Social Phobia, or “I am afraid of people”

Social phobia is a common issue of a big city. The worst obstacle and agony for the person who has social phobia is a fear that permanently follows him. It is scary to be outside, in a subway or in front of the class.

Even when they see a group of people, they start to panic and think that it is better not to get involved. The possibility of being in contact with people electrifies them, even makes them go to the other side of the road. If they have to walk by a crowd, they wear a mask of haughtiness or scorn. Sometimes they can even try to scare other people. After such attempts, they hope no one can suspect that they are afraid. Such actions make them feel safe.

They say, “ Fear has big eyes”. It is a very accurate observation. People of the visual type have especially “big” eyes. It is visual type who is able to cry their eyes out because they are overflown with feelings and somebody else feels bad and pain. Warmth, kindness and empathy for other person's grief can only radiate from the eyes of a visual man. 

Indeed a visual person cries their eyes out quite often because they feel sorry for and empathize, experiencing everlasting dramas and misfortunes. Those people are always easily moved to tears, but it never happens for other people's sake. 
 
These eyes of ours perfectly differentiate colors and shades, they love and take in enormous pleasure from things which provoke emotion. They ignite the brain, making up new bright and colorful images. Moreover, nature gives them an ability to feel various emotions. Such that life can offer and provide us with sensitivity to be fulfilled with the brightest feelings. 

It is the visual type who creates and understands art, so they can please and tempt the fine taste of others. Often people say that they have “smart eyes”, which see through the surface and can feel the emotional states of other people. A mature visual type is a native soul expert and psychotherapist. 

Many visual people fall in love as early as their schooldays. They worry to death about unrequited love and describe this experience as “worth dying for". 

Girls dream of love since their childhood. The visual type loves everyone and wishes the whole world to be seized by their love. However this feeling of love is only potential and has to be developed under the right conditions.

A person who suffers from social phobia is scared when they are asked to speak about themselves. Their focus on their personality makes them burn with shame. For example, when they are either asked to present their work in front of an audienceor or simply asked to speak about their summer vacation, they feel the fear literally devours them. They blush, their heart misses a beat, they drip with sweat and everyone can see it. 

Our mind always finds an explanation and justifies it's fear in different ways. A person getting consumed by fears will more and more broaden the range of objects which he is afraid of, thus their fear is with them all the time. 

Fixed and constantly realized fear starts with name calling or insults at school, that were addressed to a sensitive visual child. 
For example, they could give a nickname to that child and he starts to feel shy. Moreover, the otherwise “friendly” schoolmates remind them about it from time to time. And after all this he starts thinking it's happening for some reason. After a while they start to see and believe in the things being said about them. It is a horrible cycle.

People of the visual type make mountain out of a molehill. They emotionally excite themselves and lash out with their fear. Fear is the strongest emotion from their childhood. Ironically, they focus on it in an attempt to avoid it.

It is a natural fear of death which is the root of their troubles. Their fear is enormously stronger than the instinct for survival in any other person. It is on a different level with a different purpose and meaning.

Since our school days, we remember that fear is a defense mechanism and a life saver. When we see a tiger, wolf, bear or threatening person our body reacts and mobilizes our strength to save us. It is a natural reaction. Oppositely, if a person is scared of everything, even around little kids, it means that they are trying to save themselves all the time, and this is unnatural. 

Of course they would not say, “I am afraid of people” because it's not completely true and besides, fear is a normal thing. It does not hurt anyone, nor is it pathological. It is the very emotion that a child has to turn into love for another human. It is a process that takes time and is riddled with obstacles. 

Visual children like to be afraid. They are thrill-seekers. They are the biggest fan of horror movies. Such people like to have walks in a dark wood or visit graveyards at night. It is the way to satisfy their emotional needs and get excited.

In the process of maturing, visual people can learn how to leave their fears behind, and afterward develop love and empathy . It starts from a constant love for nature and animals and develops into a love for human beings.

A visual person who got stuck in their own fear has problems with social adaptation. A trifle turns into a misfortune. They tremble at the thought of everybody looking at them. 
It seems to them that people are hunting for their vices. For example, they think about themselves as awkward, ugly and fat. Or perhaps they imagine that other children laugh at them. A resourceful mind creates ideas which move further and further away from reality.

When a visual child is under favorable social and family conditions, they quickly learn how to empathize and sympathize to others: they develop feelings by building up good emotional connections with their parents, reading classical literature and their first love. 

Under bad family conditions, visual children remain unable to experience love, but they feel fear forever. For example, such a case can occur when a husband and wife play out sado-masochistic scenarios including regular beatings and scandals.

A child is constantly afraid of being bitten, they also fear for their mother, who they have a close emotional connection with. Situations at schools can add fuel to this fire. 

As a matter of fact, having a fear of people means that one believes that everyone is dangerous and tries to “eat them up”.

A fearful visual person speaks about this problem to their parents and friends, making an attempt to convince themselves that they are beautiful, smart and better than others. 
It calms them down temporarily, but as soon as they appear to be in a hostile environment fear takes over. They always find reasons to be scared and nervous. 

Those people who want to help them to cope with social phobia, try to use a real situation, so they realize that there is nothing to be scared of. Others are too busy to pay any attention and think that all their inner worries are a fantasy. 

Visual minds understand and agree with those people,but the fear remains. Popular attempts to create situations where a patient is made to experience positive emotions instead of fear do not work. The patient remains in their usual fearful state, making constant attempts to run away from anything scary. 

Immature visual types and the ones who are unable to feel emotions besides fear and often get stuck in it. They cannot help living through this strong, vivid experience. It is not a fly one can simply wave away. It even seems to them that they actively try to get rid of it and escape, but they always find reasons to return to fear. Indeed there is no stronger feeling in their lives!

Perhaps they think that it is strange, for things like infatuation, satisfaction and happiness to exist! However they're quite real! They do exist for those who are capable of experiencing these beautiful emotions, and their visual vector can finally be developed and satisfied. They take great pleasure in socializing after learning the psychology of relationships. Even if the vector is undeveloped, a need to satisfy it remains anyway. So it fulfills itself according to it's ability. 

Social phobia covers more and more aspects of life where fear comes into play. It seems to sociophobic people that everybody stares and laughs at them. At public places (stores, libraries, etc.) they quite often feel that they move so slowly, and everybody looks and thinks, 'What a slowpoke!' After such trips they run home where they feel safe. The desire to participate in social life and go out gets minimized. 

Fearful visual types react absolutely inadequately to other people. They are not able to make emotional contact. With time, their fear grows and life becomes more like a torture. Sometimes it turns out that they are scared of going to the store. They are scared that they may have a panic attack if somebody asks them something or if they have to talk with somebody. 

People in such a state cannot lead normal lives: they are not able to present a report in front of two or three people without fainting, never mind giving a speech. They cannot speak on the telephone, they blush, they have tachycardia and their brain instantly turns off completely.

It reaches a critical state when a person can not leave their house. Others often describe it like, “The person was normal, he was a teacher, but then his fear became too strong and turned into a phobia”. It doesn’t work that way though, as a matter of fact it means that this visual person had a level of fear which was already on the edge and then it became worse.  

Social phobia is only the top of the iceberg of problems, a huge array of different fears are all hidden deep inside of this iceberg. Two, wide-open eyes float just over a surface of water. 

Visual people verbalize their feelings as they experience strong anxiety, regular tension or nervousness around other people. Many of them try to make a good impression, have an entire lack of self-confidence. Actually it is the lack of confidence in their own internal and external sense of beauty (beauty is a key word for the visual type). They are scared of a fact that other people notice their strange behavior and tension.

It is visual types who are the first to go to doctors, psychotherapists or psychiatrists where they can be fed antidepressants in an effort to be rid of their fears. There are a lot of different methods to do this in our world. One happens when we experience fear of something unknown to us. Therefore if you regularly make yourself subject to your own fears and increase their load on your mind then you can desensitize yourself and get rid of them. The person who is afraid of using a gas stove initially tries to look at a warm stove and, step-by-step, cook eggs on a low fire. Fear temporary leaves us alone, but it never disappears. Generally the fear is switched with another subject and then the person calmly fries their eggs, meanwhile however, he is afraid of using subway or escalator. 
  
It is very important to realize and understand that a person of the visual type treats fear as an internal state, not as a social inadaptation. And they try to rationalize it when It is necessary to track their steps back and realize all aspects of their visual-type “I”. And to understand the normal development process of the visual type, to understand the way that the mature visual type feels.

It is usual for visual types, after visiting the doctor, to hope to get a prescription for some drugs or exercises which may help them to eliminate some of the internal discomfort and their fears. They can’t realize that the real problem is deep inside of them. Sometimes they don’t understand how normal and healthy people should look like. Healthy “Me” for them is the same as “Me” but without their social phobia.

In this case fear is the main emotional fulfilling of the visual type. Methods they use to go into this fear are vital for them. After ridding some specific fear this person returns back to the same ways of fulfilling and satisfying himself as before, he just switches it to some other subject. He simply doesn’t know another way. 

This problem can be solved after serious self-help and through realizing the core of it. When a person of the visual type realizes that he fulfills his own life through the emotion of fear, he starts to differentiate internal feelings and states which gives him the possibility to extinguish his fear in exchange for sensations, thoughts, and actions!