My father struggled with social anxiety his whole life. In his work at times when he was public facing all day he would go to the pub straight after work and return when it closed. He resented his job and the need to do all the social things his father did to sustain a respected position in the business life of the town. He retired as soon as he could and hung up his suits and ties only to be worn for weddings and funerals from that point on.
The message I got was that alcohol was a necessary crutch to get you through social situations. It was referred to as Dutch Courage. Sailors were given a ration of rum to get them through the days. It reduced anxiety temporarily and the illusion was that in moderation it was a necessary evil.
For over 30 years of retirement my dad slowly came off his dependency on alcohol. He stopped going to the pub, and giving up alcohol for Lent helped to reduce his drinking at home to only when friends or family visited.
The bonus of this for me was that in those latter years I began to get to know my dad. Reliance on alcohol had shut him off from the people around him. By making himself more available to the business and social world of the town he had withdrawn from friends and family that could have supported him.
My father’s crutch was a drink. The young adults I talk with now use that, but also reach for something else.
Social anxiety in young adults gets treated as a chemistry problem, something in the blood to get sorted out, rather than a fear of being seen. The racing heart, the dry mouth, the certainty that everyone’s watching. It all gets read as the problem itself. So the fix becomes chemical, suppress the symptoms and ignore the cause. A couple of drinks before you go out. A beta blocker before the presentation. Something to take the edge off so you can walk in as a smoother version of yourself.
Your racing heart isn’t the fear.
The racing heart and the quickened breath are not the fear. They are messages about the fear, which is almost always the same one. The fear of being seen for who you are. The messy vulnerable human that you are hiding behind the mask. A beta blocker slows the heart, it settles the body but it doesn’t go near the belief underneath it. You can steady your hands and still walk into the room knowing for sure that the real you isn’t welcome or valued.
A belief that formed in relationship
This is the part that social media gets very wrong. It tells young people that anxiety is a personal failing, a flaw in their wiring, a chemical imbalance they can manage with pills.
But social anxiety is created within a social environment. It is learned in relation to the people around us. As a small child we reach out testing the safety of our environment. Will we be seen or will we be ignored? If you suffer from social anxiety, somewhere along the way you picked up the idea that you were too much, or that you were safest when you weren’t fully seen. That belief didn’t grow on its own, and it won’t shift on its own. It shifts between people, and pills and alcohol get in the way.
Why drink and pills make it worse
A drink or a pill before a social situation does work. That’s the trouble with it. You get through the party and you feel relief that you managed it. But something else happens underneath the relief. You’ve just told yourself that the situation was too much to face as yourself, and that you only got through it because you self-medicated first. Do that often enough and it stops being a one-off. It becomes a belief you have about yourself.
Then it spreads. First you use it for parties and then it’s there for dates, then work meetings, then buying coffee or making a phone-call. People end up at “I can’t leave the house without it” and they can no longer point to the day it all started.
Thats the real cost. Every time a chemical boost gets you through something difficult you trust yourself a little less to manage without it.
The sober generation, swapping pints for pills.
Underneath all this is a bigger shift which may seem positive. Young adults are drinking less than their parents did. At the same time though there is a greater reliance on prescription drugs. Less alcohol more diagnoses, more reliance on pills to get you through the day.
We’ve taught a whole generation that social anxiety is a symptom rather than a fear. Treat the symptoms rather than the cause for long enough and they believe they can only function in society with chemical assistance.
What actually shifts social anxiety in young adults.
There is one thing a drink or a pill can’t give you. The experience of being fully present, in a difficult moment. Allowing yourself to be seen unpolished, fully as yourself and surviving it. Not only surviving but recognising that others respond positively to seeing you for who you are. They step closer and that feels ok. You no longer run for the door.
That’s the thing that changes it. Not a technique, not a prescription, but the experience of staying in something uncomfortable and coming out the other side intact. No masking no numbing. The self only you know yourself to be has been given space and permission.
This is what relational therapy works with. Not skills to learn or techniques to perform but the slow work of finding you can hold yourself steady in company with nothing between you and other people. We follow that old belief back to its source so that it stops making decisions for you.
None of this makes a beta blocker before one dreaded presentation a failure. Now and then for the thing you really dread its a fair tool. The line worth watching is where it stops being the odd bit of help and becomes the only way in. The point where you’ve stopped trusting yourself to manage at all without it.
If any of this sounds familiar, your anxiety isn’t a verdict on you. You learned it, which means it can change, and it changes in relationship, not in isolation or through chemical manipulation.
I offer a free phone call to find out whether working with me online or face to face may be the relationship you need to make a difference.
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