Social Anxiety: Why It Happens — the Method’s View

Social anxiety is often felt as “what’s wrong with me?” The method offers a different angle: anxiety is not a trait of your personality but a natural reaction of the organism to a situation it cannot yet handle. This shift moves the focus from fighting yourself to understanding the mechanism.

Anxiety Is Reactivity, Not Fear

The doctor distinguishes fear from anxiety. Anxiety arises as a reaction to a stimulus that acts on us so strongly that we cannot compensate for its effect. If it is not a direct physical threat (“not sulfuric acid”), then it is about internal processing: the organism has met an influence for which it has no ready response program yet.

Lack of Information Breeds Anxiety

A key source is the shortage of information. When it’s unclear what is happening and what to do, the system shifts into heightened alertness. In social situations this is especially evident: uncertainty about how others judge you, an unclear outcome — and anxiety grows.

Where the Resource Goes: “Draining the Fuel”

When we keep spinning anxious thoughts, we constantly argue with them — yet they have no connection to reality. This devours your resource. The doctor compares it to draining fuel from a car: you simply burn your resource. Living through anxiety burns out the natural endorphins — the inner source of calm.

Lift It Off the “Personal Self”

The method’s core proposal: the phenomenon of anxiety must be lifted off the “personal self” and brought back to normal. An unprepared person holds a rigid split between “events that should be” and “events that should not be” — and meeting a reality that doesn’t fit this picture triggers the question “why is this happening to me?” Maturing (in the doctor’s phrase, “n + 1”) is precisely about no longer reacting this way: there is a stimulus — and you simply act on the facts, without excessive evaluation.

Evaluation Versus Action

Excess evaluation is exactly the “draining of resource.” When you stop judging yourself through anxiety and start acting on the facts of the situation, clarity appears: toward yourself and toward others. The less obsessive “thinking,” the more spontaneity — the doctor notes that “the more you think, the worse it turns out.”

Practice

1. Name the stimulus: what exactly is acting on you in this social situation right now.
2. Check the information: what do you genuinely not know — and can a question clarify it?
3. Separate the phenomenon from yourself: remind yourself this is a reaction of the organism, not a “personality flaw.”
4. Stop arguing with thoughts: notice that obsessive thoughts have no connection to reality, and don’t spend resource on them.
5. Move from evaluation to action: take one simple step based on the facts of the situation.