Throughout the life, most of the people experience some amount of shyness in situations that are out of their comfort zones. Unfortunately, some people experience more discomfort than others to the point where they end up wearing earloop masks or all other kinds of masks because they feel like it might reduce their anxiety. Now this borders with social anxiety disorder. Wearing earloop mask to avoid diseases is understandable but not for any other reason.
Feeling shy vs social anxiety are social inconveniences that can be quite a problem and are similar to one another, but what is the difference between them? Can shyness be characterized as a social anxiety and can it become social anxiety? Here are some answers to those questions.
The main difference between feeling shy vs social anxiety lies in the way symptoms affect different people. With shyness, most of the unpleasant symptoms disappear as the person gets familiar with the new surrounding and new people. It’s a bit different with social anxiety disorder – these symptoms may occur even worse as the time goes by. People with social anxiety often over-analyze things around them and are afraid that people will notice their discomfort and judge them for it which can stir up even worse feelings.
Shyness gets to be difficult to handle, but social anxiety can be much worse. It could be a really limiting condition, not just because of the unpleasant symptoms but because of the negative thoughts that can be a huge problem. People who suffer from social anxiety can give themselves a hard time which can make this disorder much worse than it already is.
Social anxiety can go unnoticed for years, leaving people feeling different negative feelings preventing them from living a simpler and easier life. Of course, feeling this kind of discomfort doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with those people. Life today can be pretty stressful and hard to handle.
People can feel different amounts of discomfort in a new social situations and if it’s something too much to handle, it’s not a bad idea to make an appointment with a mental health professional and find new ways to work on it and make your life easier.