Hi,
Last year we did some investigating in scientific journals about whether or not exercise can help reduce social anxiety. You can read what we found out here. The TL;DR version is that we found that exercise can help alleviate social anxiety by increasing your feel good hormones, increasing self-efficacy and by acting as a distraction.
A very interesting finding was that exercise, like running or something that gets your heart pumping, can reduce “anxiety sensitivity” to the physical symptoms of your social anxiety. In other words it’s similar to the exposure technique! If you fear the physical symptoms of panic/anxiety and you expose yourself to these symptoms by running or exercising in a safe environment you can help your mind learn that these symptoms are not a threat to you, and reduce psychological responses in feared situations.
Has exercise worked for you? If so what have you tried that worked? If not, maybe you could pick up some ideas of our last post that you could try out now (and let us know how it goes!). We’d love to hear from you 🙂
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