Put simply, there are 3 unconscious habits that the root source of social anxiety "feeds" off of, making it stronger.
I call them, the 3 Social Anxiety Feeders (or SA Feeders, for short).
In other words, they make social anxiety worse over time -- not better -- because they re-enforce your subconscious mind's expectation of emotional pain.
The reason I am telling you this is because, when I give you the solution to SA, I want to make sure you know how important it is to get started right away.
I can't tell you how many people wait too long to get help with social anxiety.. only to finally hit their breaking point... when they realize that social anxiety has taken over their life, and it has to stop... at which point, they usually don't even have the motivation to leave their bed. (Yes, severe social anxiety disorder can lead to depression.)
And if you're in that position right now, don't worry.
What you're about to discover can and will help you get your life back, if you let it. And it might happen faster and easier than you think.
Before we get to that, let me explain the 3 SA Feeders:
SA Feeder #1:
Reliance on friends, family, alcohol, weed, or anything else that is outside of you (a person or thing) to make you feel safe.
For me, it was a friend named Jay (my SA pretty much disappeared when I was with him), plus a lot of weed and alcohol.
SA Feeder #2:
Avoiding a social situation/interaction/whatever you wanna call it.
(Avoiding it simply because you don't like it is okay. But when it's FEAR-based, that's when it becomes food for the root source of social anxiety.)
SA Feeder #3:
Staying comfortable, which is similar to avoidance, except you don't actively refuse to do something you would otherwise do if you didn't have social anxiety. Instead, your "default" is to not do anything new or outside your comfort zone (socially speaking). This commonly pops up as "I just want to stay in my little bubble at home".
By the way, the solution you're about to discover is NOT "do what you're afraid of" because...
That's "exposure therapy" and not only does it require a tremendous amount of self-discipline, will-power and hard work...
It also is very risky because if you have an emotionally painful experience (judgement, criticism, etc.) and you do not know how to consciously control the association, it can back-fire completely, making you worse off than if you just let those 3 unconscious habits slowly increase your social anxiety.
Which means you have to be really, really, really lucky in order to actually improve.
At best, your "exposure" can counter-act the 3 unconscious habits, which stops making SA worse... but... you'll then be left with "functional" social anxiety. Sort of like a functional alcoholic who can go to work and do what life needs him to do, but is always drunk. Except, instead of being drunk, you have anxiety.
Not fun.
So, if the solution isn't to stop the 3 SA Feeders, what is it, then?
It's to treat the underlying cause -- the root source that spawned all of this mess.
Good news is, since we already know that the real, root source of social anxiety is your subconscious mind associating emotional pain as a result of being in, doing or saying something in 1 or more types of social situations/interactions/settings...