The Social anxiety nowadays is the third biggest psychological problem in the developed countries. It affects millions of people every year. For difference of many other psychological conditions, this phobia is not quite well understood by the medical professionals as well as the members of the public. The facts show that the sufferers of this disorder are not diagnosed correctly in ninety percent of the cases. Very often people are said by the medical specialists to have schizophrenia, manic depression, panic disorder and many others instead. Wrong diagnoses could be very dangerous and damaging for the patient's health.

People who already know about the fact that they suffer from this condition, but have never seen or heard any discussions in the public media about it, are thinking that they are the only people in the world who have the illness. And must keep quiet about that. What the others will think about their condition if they find out how much anxiety the sufferer experiences everyday? Questions like this, the lack of knowledge, education and an appropriate treatment are destroying social anxiety sufferers' lives even further more. In addition, when such a person finally decides to seek some professional advice and adequate treatment, it turns out that the chances to find any of those are pretty small.
The social phobia, unlike many other psychological or physical conditions is not coming and going from time to time. Once you start suffering from the disorder, you will have it for the rest of your life. People suffering from social anxiety disorder may have quite different individual secondary symptoms. For example, some people have anxiety about eating or drinking in front of others. Other sufferers are afraid to write in public places, because according to them other people are watching. Another group of anxious people will feel very bad about the appearance of parts of their bodies and they are very vulnerable if someone is "staring" at them. Some anxiety sufferers have muscle spasms for example, and they have also all their focus concentrated on that, thinking how embarrassing it would be if everyone finds out about it.

There is something that all of the social anxiety sufferers realize, and this is the fact that their fears are illegitimate. These people are aware that the others are not really judging them with all that criticism and not trying to assess them all the time. They also realize the fact that people are not really trying to humiliate and embarrass them either. They know that their thoughts and feelings are exaggerated to great extend and are more or less irrational, but inspite all that still feeling the way they have always felt. These thoughts and feelings, that come up in some particular social situations have to be battled through an appropriate therapy.

Numbers of therapeutic methods have been studied and the studies show that the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the one that has shown as most effective. Practically the treatment based on the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has proven that it has a permanent effect and relieves sufferers from their social anxiety disorder for good. The social anxiety can be treated successfully with a short-term therapy as well, this depends on the severity of the illness. To get over the social anxiety, taking part in a behavioral therapy group is also very important, but only when sufferers feel ready for this.

Without a treatment, the social phobia is a very traumatic and horrifying problem. With a CBT treatment, the illness is not as unpleasant as it seems. Additionally a current research makes it clear that CBT is very successful. The only people who are not successful are those who are not persistent in their practice and who will not stick with simple methods and techniques at home. They are the people who give up. When someone is highly motivated to stop this process of torture that continues for years and years, then the CBT provides the ways and the techniques that will lead to total relief from the anxiety and make the world a much better place to live in. Shannon Michael