Social Anxiety at Christmas

By Murray Mackenzie

Christmas can be a time where we end up in social situations not of our own making. Many of us will end up at work parties or extended family gatherings that make us feel uncomfortable or that trigger social anxiety. 

It is worth remembering that when we’re feeling anxious we can be particularly prone to “thinking errors” like mind reading or fortune telling. We might be going into situations overestimating how much others will be judging us or assuming we know how it’s going to go: “I know I’m going to end up saying something dumb!” A “spotlight effect” can amplify distorted thinking. In reality, most people are too concerned with their own business to evaluate our “performance.”

There are many practical ways to cope with social anxiety in these types of setting. Most of us have some type of safety behaviours we use to prevent others from judging us negatively. These are often unconscious and include using our phone as a shield, avoiding eye contact or limiting our conversation to “safe” people we already know.

Identifying and dropping your social safety behaviours can help decrease the idea that the situation is inherently dangerous. Although they are natural ways we find to cope, safety behaviours prevent us from learning that social situations are in fact not dangerous and lead us to focus excessively on ourselves. 

It can also be helpful to direct our focus outwards to prevent the closed loop system where we fixate on how physically anxious we are or on an image or impression we might have of how we’re coming across to others.

One fantastic way to externalise our focus is to engage in active listening. This is where we listen to the other in a mindful, curious way and really pay attention to the content and tone of someone else’s words. Rather than preparing what we’re going to say next, this involves creating a situation where we can internally summarise what the other person has been saying.

When we’re between conversations in these settings, one option is to pay attention to the ambient noise. Rather than fixating on individual words from nearby conversations, we can pay attention to the overall hum or musicality of the soundscape. These gaps between conversations can be a time when unhelpful thoughts can spiral, so exercises like noticing the sensation of our feet being connected to the floor or the way our body feels as it’s supported by the chair can be timely.

It’s likely at these gatherings that there will be some food or drink. This presents us with another opportunity to externalize our focus by practicing mindful eating. Slow down the rate at which you consume and become aware of how all your senses partake in the experience.

By applying these principles you begin to move away from seeing social gatherings as threatening towards viewing them as opportunities to flourish.