Most people get clammy hands before going in front of a live audience to speak in public, and some experience difficulty breathing. Some people say they feel butterflies fluttering in their stomach prior to making a presentation in front of their boss. This is normal. It is called anxiety. Natural anxiety makes us feel fear, apprehension, or worry in tense situations where there is a possibility of failing or being humiliated.

Aside from the above mentioned signs of anxiety, people usually feel heart palpitations, nausea, chest pain, stomach aches, and headaches, too. Once the mind acknowledges the possibility of danger or humiliation, changes happen to prepare one's body, getting it ready for whatever may happen. These include an increase in blood pressure, heart rate, sweating, and blood flow to the major muscle groups.

However there are some cases that anxiety becomes too much that a person becomes unable to function normally. These kinds of people may possibly have social phobia or social anxiety disorder.

What is social phobia?

Mental health professionals refer to this anxiety disorder as an excessive anxiety in social situations wherein the sufferer feels extremely distressed. The extreme anxiety impairs the sufferer's ability to normally function in some areas in his daily life. People with social anxiety disorder have admitted to feeling extremely conscious of the people around them, fearful of being criticized, judged, or scrutinized.

Social phobia usually involves a persistent, intense, and chronic fear of being judged by other people and of the possibility of being embarrassed or humiliated by their own actions. For most sufferers, these fears are often triggered by their own perception of being judged by other people, and of actual events of being scrutinized by others.

Symptoms of having a social anxiety disorder are the same as that of natural anxiety, the only difference is, people with social phobia may experience intense panic attacks once they feel severe discomfort of the situation. It is this extreme consciousness of moving around in public pushes sufferers into social isolation, thereby taking them away from activities that they once enjoyed.

How is social anxiety disorder treated?

It is important to administer treatment to people suffering from social phobias before they become further isolated not only from the outside world, but also from people who love and support them. And the two most commonly used therapies to help manage, if not cure, this psychological illness are:

Pharmacological treatments.

Anti-anxiety medications such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), and other prescription medications are used to manage and treat generalized social phobias. Although SSRIs and MAOIs are commonly used to treat depression, they were also found to be helpful to manage social phobias. But even if SSRIs are the first choice of most mental health professionals, MAOIs were found to have less side effects on its users.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Also called talk therapy or psychotherapy, this treatment plan aims to seek out the root of the problem. By addressing the sufferer's reason for his unexplainable fear, it will be easier to start an action plan to manage the social anxiety disorder until the patient can live a normal life again.