What's Social Confidence?

Is there a difference between self-confidence and social confidence? In this article, learn all about how a lack of social confidence can affect your life.

On a social level, self-confidence is like a prized treasure. We have lots of information at our disposal about how to increase it and enjoy greater personal growth. In contrast to self-confidence, we have a very basic idea of social confidence. This is no less important, but far fewer people talk or write about it. You won’t find as much information online about the topic.

Why is social confidence so important?

Well, in the first place, it greatly influences your social mobility and makes you a more daring and open opportunity seeker. You need to realize that you’ll never stop being a social animal. You’ll always be part of an environment that can either weaken or strengthen you.

If you have high social confidence, then that will help you avoid problems such as social anxiety, fear of the unknown, or jealousy in relationships.

Social confidence vs. social phobia

You can start to develop social phobia when you start to feel that social contact is a potential threat. This may be due to something in your past that has increased your distrust of other people. In general, social phobia acts as a shield to avoid potentially dangerous situations that could come about through social contact with those around you.

In addition, this fear can spread to many types of situations, filling you with fear when you’re with other people. It can also make you behave unnaturally when relating to other people, be they friends, family, or strangers. This fear of social contact will prevent you from enjoying an enriching social life. Thus, you must learn to use social confidence as a foothold to turn this fear around.

Common characteristics of social phobia

To illustrate this social phobia in more detail, we’re going to show you some characteristics of the people who suffer from it:

• Fear of someone focusing their attention on you.
• A constant feeling that everyone is watching you and judging you in silence.
• Fear of someone introducing you into a conversation.
• Being afraid of speaking in public, even among small groups of friends.
• Fear of organizing important tasks in a meeting or in the organization of events.
• Fear of eating in front of other people.
• A constant need to think long and hard about what we’re going to say.
• Fear of contributing to a conversation, thinking that our ideas and arguments may seem ridiculous.
• Fear of small and enclosed spaces where there are people.
• Recurring self-critical thoughts.

In short, all these aspects of social phobia create a fear of prolonged contact with other people and make you create strategies to avoid it. If you don’t deal with the above attributes, then the phobia will grow even more. For example, climbing the stairs in order to avoid bumping into people in the elevator will cause this fear to increase (in addition to reinforcing avoidant personality disorder).

Strategies to increase our social confidence

As we’ve said, social confidence is the very weapon you need to fight social phobia. In addition, it’ll help you establish healthier relationships and enjoy your social life more. Because of this, we’re going to list some techniques you can use to cultivate and nurture this vital quality:

• Get to know your family and friends better.
• Be yourself with your own individual personality and stop worrying about what other people might think about you.
• Defend your own ideas and opinions.
• Make sure you’re up to date on current trends, such as music, art, sports, or fashion. This will help you to avoid the silence that can occur sometimes in conversations; a silence that can terrify you when your social confidence is low.
• Get involved in all sorts of activities, such as neighborhood community meetings, work parties, or events with friends.
• Look people in the eye when you’re talking to them. Take your time when you’re speaking, and explain things in a calm and detailed way, especially if it’s an informal conversation between friends.
• When you have to do a presentation in public, rehearse as much as you can. A good idea is to record yourself speaking to see what aspects you can improve and to see whether you’re speaking too quickly or unclearly.

By using these strategies, you’ll be able to improve your social confidence little by little. In this way, the different traits of social phobia will start to fade away, letting you enjoy a more active and healthy social life in which you’ll be able to show everyone the real you.