Posted by HyperFocus on November 21, 2008, at 18:27:25
In reply to Unmedicated Social Phobia and Confidence Surges, posted by Michael Bell on November 21, 2008, at 12:23:05
Are you 100% sure there isn't some bipolar component in your illness? I used to think of bipolar as getting these massive highs and lows in behaviour and mood but that's not what bipolar II is; check this link out and see if anything there hits home with you: http://www.psycheducation.org/index.html
As for the surges I would definitely get them, with or without medication, if I felt I had accomplished some social success. I've read that social anxiety confers a sense of ultimate catastrophe as a consequence of each possible social failure.
> I am curious as to whether other people on this board who have social phobia have had occasions where their confidence surges, all the social phobia melts away, you feel really good and you could say there is almost a hypomanic component to it. I'm not talking about med-induced hypomania. This used to happen to me before all the meds, although it was rare. I am not bipolar, and the confidence surges would not last long, maybe a couple hours at the most. Anyone else get this?
>
> Another thing I remember from my days of unmedicated social phobia is that if I thought that I accomplished some sort of social success (although this was very rare, being that the social phobia was so pervasive), even something as little as a conversation that went better than I thought it would, I would sometimes get a nice rush of pleasure as a result. However, since starting medication, I no longer get pleasure from socializing or even "social successes". Things are just kind of flattened. i wonder if I have lost the ability to feel social reward.
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> I guess you could say I think social phobia has two major aspects to it (although there are other issues) - fear of people/social situations and a deficit in reward processing insofar as socializing is concerned
poster:HyperFocus
thread:864427
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20081114/msgs/864524.html