I’ve been suffering from social anxiety for a very long time. The past years I actively worked on resolving it, but it has been a rather slow and frustrating process.

When I first tapped into psychedelics almost 3 years ago the initial euphoria was big, I thought I would have this fixed in no time. And while e.g. during a Pharma trip everything became very clear and I knew there’s no reason to be afraid of people, shortly thereafter the anxiety would return.
What I realized only a bit later was that psychedelics can disable conditioning while on them, and in that way inspire you – show you the light – but for many issues there’s still the hard hard work of integration when coming down again.

My social anxiety is linked to childhood trauma, and my inner-child or “demon” is resisting these changes very much. To protect me I suppose. Which probably made much sense in childhood, but very little as an over-30 adult now. Learned that in my case there are two components to fixing it:
One being learning social skills, building confidence dealing with people, letting go of old paradigms like “everyone is evil” or “people will only betray you” and replacing them with more useful ones to navigate the world. Letting go of wanting approval (what an insane addiction).
The second is healing the wounded-animal/inner-child. This one seems to be the biggest hindrance for progressing with the first component. The wounded-animal likes to lash out and go into panic mode when triggered, and sometimes is successful in taking me over and causing me to regress into that “helpless child” somewhat.
It becomes more and more clear to me that the right woman/partner could probably help me immensely with that. I noticed that even just touch/cuddling seems to be very therapeutic, roots me very much in the present moment and dissolves them boundaries. Had a “cuddle therapy” session with a skilled therapist and I think this really went deeper than many hours of conventional talking therapy.

I’m really happy to see more and more progress, am carefully optimistic that I’m over the hill. It’s kind of “amazing” to notice what this anxiety does/did to me. It really sucks away a lot of my life energy and can stifle me a lot in social situations. Psychedelics showed me that this is a big energy-blockade in action. It hinders me from really letting go and enjoying life fully – and I’m pretty angry about that at this point … it’s just so ridiculous, seeing the predicament, the mechanics of it with such clarity. Fortunately I can break free from that more and more and reach states of virtual no anxiety, feeling much love for others and the self. Should finally let the feminine into my life, it seems to have unique powers for letting things flow, unblock.

Dosing Lions Mane, alone, in combination with full-blown psychedelic trips or in combination with psilocybin micro/mini-dosing seems to really help to repair my brain and make newly learned things permanent in the form of novel neural-pathways. It’s also somewhat psychoactive just taking it on its own, seems to allow for more clarity and less distortion by old conditioning. Want to experiment with Harmine too.

Overall it’s a bit hard for me to pinpoint what exactly is driving these changes, it’s likely a combination of the following I’ve done/been doing lately:

- Traveling a lot, which forced me out of my comfort zone
- Quitting old job to focus more on myself/healing
- Several Kambo sessions
- Regular Pharma trips for a few months, paired with actions items that I wrote down during/after the trip (some of them in this list)
- Psilocybin micro/mini-dosing
- Lions mane
- Daily meditation habit
- Daily Cold Showers
- Vipassana retreat
- After many years of procrastination, finally going to gym 2x a week with coaching
- Going to Rainbow Family Gathering
- Started taking Piano lessons
- Cuddling


I’m becoming a much more centered/confident person, it’s really a stark contrast to just 3years ago. The way I see the world and people is radically shifting – to a much more objective/realistic way. This actually kind of hurts as well. I was so very naive.

Right now I want to add some more social elements(+WOMEN) to my life, which is still somewhat scary, and that demon not liking the idea, but it should do me good. Tantra looks very interesting also, thinking of going to a seminar.


-soul

usually when you look at how people deal with anxiety, the first few stepps are lowering inflammatory lifestyle choices (ofc...) so stuff like smoking etc

next up what ive seen was magnesium, which is a hit or miss but it can do wonders to people with anxiety

i love that you meditate, good stuff also heard ashwaganda helps

good luck

Very easy to see women as a cure all, but then i have no doubt that it would help.
But is that really so surprising? Of course does a healthy lifestyle that needs bodily and emotional needs help. In some people, there is a tendency to underestimate the influence of life circumstances or "The trip at large". It is not always you who is causing things as everything is interconnected and some people just had to live without things others take for granted and build their life around it.

Plainly spoken: How can someone expect a lonely guy without much friends leave alone a romantic partner to be happy socially and without anxiety?

For me its not so much people themselves, but being looked at in a judging, hateful, rejecting way. But how much has that to do with refusal of looking at oneself? All the distraction, dishonesty, the hurt.

I recently remembered one thing:

That we can all tap into "perfect" versions of ourselves..like, remove the hurt parts and look at us then ...how do we feel as this sort of improved Version that lived an alternative life? How do we even look? Then, maybe, project that outwards in serotonin based reality. Like..feeling that Version of ourselves, even the feeling of wearing a different , more handsome face and body because that's how you see yourself bring love into this world...

Some sort of positive body dismorphia created deliberatly.

Glad to hear your story soul-explorer.

Yeah, the coming back is often really coming back, but in the mean time the situation has been bend flexible, loosened, the knot has been opened (partly?), the state of no-problem has been reached, and then ..... coming back.

This movement of in-and-out potentially loosen up stagnation. As soon as one can experience ones selves differently (be that with help), it opens perspectives that one is, after all, not rigid and not doomed in one state forever. The ability to movement has shown that the prison door was/is actually open all the time but for some reason that prison was "home" for so long, making up for the very (and often only) known territory and not easily traded away.

There's such a difference in not even knowing of another state of being, or having tasted them and knowing other states are around the corner. Accessibility of other states, first with psychedelics, then with life-style, it all has never been out of the question really but just been out of sight, perhaps.

Then there remain the potential discouragement that stuff-in-life is not really a rose garden and a slam back into the good ole known personality prison awaits, safe between the bars of self limitation. Back into the shell. For example: it needs one negative encounter with a partner to do that kind of stuff. I would suggest to expect the world as it is, not as a cure for your issue. I think if you reach out to the world, the social etc, in the expectation that it picks you up and put you together, hmmm, you'd be very lucky if so.
In the case it doesn't happen, in the case external world is not very supportive, or even turned out negative, then I would think: typically and fully expected, people are stagnated all the time. Just as I was (or still am, partly).

I tell things that have helped myself, so fwiw and ymmv.

Romance can very intense sometimes. There's fights, breakups, make-ups, etc. It can get pretty crazy. You probably know this, just want to mention it in case - so it doesn't catch you by surprise. People can act irrationally and very oddly in romance.
I think it's a good idea to explore romance as part of being human, just remember that you may be in for an emotional ride
Best of luck to you.