Can Drinking Alcohol Cause Social Anxiety?

Be careful with alcohol!

Alcohol can eliminate anxiety and social anxiety with just a few drinks. But then....

...it comes back. Even worse then it was before.

Ant there is a reason for this.

Many people like to drink alcohol just because of the relaxing effects and I, myself, is one of them. It comes with a price however and that price is paid with our health.

I'm not saying you have to completely remove alcohol but if stress and anxiety are an issue then you should at least consider reducing the intake and here's why:

Read this article ==> Will my anxiety get better if I stop drinking alcohol?

After you read that article perhaps you understan it better. If suffering from anxiety then alcohol really should be left alone.

That said here is a bonus "social anxiety tip" for you:

Count to three!

Start practicing the habit of silently counting to three, in your head, not out loud, before you say something, answer a question or act in some way (notice the importance of the fact that I used the word "act" and not the word "react"). Start practicing this today! The next time you walk up to someone you aim to talk to, simply look him or her in the eyes, silently count to three, letting that space of time pass, even if it feels uncomfortable and THEN say what you had on your mind. Do the same thing when someone comes up to you. From now on you are, every so often, going to create a "three second space" between you and the rest of the world.

The first times you try this you might find it to be uncomfortable and it might feel unnatural and even induce some anxiety. That is understandable because you are not used to it, but just keep doing it and keep practicing . Now, of course you don't have to be thinking and doing this in every conversation all the time but, every so often, throw it in there. You will soon find it gets easier and you will, almost certainly, notice how the feelings of confidence grows after just a few times.

Why?

We have to make room for confidence. This point is incredible powerful in so many ways I really want you to give it a lot of thought, so I repeat -We have to MAKE ROOM for confidence-. You see confidence is a funny thing, as it needs space in order to exist. Just as the body creates physical space when we feel confident and proud, as we covered in the first chapter, confidence also needs space in the dimension of time. And by counting to three we make sure to create exactly that space for it, making room, in the dimension of time as well.

Have you ever noticed that when people are really nervous they hurry and fumble too much with their words, almost as they are afraid that the other person are disturbed that they take up his time? This is the opposite of the "count to three action" and by not taking our time, it is also nearly impossible to feel confident. In contrast, now think of some of the most confident, secure and powerful people you know. If you don't know anyone with supreme confidence, think of someone you have seen on TV, an actor or maybe a politician like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama for example. If you think about it you will notice that they use a lot of that "space in time" and sure enough, it is like they are oozing confidence and security out of every pore. Most of the confident people just do this naturally and don't even think about it. You, however, can start doing it by choice, because as we talked about in the first chapter, actions affect how we feel, just as much as how we feel affect our actions.

Another great thing the "count to three action" will develop, is the ability to ACT instead of automatically REACT. It will gives us more distance, preventing us from reacting and getting dragged along by our emotions. By putting that distance there you will gain so much more control over yourself in every way, and of course, control also feeds our feelings of confidence and makes us much more …”badass”.