Social Anxiety can have many causes.

Sometimes anxiety is inherited; just like big brown eyes or wide hips can be inherited, so can anxiety. If a parent has a mental disorder, it greatly increases the chance that you will develop that same disorder.

You may just be the anxious type. Have you always worried a lot? Were you quiet and shy even as a child?

There may be an imbalance in your brain. The vital neuro-transmitters: (the bits that transfer information around your brain) Serotonin, Norepinephrine and Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) affect the way we feel about a thought or situation.

Social anxiety can also be caused by bad experiences, for example say you visit the dentist for the first time and he pulls out a tooth, you begin to feel you can’t trust the dentist  and the bad experience begins here. Say you visit the dentist a second time, you’re more hesitant this time, maybe you feel a little nervous, and the dentist says you need a filling and begins drilling away at your tooth. Before you went to the dentist you expected something bad to happen based on your previous experience, and something bad did happen so this begins a cycle of negative thoughts surrounding the dentist. The next time your appointment comes around you’ll probably start to feel anxious about the situation as you’re expecting something bad to happen as it did both times before.

<Edit later>

Trackback URI | Comments RSS