the individual has to make alone. The most important feelings of which man is capable emphasise his separateness from other people, not his kinship with them. The feelings of a mountaineer towards a mountain emphasise his kinship with the mountain rather than with the rest of mankind. The same goes for the leap of the heart experienced by a sailor when he smells the sea, or for the astronomer's feeling about the stars, or for the archaeologist's love of the past. My feeling of love for my fellowmen makes me aware of my humanness; but my feeling about a mountain gives me an oddly nonhuman sensation. It would be incorrect, perhaps, to call it 'superhuman'; but it nevertheless gives me a sense of transcending my everyday humanity.

Maslow's importance is that he has placed these experiences of 'transcendence' at the centre of his psychology. He sees them as the compass by which man gains a sense of the magnetic north of his existence. They bring a glimpse of 'the source of power, meaning and purpose' inside himself. This can be seen with great clarity in the matter of the cure of alcoholics. Alcoholism arises from what I have called 'generalised hypertension', a feeling of strain or anxiety about practically everything. It might be described as a 'passively negative' attitude towards existence. The negativity prevents proper relaxation; there is a perpetual excess of adrenalin in the bloodstrea ~ Colin Wilson

When social software becomes a component of formal education, students and teachers interact with one another in more meaningful ways, creating a variety of positive results. Ted Panitz (1997) details over 67 benefits from engaging in collective learning, arguing that collaborating reduces anxiety, builds self-esteem, enhances student satisfaction, and fosters positive relationships between students and faculty. ~ Jon Dron

Awareness of freedom and responsibility creates anxiety, which is also referred to as anguish or angst. Aspects of romantic attachments can relieve anxieties. For example, Mario Mikulincer et al. argue that loving relationships can act as a "death-anxiety buffering mechanism", since the sense of security, protection, comfort, self-esteem, and social validation that close relationships provide may serve as defensive devices with respect to existential anxiety about the threat of mortality. ~ Skye Cleary

When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Maybe I've never smiled or laughed at an appropriate time in my entire life and I just didn't realise until this moment. ~ Nina Kenwood

Hideous psychic fallout they'd all endured both in active marijuana-dependency and then in marijuana-detox: the social isolation, anxious lassitude, and the hyperself-consciousness that then reinforced the withdrawal and anxiety - the increasing emotional abstraction, poverty of affect, and then total emotional catalepsy - the obsessive analyzing, finally the paralytic stasis that results from obsessive analysis of all possible implications of both getting up from the couch and not getting up from the couch ... ~ David Foster Wallace

Life is made of fear. Some people eat fear soup three times a day. Some people eat fear soup all the meals there are. I eat it sometimes. When they bring me fear soup to eat, I try not to eat it, I try to send it back. But sometimes I'm too afraid to and have to eat it anyway. ~ Martin Amis

Make no mistake. The greatest destroyer of ecology. The greatest source of waste, depletion and pollution. The greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime, poverty, animal abuse and inhumanity. The greatest generator of personal and social neurosis, mental disorders, depression, anxiety. Not to mention the greatest source of social paralysis, stopping us from moving into new methodologies for personal health, global sustainability and progress on this planet, is not some corrupt government or legislation.
Not some rogue corporation or banking cartel.
Not some flaw of human nature and not some secret cabal that controls the world.
It is the socioeconomic system itself at its very foundation. ~ Peter Joseph

Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the possibility of children. ~ Iris Murdoch

Never ignore the elephant in the room. That's rude; play with it and introduce it. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

I was so nervous about the airport, going through security and doing all that gives me some serious fucking anxiety. ... Everyone seemed so chill. ~ Jen Wilde

Paul walked with something screwed up tight inside him. He would have suffered much physical pain rather than this unreasonable suffering at being exposed to strangers ~ D.H. Lawrence

Sometimes I don't have enough energy to be social. I need time alone to recover from the last time I went out. ~ Tina J. Richardson

Easing Your Mind's Responses to Anxiety

When you are in social situations, your mind might race with negative thoughts about yourself, expectations about what is going to happen, or fears about what others are thinking. Often, these thoughts develop into a vicious cycle: Because you believe you don't have anything worthwhile to express, you expect to have difficulty speaking. When you have difficulty speaking, you believe that people think you're stupid. Because you believe people think you are stupid, you have even more difficulties with conversation. With your mind in such a tizzy, it is difficult to relax and be yourself.
Your imagination is a very powerful tool to help combat negative self-talk and reduce stress, tension, and anxiety. This section will help you learn to think your way out of this mental trap. ~ Heather Moehn

Social systems are neither a consumer product that we can buy or rent from the market nor a material that we can import from another country. It is not a creation of the almighty gifted from the heavens. A social system is a creation of mankind. That is a reflection of our responsibilities. In other words, the social system is the result of our behavior and the decisions we take in our way of life. ~ Nilantha Ilangamuwa

It was hard for me to come up with something on the fly, which is why I preferred, if at all possible, not to say anything at all for fear it wasn't the right thing. ~ Tracey Garvis Graves

Put aside any notion you might have that low-income people live lives of ease and pleasure and that it is high-income people who suffer angst and anxiety. Studies of happiness show that people who experience less power on a daily basis, or who are in low-power positions within a social group, or who live in poorer neighborhoods, are less happy than those with more power. These findings are true of adults as well as of children. ~ Dacher Keltner

I live for moments when I dare to be ME in spite of all that I "should" be. ~ Kierra C.T. Banks

The words kept coming and he could not stop them, not while Callie was standing there so indecipherably, and so he was going to keep talking until he used up all the words there were and then no one would be able to talk to anyone else anymore and then all anyone would have left were one another's unintelligible faces, and maybe some weird gesturing, too, and it would be all Oscar's fault. ~ Anne Ursu

...Every one of the social and psychological causes of depression and anxiety they have discovered has something in common. They are all forms of disconnection. They are all ways in which we have been cut off from something we innately need but seem to have lost along the way. ~ Johann Hari

We are citizens who love to fake life than dig deep into our reality to discover the truth and make amends and correct our own wrongdoings, because we are reluctant to learn from our past. ~ Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Learning from Negative Experiences

Many people with social anxiety can remember certain events that contributed to their fears. Martin knows exactly why he is afraid to speak in class.

When I was in seventh-grade science class, the teacher had each student read aloud a paragraph from the textbook. It was a chapter on different types of organisms. When it was my turn, I accidentally said "orgasm" instead of "organism." Everyone howled with laughter, including the teacher. I felt so embarrassed. My face was bright red and I wanted to hide. Kids teased me about it for a long time. Ever since then, I am terrified about reading anything aloud. Sometimes, I am even afraid of simply speaking.

This event, together with Martin's biochemistry and genes, set him up to have a form of social anxiety. People who don't have the same heightened sense of awareness or the same chemicals rushing through their bodies may not have been upset by this event. They may have laughed with the class or even have been able to make fun of themselves. ~ Heather Moehn

But the more we all stuck together, the more outside layers fell off, revealing that we all have insecurities, fears, and dreams. And that's perfectly normal. That's how God made us. ~ Allyson Kennedy

Orientation in time, space, and status are the essentials of social existence, and the Balinese, although they make very strong spirits for ceremonial occasions, with a few startling exceptions resist alcohol, because if one drinks one loses one's orientation. Orientation is felt as a protection rather than as a strait jacket and its loss provokes extreme anxiety. ~ Margaret Mead

Popular religion is a coping mechanism for the anxieties of a dysfunctional social and economic environment. ~ Gregory S. Paul

Boys are suffering, in the modern world. They are more disobedient - negatively - or more independent - positively - than girls, and they suffer for this, throughout their pre-university educational career. They are less agreeable (agreeableness being a personality trait associated with compassion, empathy and avoidance of conflict) and less susceptible to anxiety and depression,172 at least after both sexes hit puberty.173 Boys' interests tilt towards things; girls' interests tilt towards people.174 Strikingly, these differences, strongly influenced by biological factors, are most pronounced in the Scandinavian societies where gender-equality has been pushed hardest: this is the opposite of what would be expected by those who insist, ever more loudly, that gender is a social construct. It isn't. This isn't a debate. The data are in. ~ Jordan B. Peterson

Though I am naturally curious about people, I'm also naturally uneasy when they are right in front of me; when I am right in front of them. ~ Sara Baume

I don't act weird because it's awesome. I act weird because i'm not used to normal people ~ Dean Mackin

Generalized Social Anxiety

In contrast to people with specific social anxieties, you may be afraid in a wide variety of situations. You might feel that people are judging everything you do and you might set unreasonable standards of perfection for yourself. This condition is called generalized (or discrete) social anxiety. Generalized social anxiety accounts for 80 percent of all cases of social anxiety.
Often, people with generalized social anxiety get caught in a vicious cycle. Because they are overly anxious in many situations, they act in clumsy and awkward ways, which in turn makes them feel even more discouraged and anxious. This cycle often results in depression and chronic stress.
Generalized social anxiety can affect almost every aspect of your life. This has been the case for Toni, a college senior.

In high school, I hardly had any friends. I didn't participate in any extracurricular activities and managed to get by with average grades. Because I attend a large state university, I am even more invisible. So far, I have avoided any class that has any interaction with my peers, such as discussion groups or labs.
As graduation approaches, I need to decide what type of career I want. The thought of job interviews terrifies me. I am considering grad school but would need recommendations to apply. I haven't even spoken to most of my professors, and the ones who know me probably can't say anything good about me.
As a result, I'm r ~ Heather Moehn

My face is like some sort of bashful chameleon, flashing red at any sign of social interaction. Stupid face. ~ Allyson Kennedy