50 Social Anxiety Quotes To Manage Fear and Worry

Increase your empathy and awareness with these social anxiety quotes.

Social anxiety impacts the lives of over 7 percent of the United States population.

That is roughly 15 million people. We have all experienced feeling shy before.

Being shy is short-termed and does not disrupt a person’s life.

Tell us which social anxiety quote most resonated with you in the comment section below.

What are the benefits of reading these social anxiety quotes?

Social anxiety is different because it is persistent and can debilitate us, making everyday activities like work or school very challenging.

Social anxiety disorder is a type of anxiety disorder that causes extreme fear in social settings.

Those affected have:

• trouble talking to or meeting new people
• fear that other people are judging or scrutinizing them
• lower self-esteem

It is not a one-and-done disorder.

Everyone’s anxiety can manifest in different ways.

Symptoms of social anxiety may not occur in all situations.

You can have limited or selective anxiety.

This condition makes developing close relationships with others outside of their family difficult.

Short social anxiety quotes 

1. “Act the way that you want to feel.” — Gretchen Rubin

2. “I’m not anti-social. I’m just not social.” — Woody Allen

3. “Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action.” — Walter Anderson

4. “Everything you have ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear.” — George Addair

5. “Anxiety is good for nothing if we can’t turn it into a defense.” — Samuel Rush Meyrick

6. “What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.” — Martha Graham

7. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” — Les Brown

8. “I think one thing that does cause unhappiness is protracted anxiety and worry.” — Derek Bok

9. “Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” — Albert Camus

10. “Now that I have conquered social anxiety disorder, I find pleasure in fans approaching me.” — Ricky Williams

Social anxiety quotes about coping and having hope

11. “It’s okay if they don’t understand.” — Kelly Jean, How to Explain Social Anxiety

12. “Never fear shadows. They simply mean there’s a light shining somewhere nearby.” — Ruth E. Renkel

13. “Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.” — Madeleine L’Engle

14. “You’re not going to master the rest of your life in one day. Just relax. Master the day. Then just keep doing that every day.” — Unknown

15. “The constant vigilance and my heightened anxiety that I’d screw it up anyway exhausted me, but I persevered.” — Tracey Garvis Graves

16. “Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside of you that is greater than any obstacle.” — Christian D. Larson

17. “One way to handle social anxiety is to pretend you are a ghost and people are staring at you because they have a gift they never asked for.” — Aparna Nancherla

18. “Slow breathing is like an anchor in the midst of an emotional storm: the anchor won’t make the storm goes away, but it will hold you steady until it passes.” — Russ Harris

19. “Instead of telling your loved one to do something social and getting frustrated when they can’t, try and bring more positive vibes to the table.” — Kelly Jean, 6 Simple Ways to Help Someone With Social Anxiety

20. “Some days, doing ‘the best we can’ may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect—on any front—and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.” — Fred Rogers

Social anxiety disorder quotes

21. “To suffer some anxiety, some depression, some disappointment, even some failure is normal.” — Boyd K. Packer

22. “Social anxiety tries to protect us from rejection.” — Fallon Goodman, Social Anxiety in the Modern World, Tedx

23. “The impact of social anxiety disorder on quality of life is enormous.” — James Jefferson, Social Anxiety Disorder

24. “Social anxiety has this twisted way of poisoning your mind, making you believe terrible things that aren’t true.” — Kelly Jean, Anxious Lass

25. “The real tragedy of social anxiety is that it robs individuals of their greatest resource: other people.” — Fallon Goodman, Social Anxiety in the Modern World, Tedx

26. “Lying because of social anxiety leaves us in a vicious cycle of trying to protect ourselves but continuing the negative thought patterns.” — Kelly Jean, Lying Because of Social Anxiety

27. “People with social anxiety are not devoid of the basic desire for human connection; they just have trouble obtaining it in certain situations.” — Fallon Goodman, Social Anxiety in the Modern World, Tedx

28. “People with social anxiety disorder generally avoid social and performance situations whenever possible or endure them with considerable distress.” — James Jefferson, Social Anxiety Disorder

29. “Anxiety was born at the very same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, we will have to learn to live with it—just as we have learned to live with storms.” — Paulo Coelho

30. “It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame, and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.” — Stephen Fry

Wise words about social anxiety disorder and mental health

31. “Breathe, darling. This is just a chapter. It’s not your whole story.” — S.C. Lourie

32. “You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control, anyway.” — Steve Maraboli

33. “People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.” — Epictetus, Greek Stoic Philosopher

34. “You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.” — Olin Miller

35. “Don’t believe every worried thought you have. Worried thoughts are notoriously inaccurate.” — Renee Jain

36. “Nothing so much prevents our being natural as our desire to seem so.” — François de La Rochefoucauld, French Author

37. “Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state.” — Natalie Goldberg

38. “If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.” — Dale Carnegie

39. “It’s okay to feel unstable. It’s ok to disassociate. It’s okay to hide from the world. It’s ok to need help. It’s okay not to be okay. Your mental illness is not a personal failure.” — Unknown

40. “Your mental health is more important than the test, the interview, the lunch date, the meeting, the family dinner, the soccer game, the recital, and the grocery run. Take care of yourself.” — Naked With Anxiety

Social anxiety quotes about struggles, trials, and tribulations

41. “You have dug your soul out of the dark, you have fought to be here; do not go back to what buried you.” — Bianca Sparacino

42. “Don’t let your difficulties fill you with anxiety, after all, it is only in the darkest nights that stars shine more brightly.” — Anonymous

43. “Everyone faces challenges in life. It’s a matter of how you learn to overcome them and use them to your advantage.” — Celestine Chua

44. “You are not weak. People like us, we’re brave. We’re the ones who get up and face our worst fears every day. We keep fighting.” — Jen Wilde

45. “Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future.” — Deepak Chopra

46. “Sometimes the bad things that happen in our lives put us directly on the path to the most wonderful things that will ever happen to us.” — Nicole Reed

47. “Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.” — Mary Tyler Moore

48. “Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven’t half the strength you think they have.” — Norman Vincent Peale

49. “Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy at the moment.” — J. Donald Walters

50. “At the end of the day, tell yourself gently: I love you, you did the best you could today, and even if you didn’t accomplish all you had planned, I love you anyway.” — Anonymous

What did you think of these social anxiety quotes?

Fear and stress are at the root of most of our anxieties.

As a middle school teacher, I always see social anxiety.

Young people usually develop the symptoms of social anxiety as early as 13 years old.

Physical symptoms include blushing, nausea, excessive sweating, nervous trembling, difficulty speaking, or even rapid heart rate.

Some people have a difficult time because they are worrying intensely about social situations.

Others may fret about embarrassing themselves in front of others.

For others, something like asking someone a question can cause worry.

It is normal to feel anxious sometimes.

It is part of our growth process.

However, those who experience social phobia constantly fear being judged by others or humiliated in front of them.

If left unchecked, these experiences can lead to a person who attempts to avoid all social situations.

How do you deal with social anxiety?

Let us know in the comments.