Well, altough its not my section, I try to give an answer due to my recent progress regarding this very subject.
First of all, what do you fear about the situations you described? Think about if for a second now and then read on.
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I discovered the last week that I feared almost every social situation, everything that I don't want to happen to me because of the negative emotions (tension in the chest/stomach) that come up in those situations. so its not the situation that makes you feel bad but the emotional charge you put on it. And the emotions you get then aren't bad themselves but they're only as bad as you give them the meaning of "bad".
They're just emotions. Take a minute, let such an emotion come up and OBSERVE it from a rational point of view.
You'll see that its there and feels somehow but its not more than that. Don't consider your emotions as an enemy or as something you want to get rid off as fast as possible. I did this mistake for the last year! So I recommend to practice observing your emotions (I'm in that process too at the moment). If you just observe your emotions, you accept them.
Another thing you should do is exploring the beliefs that lie beneath those emotions. But don't beat yourself up if you think you can't find the answers right now. Digging into your belief-system alone has a releasing effect since you gain awareness about stuff thats absolutely irrational. This brings us to another thing that helped me a lot in the last week: Look at things
from a rational way, especially your emotions! If you see that there's absolutely no rational reason why you be unhappy in certain situations, you won't identify with the emotions anymore (or it will decrease at least).
Questions to dig:
http://www.behappylifecoach.com/change- ... on-method/
And one last very important thing. Before the last week I thought that there are only two possible ways of being: 1. Having no negative emotions and being happy, and 2. Having negative emotions and being unhappy. I didn't get that there is another, the REAL possibility: 3.
Being ok with having or not having those emotions. In other words: Indifference, Indepedence, Acceptance.
I basically wanted to get indifferent but was in a paradigm where indifference didn't even exist! I see you want to get rid of your "negative" emotions as I did and you think you'll be happy then. Its not about having no emotions,
its about knowing how to deal with your emotions so that they don't have power over you. You can't switch off your emotions. And yeah, if you start to observe and accept your emotions, most of them and the beliefs beneath them will disappear. As Kidd says: If you can't change something, accept it. You can't change your emotions/beliefs from one second to the other, so accept them for what they are, just emotions. And something you accept doesn't bother you anymore!