Case Study 7: A 35-year-old clothing salesman was showing a particularly fussy customer a suit 2 months ago and suddenly began to sweat profusely. His heart started to pound, he felt dizzy, and became fearful that he was about to die. The customer didn’t notice his condition and continued to question him about the suit in minute detail. The patient, feeling faint, abruptly left the customer and went to lie down in the back of the store. The customer became insulted, complained to the manager, and left. When the manager found the patient he was slumped in a chair in the back room trembling. Approximately 10 minutes later the patient’s symptoms began to subside. He saw his physician the next day who found no evidence of any medical problems. Two weeks later, he had another similar unexpected attack. Since that time he has worried continuously about having another attack. His friends and colleagues have noticed that he is no longer as spontaneous and outgoing as he had been in the past.
This patient has a condition of social phobia, which is unreasonable fear of exposure to social situations, such as having contact with strangers. This fear may affect the person's normal routine.
For therapy for this patient, he needs to be able to conquer his fear for turning others mad or frustrated. In order to do so, he should start with helping customers that have the same questions as the fussy man, but that are more calm. Once he is able to be able to answer correctly and help these people, it is only a matter of changing the types of people he attends to. He should gradually start helping more aggitated people, even if it is manipulated, in order to get rid of his social anxiety.
I colclude that this man is suffering from social anxiety for many reasons. First of all, he has an anxiety attack because of contact with a person and a situation rather than an object. Second of all, supporting evidence shows that this may alter his normal routine, which his friends said have changed since he has had these attacks. The customer he was attending to was very fussy, and didn't recognize the mans problems, which shows that he only cares about his suit. He persists to ask very minute and specific questions that a salesperson might have a hard time answering. Out of his fear of not satisfying the customer, the salesperson became anxious and thus is suffering from social anxiety.
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6 comments:
weird disorder. it's also strange that there was a 2-week span between attacks and that it didn't occur again with other potential customers in that 2-week span.
Interesting disorder. You were very in depth with your diagnosis and treatment; I liked it a lot.
It's an interesting disorder because it's hard to imagine a person with social phobia. I wonder if getting treatment might make the person anxious, too. Interesting blog!
Very interesting disorder and blog. Social phobia seems like a difficult disorder to diagnose and treat, but I feel that you've done a great job in doing so.
Great job with going into such detail in describing the salesman's disease and therapy! :-D
Wow. I've never heard of a disorder like that before. Nice job going into detail
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