(im also gonna post this in the general thread thanks)

The way you feel is the way I felt for many years.  However tapping every day, and on the specific incidents has helped dramatically.  Think of yourself in "that" situation and tap about how you feel.  Tap every day on feeling scared, and not good enough.  You will see changes.  I'm cheering for you.  :)  Arum

I know that sometimes having a label for our symptoms helps make sense of whats going on but EFT therapists are not worried about diagnoses.  What we work with is what you are experiencing, where and how you experience it.

This does sound like a form of performance anxiety and a rough guess would be that when you were younger you have had experiences which felt traumatic to you where you were criticised or there was some fall out or unwanted result from having done something slowly or badly.

Unless there is deeply buried trauma it should not be too difficult to access the memories of these times and resolve them, along with the limiting beliefs that were formed at the time, although sometimes it can be helpful to do this with someone else when we are strugglng to access the memories.  A little bit of objective guidance and support can be very helpful.

I would suggest also tuning in to where you feel it in your body when you think of doing something in front of people, and describing the sensation you experience, tuning in and imagining it in terms of shape and colour can be helpful.  Our subconcious mind loves communicating in pictures, shapes and colour and tapping on that can help shift the energy and perhaps open up the way for the memories to arise, particularly when we ask ourselves when is the first, or worst time, I experienced this feeling before.

Sometimes our issues can be complex so we need lots of persistence working on whatever comes up around the experience or imagining the experience of doing things in front of people.

I would also suggest you address your feelings about having the problem as well.  If we feel agitated or angry with ourselves that can make a little tricky.

I like to remind my clients that all issues of anxiety are because parts of us are doing their very best to be safe and we need to work along with that rather than fighting against it.

Best wishes

Gillian

thank you for your response

"I would suggest also tuning in to where you feel it in your body when you think of doing something in front of people, and describing the sensation you experience, tuning in and imagining it in terms of shape and colour can be helpful.  Our subconcious mind loves communicating in pictures, shapes and colour and tapping on that can help shift the energy and perhaps open up the way for the memories to arise, particularly when we ask ourselves when is the first, or worst time, I experienced this feeling before."

how do i go about tapping out shapes and colours?

 Hi there,

The core problem in your case seems to be Fear of JUDGEMENT. Fear of being judged by other people; fear of their criticism can give rise to this kind of anxiety /nervousness  So you need to address that in your tapping.

Also, social anxiety is mainly about this - fear of being judged, criticized by people which is why when you are alone then you can perform well but when other people are there then you get nervous. These  thoughts -'wow you're slow..' or 'wow you're really bad at this' etc demonstrate this.

 Also look up incidents from your past where you have been judged by family, friends, in social situations etc.Tap on those events.

Best wishes

This is what we call using metaphors.  There are many examples of this on the www.emofree.com site as cases studies and its a technique I use alot both for clients and myself as sometimes its hard to name the feeling but we can be aware of what it feels like.  It then allows the memories to start popping up when appropriate.

So as an example, you imagine yourself opening a can in front of someone for instance.

As you imagine this start to observe what is happening in your body, does it feel tight anywhere, heavy, constricted, is it hard to breath.  How do you know you feel anxious?

Focus on the sensation wherever it is and use childs language to describe it, ie if you were trying to tell a small child what this felt like and describe it how would you do that?

If this feeling had a colour what would it be?  Go for the first thing that comes up.  Is it hard or soft, smooth or rough.  Does it feel internal or external.  Often we can also name the feeling.  Being specific about what it feels like or looks like if we could imagine is specific enough for the EFT to work.

We don't have to actually visually SEE this, just get a sense of it, if we could see it what would it be.

If this feeling had a shape would it be smaller or bigger than a fist?

Would it be hard or soft, smooth or jaggy?

If it had a colour what colour would it be?

You don't have to actually see it or even know it, just guess what it would be if you could see it?

Then your set up is something like

Even though I have this heavy black jaggy rock in my solar plexus I accept myself

After the tapping recheck the feeling.  What has changed?  What remains?

Then ask yourself is this the first time I felt this?  Usually the answer is NO.  When is the first time you felt this?  Be aware of what comes to mind.  Apply the Movie technique or Tearless Trauma to this memory.   Go back to just before the event. Was the feeling there.  If it was already there, then you need to go a little further back.

Our mind remembers what happened and our body keeps the score, we tend to repexperience emotions as feelings in our body,  so when we are being triggered in now time by cirumstances we end up feeling like we did at the time.

Another way to do this work is just to say to yourself

I am worried about other people thinking I am to slow because ........

If people think I am slow then they will.....(what will they do?)

Whats wrong with being slow at doing anything?  What pops up into your mind about slowness.  Again what are the memories that support this belief that being slow is a bad thing.

What is your evidence that this will negative judgement will happen?  What has happened to you in the past that gives you the proof that people will judge you adversely and this will have bad consquences.  These are the supporting memories to your belief that there is something wrong with you.

Once you have tapped on all the feelings and memories surrounding this issue test yourself by imaging opening a can in front of someone and see how this feels differently now.

Opening a can can be substituted for any other thing you feel unable to do in front of someone.

I would suggest that any information you have about social anxiety etc and EFT can be interchanged as it will always be asking

Where is the first time you experienced this feeling, no matter what the presenting problem is.

Gillian

thanks to all who responded--i am eager to try these suggestions--thank you!

you asked for a diagnosis - so here's some info you might find helpful, but remember, a diagnosis should be used to help you move forwards through and wherever onwards you're meant to be going, not a label to keep you stuck for life. Also, my opinion does not really represent a diagnosis.

My suggestion is that you may have some Sensory Integration difficulties, which make it harder for a person to orient themselves easily in time and space. Undiagnosed, the person may well feel odd, different and less good than those around him, so that leads to feeling judged often. Instead it may be more helpful to learn what you can about sensory integration. From an EFT perspective, a person may need to let go of a trauma to let go of sensory integration symptoms, so you may want to think about when this started, eg if it started at birth, it MAY represent a birth or pregnancy trauma. Alternatively, you may want to just accept and live with any difficulties you have, with greater peace.

Some people with dyslexia have been helped by a method that says that a person's inner sense of centeredness can be slightly off center. I don't know much more about this.

 Tapping on auditory/visual/kinesthetic sensations helps. Eg.- quality of sound, shapes, feelings etc. These are NLP (Neuro Linguistic programming) modalities. EFT has many techniques that are from NLP.

It depends on the primary modality of an individual.For some people visual may not work cuz they may be kinesthetic(feelings) or auditory(sound). Finding out which one works for you is important. Think of one incident. Check which aspects made you more uncomfortable- was it the color, shape, sound, taste,  smell.... etc. Tap on that .Eg- what the person said was important or the way he looked at you or what he made you feel.It could be a mixture of all three but there will be one that is most prominent. Sub-modalities like texture, brightness, loudness, pitch, etc can help in getting deeper into the past experiences and finding tappable issues.

Julie, there are also many good audios and videos that you can tap with on line.  I don't repeat the words myself, I just listen and tap.  Brad Yates, Robert Smith, Christine Metawati, Betty Moore Hafter,..... Just use a search engine.  Every AM I tap to one or two of these, it really gets things of to a positive start.  Prayers good too.  :)  Arum