Grace Tworek is a clinical psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic who is passionate about helping people who have autoimmune disorders. She shares strategies for overcoming anxiety and embarrassment related to entering social settings with visible myasthenia gravis symptoms.

When engaging socially while having visible symptoms, people may experience a level of worry, stress, or even thoughts surrounding how they might be perceived by others. To assist in managing this, stress management skills can be really, really beneficial.

So when we experience or anticipate stress surrounding a specific event, our body responds to this by engaging our autonomic nervous system — so what we often refer to as our “fight or flight.”

This can cause feelings of overwhelm, sweating, increased heart rate, and feeling on edge in general, which can make it more difficult to interact or approach an interaction feeling confident. Stress management skills can help us to shut off the stress response, so increasing our feeling of calm, reducing heart rate, and boosting overall confidence.

Stress management skills can include deep breathing exercises, meditations, guided imagery, and mindfulness. Engaging in these sorts of exercise regularly can assist in managing stressors and decrease our time spent in fight or flight, increasing satisfaction with your social interactions.