“When families work together with teachers and counselors, it makes a huge difference for their child.” Learn more about what Laura Griese, MS, has to say about school counselors, therapists and parents working together.

Anxiety can make connecting with friends hard. Add COVID, lockdowns, social distancing, and isolation to the mix, and it can feel overwhelming.

With this COVID year, we’ve had to focus so much on ourselves and our mental health. Stress has been at an all time high. So it makes sense that connecting with friends, especially after losing contact with them over 2020, feels hard to do.

Anxious people need friends, even when their anxiety and stress makes it hard.

And you may have worries about what they think or how they’ll react when you reach out again. That’s ok and normal! Of course you have anxiety around that. But that anxiety shouldn’t keep you from doing the things you need to do to benefit yourself, your mental health and, yes, your friendships that have fallen by the wayside.

Supporting your child with social anxiety

It can be overwhelming for a child experiencing social anxiety while not understanding what it is or how to cope. It can also be frustrating for you, as the parent, to deal with the many challenges of social anxiety. Since social anxiety can manifest in a lot of different ways, it’s important to learn what it is and how it looks, so that you can best support your child in dealing with it.

Social anxiety! Almost everyone has it.

I'm sure the majority of us, at one point or another, has experienced anxiety about socializing with somebody. That little bit of trepidation before you walk into your first day of work, that hiccup of anxiety as you enter a party, or that discomfort when the person sitting next to you on a plane just keeps asking you questions.

But, those small social anxieties are very different from social phobia.

Rather than experiencing a small amount of anxiety that we can easily push through, having a social phobia means that anxiety is debilitating. You're too anxious about that party, so you never go in in the first place. Rather than going to work on your first day, you call in sick or make up an excuse. 

Because I specialize in anxiety, I know how frequently addictive behaviors can co-occur.

I even have clients on my schedule specifically because of their media addiction, with anxiety as the underlying concern. So, I was so happy to talk with Huffington Post earlier this year on "going dry for a month" regarding tech, social media, and smartphones.

The reason addictive behaviors can occur so frequently is because anxiety is tough to deal with. And an anxious mind feels better when it’s distracting itself with media, sugar, or alcohol. All can be self-medicating behaviors.

People pleasers unite! 

Unsurprisingly, people with anxiety in general tend to have social anxiety as well. And that need to be liked, that shaping of your behaviors and reactions to try and cultivate a positive response from another, is seen across the lifespan.

Some of this is healthy, such as matching tone or engaging in receptive communication, and some of this is unhealthy, like when we feel that we need approval in order to get on with our day.