So the racing heart, tightness in chest, lump in throat, imagining worst case scenarios, etc…

… all these “social anxiety symptoms” are nothing but the results of the activation of the FFF response.

Anxiety in social situations is merely the result of the FFF response activation. 

Which ONLY happens when the subconscious perceives a threat.

No perception of threat = no FFF activation. No FFF activation = no social anxiety.

The perception of threat is caused by limiting beliefs (like ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘people don’t like me’,
‘I have to do everything right and can’t make mistakes’).

And these beliefs are learned: as a result of cultural, religious, and societal conditioning. But most often the strongest limiting beliefs come as a result of the repetitive negative experiences in early childhood, and life’s traumas.

From this limiting beliefs (emotionalized thoughts) were formed. And these are responsible for the current perception of threat.

And these beliefs are very difficult to change by mere logic, reasoning, and forcing yourself to face your fears. 

Why that is?

Because you’ve gathered emotional evidence to prove the validity of your limiting beliefs.

Your subconscious has emotional reference experiences from the past to point to. It learned you are not good enough when your mom criticized you. Or when you got bullied. Or when you failed. Or when you got rejected. Or…

Now you might say “I am good good enough” over and over, or you might come up with good logical reasons for why you ARE good enough…

But the emotional evidence of “not being good enough” is much stronger than your logic.

Emotion wins from logic any time.

Strongly held limiting beliefs won’t shift if you don’t release the emotions connected to them.

Reasoning can be helpful when you have irrational thinking, but you won’t logic your way out of your social anxiety. 

You know this is true if you’ve ever tried to talk yourself out of your anxiety (if this worked you’d be anxiety-free by now).

You can repeat logical statements, challenge automatic negative thoughts, and face your fears all day long, but it at best only decreases your anxiety.

It doesn’t undo the past programming. It only builds new beliefs on top (that is IF you do it right).

But that’s as the saying goes “adding whipped cream to a dog turd”.

There is value in challenging unhelpful thoughts, and being mindful. I do it myself, recommend it to my clients, and provide exercises for it.

But it’s helpful only to a (small) degree.

Why?

Because it only addresses the cognitive side of the problem. Which is MINOR compared to the emotional side of the social anxiety problem.

And that is because SOCIAL ANXIETY IS MOSTLY AN EMOTIONAL PROBLEM.

Cognitive approaches will never solve your social anxiety because they do not get rid of the perception of threat completely.

But here’s the good news:

Beliefs are nothing more than thoughts that have strong emotion connected to it.

And with tapping, we can release this emotion, and get rid of the beliefs.

Very quickly, as you can see in my coaching sessions with Mahsa.

As we release the beliefs responsible for the perception of threat, your subconscious no longer needs to warn you about danger (cause it sees none).

Now you feel safe being yourself socially. Now you feel comfortable and at ease around others. 

You find many video testimonials of former clients who overcame their social anxiety on my Youtube channel. I started it in 2009. And now has nearly 3 million views.

And in 2016 I launched my Social Anxiety Solutions podcast in iTunes (has since been downloaded
< 800 000 times). And the psychologists, coaches, healers, PhD doctors and psychotherapists I interview here also rave about the power of tapping.

August 2018 (after 9 years of coaching) I decided to take things to the next level: work with groups of socially anxious people.

I started the first ever Social Confidence Community.

One key element of our community was me doing live coaching webinars with our members.

I would take a volunteer and do a normal 1 on 1 coaching session. And I’d help that person release the biggest social anxiety issue they had.

And as we tapped together, everyone else could watch us and tap along.

This turned out to be one of the main reasons people had life-transforming breakthroughs.

One of the other key elements of the community was the drip fed tapping lessons I shared with people.

Some of the key lessons I decided to put into a smaller online program: ’Create Incredible Emotional Control’. And as a bonus for this program I decided to do a live webinar with one of the people who purchased the product.

That person would have to be OK with me using the recording later inside the product.

This is how me and Mahsa met (she’s the woman I coach in the coaching series).

In our little pre-interview Mahsa told me about her social anxiety troubles. And I could relate to all she was describing. What she told me I had heard other clients describe many, many times. 

She said she had tried to change for years and years. She had tried many things, seen a therapist for many years, and nothing would help.

She wrote this in her client form to apply for the free live webinar coaching session:

“I’ve read pretty much every self-help book on the market, changed my diet, started meditating/exercising, been to both solo and group therapy for the last 4 years (though I haven’t been going the last few months), been on medication which helped a bunch but I stopped a couple years ago because I wanted to solve the issue from the root, and for now I’ve just been doing a lot of avoidance of social situations… which I know isn’t ideal, but it beats feeling afraid all the time.”

In that same client form I asked her to write down her goal of social ease.

And then what limiting beliefs came up for her as she thought about achieving this social ease. Mahsa wrote the following 4 limiting beliefs:

• “Social ease can never happen. I will be this way forever” 
• “I’m too different from everyone. I could never make genuine, lasting friendships.” 
• “If it hasn’t happened by now, what makes me think I can change?”
• “I’m not worthy of getting to know/I’m not good enough.”

As I read this I knew Mashsa had done a lot, but failed to get any results for a clear reason.

It’s why pretty much everyone fails to overcome their social anxiety:

The self help books and therapy was working on a ‘cognitive level’…

… but social anxiety is for the most part an EMOTIONAL PROBLEM. 

And tapping works to release emotions. So after our intro chat I told her I could help her her and we were both excited. So I coached her over this live coaching series.

Mahsa started with a massive breakthrough, at the end of our first 90min coaching session:

Now at the start of our coaching session I had told everyone watching us to tap along throughout the whole webinar.

And to repeat what I had Mahsa repeat.

Since the social anxiety issues are very similar, and they can relate to Mahsa’s pain, suffering, and anxiety, their mirror neurons would fire.

Their social anxiety issues would get triggered, and the tapping would bring them relief too.

Just by tapping along with Mahsa they would get relief on their social anxiety issues.

Their subconscious would link it to their issues, and the tapping would release the issues.

Here are some comments from under that 1st video:

After our initial session I had a good grasp on what Mahsa’s issue was. And I knew I could help her overcome it. Because while the roots of her issue are of course different as every person is unique and every issue is unique…

… there are A LOT OF SIMILARITIES.

One of her biggest issues was what -according to a poll I sent to my whole email list- the no#1 most common social fear:

Fear of negative judgment.

And I knew that if I started coaching her on this and others would tap along with it, just like I had done in the community, many people would benefit.

And we’d not only address her fear of judgment, but other key social anxiety issues too.

And so I asked her if she was interested in doing a coaching series.

Thankfully, courageous Mahsa said yes.

The page you’re reading now is the end results of this.

I’ve recorded the live webinars and put them all in one place for you to easily consume. Watching the replays is just as effective as seeing them live.