What Is Social Trust?

In the social context, self-confidence is a treasured treasure. In this sense, there is a lot of information, and of good quality, on how to increase self-esteem in order to have greater personal growth. In addition to the trust we have (or don’t have) in ourselves, there is also social trust, which is no less important but which has always received far less attention. Thus, the volume of literature devoted to her is significantly smaller.

Why is social trust so important? Firstly, because it greatly influences the way we behave in the social environment. It makes us bolder, more open and makes us look for more opportunities.

We cannot forget that we are social animals, part of an environment that can make us stronger or weaker. In this sense, having good social confidence will help to avoid problems such as social anxiety, fear of the unknown or jealousy in romantic relationships.

Social trust and social phobia

Social phobia stems from a sense of understanding social contact as a potential threat. This may be due to an episode in the past, which causes a distrust of others to develop within us.

Generally, social phobia acts as a shield to avoid possible dangerous situations produced or generated through contact with others.

Furthermore, this fear can be extended to many situations, giving rise to a generalized fear and an inability to behave naturally when relating to other people. This can happen to friends, family or strangers.

This fear of social relationships prevents us from having an enriching social life, so we must learn to use social trust as a support to overcome fear.

What usually happens in social phobia

To more accurately illustrate social phobia disorder, the following are some of the symptoms that people with this problem experience:

• Fear of being the focus of someone’s attention
• Constant feeling that everyone is watching us and silently judging us
• Fear that someone introduces us in a conversation
• Fear of public speaking, including in small groups of friends
• Fear of eating in front of other people
• Take charge of important tasks in a meeting or organizing any event so you don’t have time to interact
• Fear of intervening in a conversation because I think our ideas and arguments might seem ridiculous

• Fears of small, closed spaces where there are lots of people
• Constant need to think long and hard about everything we’re going to say
• recurrent self-critical thoughts

Definitely, all these aspects of social phobia give rise to different strategies to avoid prolonged contact with other people. In addition, all the symptoms listed above cause the phobia to grow even further. For example, going up the stairs to avoid getting someone into the elevator will only increase this fear – in addition to reinforcing avoidance behavior.

Strategies to increase our social confidence

As we mentioned earlier, social trust will be the appropriate tool with which we can fight social phobia. Furthermore, it will allow us to establish healthier relationships and make it possible to enjoy our social life.

Therefore, we share below some techniques that allow you to cultivate and reinforce this interesting quality:

• Caring to learn more about our friends and family
• Showing ourselves the way we are, with our own personality and lowering the level of concern about what others might be thinking about us
• Defending our own ideas and opinions
• Research current trends such as music, art, sport or fashion. This will allow us to break the silence that arises in some cases and that is so feared when our social confidence is low
• Commit to activities that are different from each other, such as meetings and events in our community, work parties and gatherings of school friends
• Looking into the eyes of the interlocutors when speaking in public. In addition, we must speak in a calm and leisurely manner, taking all the time we need, especially if it is an informal conversation between friends

• When we have to face a presentation in public, rehearse as much as necessary. A good piece of advice in this regard might be to record a video to see what we can improve and analyze whether we are talking too quickly or not very clearly

With these strategies, we will be able to improve, little by little, our social confidence. In this way, the different aspects related to social phobia will diminish, leaving us free to take advantage of a more active and healthier social life, in which we can show our true personality.