In its early stages, social anxiety can simply be everyday shyness.
Shyness, of course, is quite common and does not have to be dealt with if the person suffering from the condition does not plan on working in the field that requires a bold and/or outgoing personality.
On the other hand, this shyness can lead to a more severe form of social anxiety which prevents the sufferer from living a normal life.
When carried to an extreme, a socially anxious person will avoid other people at all cost.
This means he or she will actually be afraid of having a relationship or even a friendship with another person.
A socially anxious person will even avoid shopping because this usually requires an interaction with another individual.
It is also thought that social anxiety can lead to agoraphobia.
Agoraphobia is a condition where the sufferer is afraid to leave the comfort and safety of his or her own home.
Such people tend to remain locked up at home and are commonly referred to as recluses or hermits.
Of course, social anxiety does not always lead to agoraphobia.
The reason for this is, agoraphobia usually is born of an extreme fear of the outside world.
This fear is spurred on by the fact that such a person is suffering from panic anxiety disorder.
In other words, he or she is suffering from panic attack syndrome and sees the preventing of visiting certain places as a means by which he or she can prevent panic attacks.
Oddly enough, for many people this seems to work.
In other words, as long as they are held up in their own home they do not experience panic; at least to the degree where it disables them and to the point where they suffer these attacks frequently.
Their fear is that should they leave their home, they will have a an attack immediately, or at least visiting a certain venue will bring one on.
Of course, having this attitude will ensure such a person will indeed suffer a panic attack as soon as he or she leaves the home.
Still, the way to overcoming agoraphobia is not to try to make a person friendlier toward others because panic attack sufferers are not always socially anxious.
Usually, agoraphobia is the result of panic attack syndrome.
Therefore, curing this will go a long way toward curing agoraphobia.
In some cases the sufferer of this illness will need to be helped in becoming comfortable with the outside world.
However, if panic attacks are no longer disrupting this person's life, becoming free of the agoraphobia will be much less of a challenge.
Still, the treatment of agoraphobia will be the same whether or not the sufferer also suffered from social anxiety before the agoraphobia came on.