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Social Anxiety and PTSD During Inevitable Uncertainty

How Social Anxiety and PTSD Interact

Social anxiety is also known as social phobia and can come hand in hand with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The symptoms include avoidance, lightheaded, sweating excessively, nausea, fast heart rate and can disrupt everyday life such as school, work, and relationships. The causes may vary for both disorders, but the main causes are trauma. 

The Impact of COVID-19 on Social Anxiety and PTSD

During this past year of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a country and as a nation we have experienced an amount of uncertainty. The world is now starting to reopen businesses and larger gatherings in many places that weren’t opened before. For numerous individual’s social anxiety may be something that has been amplified during these times. 

Research shows that due to the regulations that were established during the pandemic, many individuals have shown symptoms of social anxiety as well as PTSD. A study from China (Liang, 2020), shows that “Nearly 13 percent of participants aged 14 to 35 showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), life avoidance” during social interactions. Another study from Italy (Forte, 2020) mentions that “fear of contracting the infection, physical distancing, and economic issues alone could generate trauma”. In other words, you may experience trauma symptoms even if you did not personally get sick with the virus or know of anyone that did or died. 

Finding Relief: Professional and Natural Approaches to Anxiety and Trauma

Is important for individuals who are experiencing social anxiety as well as to trauma symptoms to seek professionals’ help. The quicker that someone is able to get the right treatment, the quicker they’ll begin to feel better and less probable of them having prolonged effects from these symptoms.

There are numerous kinds of treatment that include psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing  (EMDR), Exposure therapy, group therapy, and psychiatric medications. Other natural things to do that can help decrease anxiety and trauma symptoms include eating well, having plenty of sleep and avoiding caffeine.

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Eating Disorders - It's Not About the Food

By Kelly Lopez

If it’s not about the food, what is it really about?

The eating disorder serves a function, it does a job. Despite the problems an eating disorder creates, it is an effort to cope, shield against, communicate, and solve problems. Behaviors may be a way to establish a sense of power or control, self-worth, strength, and containment. Bringing may be used to numb pain. Purging may be a way to release emotions. When one cannot cope in healthy ways, adaptive functions (behaviors) are created to ensure a sense of safety, security, and control.
According to Carolyn Costin*, some of the “adaptive functions that eating disorder behaviors commonly serve are”:
  • Comfort, soothing, nurturance
  • Numbing, sedation, distraction
  • Attention, a cry for help
  • Discharge of tension, anger, rebellion
  • Predictability, structure, identity
  • Self-punishment or punishment of "the body"
  • Self-cleansing or self-purification
  • Protection or safety (through creation of a small or large body)
  • Avoidance of intimacy
  • Proof for self-blame instead of blaming others (for exampl, abusers)
It’s not about the food, it’s a way of coping with low self-esteem, negative emotions, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, unstable home, difficulty resolving conflict and much more.
*Costin, Carolyn. The Eating Disorder Sourcebook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Causes, Treatments and Prevention of Eating Disorders. 3rd. edition, McGraw Hill, 2007.
Fuller, Kristen. “Eating Disorders: It’s Not All about Food.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 22 Mar. 2017

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-is-state-mind/201703/eating-disorders-it-s-not-all-about-food