How to reduce social anxiety and expand your social circle

As noted in a recent post, an inadequate social life may be as detrimental to your health as smoking, alcoholism and obesity. This is serious stuff. For those of us who are conscious of healthy living and extending our healthy lifespans, social disconnection needs to be taken as seriously as any other risk factor.

And this may hold particularly true for our community, that of the futurist sci-tech crowd, many of whom are too buried in their work and/or socially awkward (yes, Aspies, I'm talking to you). So, if you're finding it hard to get out and meet people, there are things you can do to remedy the situation.

Dealing with social anxiety

Now, before I get into it, I realize that for many people expanding a social circle is easier said than done. Social anxiety, severe introversion and shyness are serious things. If you suffer from these problems, I suggest the following:

• Role playing: As silly as it may sound, you may wish to start roll playing all by yourself. Or recruit a friend or family member and practice various social scenarios with them. You'll be amazed at how this kind of pre-visualization helps.
• Work within your skill-set: There's no need to completely reinvent yourself. Just remember your strengths and good qualities and work with them. Be sure to operate in social contexts that are familiar and nonthreatening to you.
• Make good eye contact: Practice good eye contact. And that doesn't mean staring. As a rule of thumb, a natural range of eye contact is between 30% to 60% of the time during a conversation. As for you Aspies and Autistics, I know this is physically painful, but practice and regularity will ease the discomfort.
• Have topics ready to discuss: If you're particularly anxious about the conversation itself, be prepared to have a dialogue ready. Make sure your topics are contextually appropriate and interesting, and that you deliver them in a seamless way (i.e. not as non-sequitors).
• Introduce yourself to a stranger: Again, if you're going to approach a stranger, be sure that it's contextually appropriate and that you don't come off as being creepy. Put a smile on your face, introduce yourself, and inject a topic that is consistent with the setting (e.g. "Wow, it's taking forever for the bus to show up today"). The more you do it, the easier it will get.
• Learn social skills: If you're feeling particular helpless, you can sign-up for an assertiveness training class. Community colleges, centers and adult learning facilities often offer free and low-cost classes. Alternatively, you can join an improv class.
• Join a local or online support group: Find forums or classes where other social phobics can get together and share in their struggles and breakthroughs.

Failing this, you may wish to seek professional help; counselors and mental health professionals can help you with your social phobia with talk therapy, medication, and other techniques.

Expanding your social circle

Many of us take our friends and family for granted. We also take our social skills for granted, rarely thinking about the processes required to create and maintain our social circles. Assuming you're starting from scratch (e.g. you've moved to a new city, or you're overcoming social anxiety), there are some things you can do to start your very own social group:

• Work with what you have: Do you have family that lives nearby? If so, you may want to increase your contact with them, especially if you're having trouble meeting and making new friends. This includes not just immediate family, but grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces and cousins. And if you already have a friend or two, be sure to treasure and foster those relationships. You may even want to get to know friends of your friends, and even their family members. Lastly, if you have online friends who live in the area (e.g. through Facebook, Twitter or chat sites), be sure to organize a meet-up. If this is too much too soon, set-up a video chat as an intermediary step to meeting in person.
• Pursue your passions in a social setting: You will stand a far better chance of meeting new friends when (1) you're in a setting that you're passionate about and comfortable in, (2) you're seen as someone who clearly has a specific interest and skill, and (3) you're surrounded with like-minded individuals. At the very least, you'll have fun doing what you love doing. Ideas include sports, public speaking, politics, games, crafts and so on.
• Organize!: Why wait for someone else to organize something when you can? Create a meetup online. Help a friend set-up a party. Create a new group and schedule get-togethers. There's lots you can do, here.
• Be the fun guy/gal: This might take you a bit out of your comfort zone, but it's important that you come across as being a genuinely fun, happy, and interesting person. Ultimately, you want to make people feel good when they're around you. If you project positive qualities, those around you will suck it up like a sponge and continue to want to hang out with you.
• Make an effort: All of this advice will be for naught if you don't actively pursue friendships. Go into these settings with the mindset that you will meet new people. Approach strangers and introduce yourself. Build on familiarity and take it to the next stage by inviting your new acquaintances to alternative venues, like a bar or sporting event. Failing that, learn to enjoy the company of others in these settings. Remember, the goal here is to reduce the ill effects of social isolation.

As a last piece of advice, realize that there are a lot of people out there who would be happy to know you. Borrowing an axiom from the dating world, just remember that there are plenty of fish in the sea. Moreover, people are, for the most part, genuinely nice and well intentioned. Creating or increasing a social circle takes time, patience and persistence, but the payoffs are certainly well worth it. Your efforts will undoubtedly translate to positive and formative experiences.

Those with 'fused' identities more willing to die for their social group

Psychologist William B. Swann, Jr., of the University of Texas has come up with the idea of "fused identities" to describe people who are exceptionally bound to their social group—so much so that they're willing to kill themselves to preserve it.

Those people who are "fused" with a group—a bond even stronger than group identification—will take extreme actions to protect other group members, but not outsiders. It is thought that this intense bond to a group may help explain the actions of suicide bombers.

Swann believes that there is something particularly unique about terrorists and other extremists that goes beyond simple identification. He calls this phenomenon identity fusion and argues that it has two characteristics that make it different from plain old group identity: (1) a sense that you and the group have a shared core essence, and (2) a feeling of reciprocal strength.

"You give the group strength and the group gets strength from you," says Swann. People who are fused with a group, whether it's a country or a military unit, often say they would be willing to fight and die for the group.

To test how fused people behave, Swann and his colleagues asked Spanish volunteers how they saw themselves in relation to Spain. This was done using a pictorial scale in which the person and "Spain" were overlapping circles; those who said their circle was completely inside Spain's were considered fused. Each participant answered some variation on the classic trolley problem (in which a runaway trolley is about to kill some people).

In one variation, the dilemma was whether the participant would jump on the tracks and die to save five Spaniards. People whose identities were fused with Spain were more likely to sacrifice themselves, while others would let their fellow Spaniards die. Additional experiments found that fused people would also sacrifice themselves for a group of Europeans—a group that includes Spaniards—and that they would be more likely to do so for Europeans than for Americans.

Perhaps the most striking finding was in the last experiment. In that scenario, participants imagined that it was the day of the Madrid bombings, and someone else was about to jump on the train tracks to kill both himself and the bombers. Fused respondents were more likely to say they would push the would-be martyr out of the way so that they could die to save others. "It's amazing to me that these guys would endorse that kind of behavior," says Swann. "It's just a little hard, as outsiders, to wrap our heads around the idea that people will sacrifice themselves to produce an outcome that would occur even if they did nothing."

This study may help explain why suicide bombers are willing to kill themselves: Fused individuals see their own essence and strength as coupled to the group they belong to. The research also has other applications, says Swann. In the military, for example, having service members fused to their group is important, so they'll act as a unit. "But when they come back, you want them to de-fuse with their group and re-fuse with their family," Swann says—an adjustment that is difficult for many people.