College Students Facing Social Anxiety
This is me. In my everyday life, always watching a movie or playing video games. Never going outside to see the light of day, I’m joking I do see the light of day. Although, I’d rather be playing video games or watching a movie than going out and being social with other individuals.
Many college students, myself included, have problems with not being socially and politically involved on campus because we tend to focus on our outcomes of social anxiety rather than our roots of where it began. I have always been a person who never talks to people without actually wanting to. Thus, until this day I don’t go outside my dorm often, I am always in my dorm playing video games, watching movies, and doing homework. I do these things because I just don’t want to and because I am already used to doing these things at home. Other students in my English class that go through the same challenge of not being social. Dafne a peer of mine, only speaks to people that she has already known, her high school friends are the only people she’s been hanging out with and speaking to. Another fellow peer of mine that I interviewed is, Lorenzo. In his experience he only speaks to people who are close to him, more specifically at his dorm there are two sides to the building. Although there are two sides, he only chooses to speak to the people at his side and not the others.
Furthermore, from our studies from our student survey, 77% of students out of 213 students have are not social enough to make friends in any class. While, the 23% of 213 students actually choose to make friends and be social with others. Another study that explains that being socially and politically involved in college is a problem is that only 5.16%, 12 students out of 214 go to campus meetings or events. This research clearly and dramatically shows that college students face the problem of being more social. In the end, not being socially and politically involved on campus is a problem because being social can truly help you in the future just as the present. Being social can help build a social network, meaning having people in the near future help you in different things that the person may be highly educated in. Not being social can also mean not building your own person/ character. Therefore, not building courage and not building your own potential as a being. While not building this potential, it can cause you to be seen as a person who is not willing to take a risk for something that can positively or negatively change your life. Overall, If an individual is not courageous enough to take the risk of being social, it will ultimately degrade their social skills and will worsen the fear towards social interaction.
The typical social anxiety usually occurs when we begin to defend ourselves from an event due to panics of social interaction and trying to avoid it. Therefore, I used to think that having social anxiety was a difficult problem that wouldn’t be easy to overcome within just realizing as an individual that they need to change. What I began to do was change my mindset that if I begin to be more social, individuals will see that I am not afraid to speak and seen as a courageous person. Because I previously thought this way, I conducted some research in hopes of learning more about the ways to combat the social anxiety that I, and many other students, experience
Until I read “Four Strategies to Help Conquer Social Anxiety” by Sophia Dembling. After reading this article, I now know that overcoming social anxiety is a process that can be easily managed. Furthermore, in the article the four strategies that are explained are being able to realize as an individual what your fatal flaw is, the worst-case scenarios don’t often happen, compromising our own behaviors by going on to social devices and other electronic devices, and controlling the amount of attention that we need to give to our individual anxiety. An example of controlling our thoughts on having anxiety would really help an individual is from the quote “In other words, worrying about the things that can go wrong might actually contribute to things going wrong.” Meaning if a person is able to control their negative thoughts they are less likely to have social anxiety and just making things more difficult than they already were. Another quote from the article that shows social anxiety can be easily overcome is “Managing social anxiety requires first figuring out what you consider your fatal flaw, the one you fear will be revealed.” This quote explains that being able to understand the roots of your social anxiety comes will make things easier for an individual to understand and overcome their fear that they are facing. Furthermore, being able to see the main purpose of why they have social anxiety, whether they know it started at a young age or just recently. In other words, social anxiety can be caused by past traumas or even current events.
After researching and thinking about my problem with being more socially and politically involved on campus, I realized that in order to change my habit of not being more social with other individuals I need to figure out my roots of social anxiety, stop thinking of the possible outcomes, doing everything to avoid talking to other individuals by using social devices and other electronic devices, and to give more attention to my anxiety to fully understand it. I first need to figure out my roots of social anxiety to know my fear of speaking with others, doing so will help me realize that the fear isn’t a fatal one as it is said in the article I read. Next, to stop thinking about the possible negative outcomes that can occur and being able to understand that the possibilities are most likely not to happen. In other words, the article said, I must decrease the use of social devices to be able to avoid social interactions with people. Thus, this is usually the case for me because I’m always using an electronic device instead of going out and being social with the outside world. The last thing I need to do is just fully understand my anxiety entirely from why I don’t like to talk to others, including all the other things I can do to change my anxiety issues.
The way that I will be doing these things is by being more social with other people on my two weeks of engagement. What I did for my engagement was meeting new people and go out with these new people. In some of my classes I talked to new people and got their information for future collaboration in assignments. When I went out with these new people a friend of mine was visiting from Santa Cruz so we showed her around the SFSU area. For example, we went to the mall and she ended up buying lots of Japanese products that she liked at MiniSo.
I believe that my engagement project was successful because I figured out my roots of social anxiety. The main reason why I don’t like being social with other individuals is due to the fact that I always have the urge of being safe. I have had trust issues with individuals that I know but it becomes more hostile when I speak to a person I don’t completely know. Due to the fact that I don’t know what they can do, if they are friendly or an enemy. Overall, many college students, myself included, have problems with not being socially and politically involved on campus because we tend to focus on our outcomes of social anxiety rather than our roots of where it began.
