# Pretty much cured through therapy! I'm super happy!



## kats (Jun 24, 2011)

Hello everyone, I have followed this forum for a long time but I hardly wrote anything because I felt I had nothing to add. Now I want to share my experience with my treatment for social anxiety. Brace yourselfs, it is a long text with some mistakes because I'm portuguese xD

Around a year ago I had a big family crises, fighting all the time, my social anxiety was at a peak. I stayed in my beedroom all the time in a house I shared with 3 other girls. I didn't have any motivation to go to class, to make a good meal, to get out of bed really. I stayed awake entire nights just laying in bed and slept during the day. 
Than the change began to happen, I talked to my dad, told him I felt depressed. He took me to a really good pshychiatrist who prescribed me paroxetine and told me to go to pshycotherapy with his colleague for SA. In addition my dad told me to move in with him to feel more supported.
First the therapisy taught me how to identefy in my mind all the signals of anxiety, and to start slowly making conversation with 2 classmates whom I felt more confortable with for 2 weeks. 
After he taught me to use a countertought for my anxious thoughts and increased the number of people to 4. 
Meanwhile I had to write all my anxious thoughts in a notebook and the countertought for that tought, until it became automatic.
I started to talk to more people. I started to look more to they're facial expressions without thinking about what they were thinking about me. I noticed small facial expresions like small smiles, certain looks of interest towards me that I dind't notice before. 
He made me do small tasks like trying to have lunch with someone, or talk to the maximum amount of people I could. And slowly I started to enjoy social interactions, I created the opportunities instead of running away from them. Nowadays I feel pretty much anxiety free, I am the more talkative person in my group of friends. In a new class I can easely talk to everyone, make groups for group work, and participate A LOT in class, in front of 40 people without feeling anxiety. My psicotherapist tells me I'm pratically cured, and now I should challenge myself and be supertalkative with new classmates, to exagerate and be silly sometimes, to put myself to test, and I feel very confortable with that.

If you read throught all of this believe me, THERE IS HOPE, with the right therapy, i definetly reccomend drug therapy associated with psicotherapy and some support you can overcome social anxiety. GO FOR IT, it is hard to take the first steps but when you feel the emprovement IT WILL BE WORTHY.


----------



## Kujara (Sep 21, 2013)

Thats awesome man.

Remember to keep training your mind and keep challenging yourself. You can go from socially anxious lil kid to a fearless warrior.

One day at a time.


----------



## RecoveredWell (Jun 10, 2013)

Hey congratulations! It really is a great feeling I agree.


----------



## Kt7474 (Sep 21, 2013)

The sweet smell of hope..


----------



## FunkyFedoras (Aug 30, 2013)

Yaaayyy kats! Happy you're almost cured


----------



## CopadoMexicano (Aug 21, 2004)

kats said:


> Hello everyone, I have followed this forum for a long time but I hardly wrote anything because I felt I had nothing to add. Now I want to share my experience with my treatment for social anxiety. Brace yourselfs, it is a long text with some mistakes because I'm portuguese xD
> 
> Around a year ago I had a big family crises, fighting all the time, my social anxiety was at a peak. I stayed in my beedroom all the time in a house I shared with 3 other girls. I didn't have any motivation to go to class, to make a good meal, to get out of bed really. I stayed awake entire nights just laying in bed and slept during the day.
> Than the change began to happen, I talked to my dad, told him I felt depressed. He took me to a really good pshychiatrist who prescribed me paroxetine and told me to go to pshycotherapy with his colleague for SA. In addition my dad told me to move in with him to feel more supported.
> ...


thats really good. Just curious. what kind of therapy? Psychodynamic?


----------



## kats (Jun 24, 2011)

CopadoMexicano I don't know exactly what kind of therapy it is, I just go to consults with a psychologist and we discuss things during that time and he sends me tasks to complete until the next session. I may ask him next time I go.


----------



## matte (Sep 10, 2011)

Good for you kats! Might not sound logical, but I seriously feel like I just won the lottery whenever I hear stories like this haha.


Welcome to the club :b


----------



## IndieVisible (Aug 28, 2013)

Congratulations. It's been known for a long time that Social Anxiety is very much treatable and can be eliminated. That's because social anxiety is not a chemical imbalance but a way of thinking and thinking can be changed. Unfortunately General Anxiety is a chemical imbalance and can not be talked out of. Only meds that counter the imbalance will help.


----------



## Dylan2 (Jun 3, 2012)

CopadoMexicano said:


> thats really good. Just curious. what kind of therapy? Psychodynamic?





kats said:


> CopadoMexicano I don't know exactly what kind of therapy it is, I just go to consults with a psychologist and we discuss things during that time and he sends me tasks to complete until the next session. I may ask him next time I go.


Sending you on tasks to complete sounds like cognitive behavioral therapy. I'm glad it worked out so well for you 



IndieVisible said:


> Congratulations. It's been known for a long time that Social Anxiety is very much treatable and can be eliminated. That's because social anxiety is not a chemical imbalance but a way of thinking and thinking can be changed. Unfortunately General Anxiety is a chemical imbalance and can not be talked out of. Only meds that counter the imbalance will help.


:con

Social anxiety disorder researchers like Deborah Beidel have compared the disorder to diabetes and called it a chronic condition with an average episode duration of 18 years. The only view of social anxiety disorder's course that I've come across in the research literature is that it is a chronic disorder that can be effectively managed, but not 100% cured.

Here is some of the research showing serotonin and dopamine dysfunction:

http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/49/5/757.full
http://journals.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?Volume=157&page=457&journalID=13
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16979141?dopt=Abstract

Since this is the Triumphs Over Social Anxiety section, I will point out that many of the brain abnormalities found in people with social anxiety disorder have reversed themselves to some degree after treatment with cognitive behavioral therapy or medication. The same thing has been found in other psychological disorders like depression and OCD.


----------



## kats (Jun 24, 2011)

matte said:


> Good for you kats! Might not sound logical, but I seriously feel like I just won the lottery whenever I hear stories like this haha.
> 
> Welcome to the club :b


That soundkind of logical xD. Did you get over social anxiety too?


----------



## RainbowRND (Apr 14, 2013)

Like many have already posted, congratulations! 

I don't think I'm cured per say (or ever will be), but it's definitely gotten better. I think it's good for people to have hope and to make an endeavor in their lives.


----------



## kats (Jun 24, 2011)

RainbowRND said:


> Like many have already posted, congratulations!
> 
> I don't think I'm cured per say (or ever will be), but it's definitely gotten better. I think it's good for people to have hope and to make an endeavor in their lives.


Thank you (and everybody else), I shall read your story in the proper thread


----------



## KennyNC252 (Sep 25, 2013)

Congrats at least I know it's possoble now


----------



## kats (Jun 24, 2011)

It is Kenny, I think you just need to find the right help, which can be very hard...


----------

