When an individual is extremely self conscious and also has extreme amounts of anxiety regarding social situations, it is called social anxiety. It is also referred to as social phobia and is a disorder. These people constantly have the fear of being judged, watched or criticized. These people have such a great amount of fear that it does interfere with life at school, work, and any kind of social activity or even with everyday life. Most of these people do realize that the fear is something that is not really needed but are still not bale to stop it.

Social phobia is also one form of phobia. A few people feel scared to drink or even eat in front of other people. Some of them do not speak in front of other people also. Some of the cases may be so severe that the person is scared to speak to another person. Physical symptoms develop in many of the cases of social phobia. They include blushing, sweating, talking with difficulty, palpitations, trembling, discomfort in the stomach and many more. It makes it very simple if they deal with these problems instead of worrying more about it.

Social phobia may be caused due to many a reason. In may be because of the fact that it runs in the family. Therefore, the children get the same problems from their parents. It may also be due to alcohol dependence or due to depression. In women social depression occurs two times as much as men for reasons which we do not know. It may start at childhood or even at adolescence. It seldom begins at 25 years of age. Researches have been going on in this field to learn all the problems that are causing social phobia.

Some of the researchers have been blaming the cause if these symptoms on a small structure present in the brain which is called amygdale. Our sense of fear is what is controlled by this amygdale. Another group of scientists believe that this social phobia is passed down from generation to generation. Yet another group of researchers say that the cause of this social phobia is due to a sensitivity that is very high to disapproval, it may also be based on physiological reasons or on hormones.

The environment may be yet another reason for the cause of social phobia according to a few researchers. This may be due to something that happened to someone else in the same situation. It is called observational learning. This in other words is learning to behave based on others around you.