Can social anxiety be remedied by improving your physical image or social standing?

By "social anxiety," I mean an inability to function well in social situations because you are worried about what others think; for example, fear of going to a "pool party" because you feel that you will be ridiculed in regards to how you look. It can also be as simple as being very introverted and isolated (by your own doing) in a party or social setting, even though there are people who are trying to socialize with you.





By "physical image," I mean losing weight and/or building muscle, thereby having the "Hollywood" image that society idolizes.





By "social standing," I mean having the highest (or higher than average) grades if you are a student, being a doctor/lawyer/highly respected professional, rising in rank in the workplace, having a bigger house than the Smiths, driving a Mercedes, etc.





To reword the question, would achieving these things make a person more sociable and more of an extrovert? Or, are they just masking an underlying, more fundamental problem?

Can social anxiety be remedied by improving your physical image or social standing?
No.


Anxiety like this is due to one's self-evaluation in comparison to the people around them. Improving one's physical appearance or social standing simply places the anxious person into a new social backdrop, essentially just raising the standard that the anxious person feels they must meet.





The only real remedy for this kind of social anxiety is to learn to discern between realistic self-evaluations and unrealistic self-evaluations. Everyone compares themself to other people, but when it gets to the point of anxiety, the act of comparison becomes pathological. Emotionally healthy people will be able to compare themselves to other people without giving into feelings of inferiority.





In short, if someone feels inferior to other people on a consistent basis, the solution is not going to be alter oneself to meet the standards of other people, but rather to become more dismissive of others' standards; that is, to not allow one's perceptions of others' beauty or status to affect one negatively. "Achieving" beauty or "achieving" status is really just a temporary fix.
Reply:its all self image.....nobody can love you until you love yourself!
Reply:yes. you are correct. Achieving these things can help make a person be more sociable and extraverted if it helps them feel more confident and good about themselves.