How can Social Anxiety Treatment in California help me? (Part 1)
We humans are by nature social creatures. Even our ancestors needed to rely on one another for survival. So how do you cope with the constant fear of being judged that social anxiety can bring? How do you improve your ability to connect, when it feels so dreadful? If you’re considering therapy for social anxiety but feel unsure of how it could help, you’re in the right place. I am an online Social Anxiety Therapist in California, and many of my therapy clients have benefitted from the skills below. Learn more about the symptoms of Social Anxiety Disorder (also known as Social Phobia) here.
Social Anxiety Treatment in California can help you:
Learn new thinking skills with CBT for Social Anxiety
Our thoughts play a big role in how we interpret situations and how we feel. Our feelings then influence how we behave towards these situations. Our behaviors impact our future thinking, and we are back full circle in this cycle of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Sometimes we get stuck in unhelpful thinking that leads to intense emotions and behaviors that become problematic in our lives. We may not always recognize these thinking patterns when they occur, as they are often reinforced outside our awareness.
Some common thought patterns seen with social anxiety include:
Mind-reading (“They must think I’m boring”)
Catastrophic thinking (“I’m going to make such a fool of myself and become an outcast without any friends.”)
Overgeneralization (“I always say the weirdest things”)
Discounting the positive (“The night went mostly well but I can’t stop focusing on that one awkward moment.”)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment approach for social anxiety.
A Social Anxiety Therapist in California can help you identify thought patterns keeping you stuck in this anxiety cycle. You'll learn to notice and interrupt your thinking when it's not helpful. By doing so, you can then challenge it and develop more helpful reframes and more realistic perspectives. An important component of CBT for social anxiety is engaging in exposure exercises. These exposure exercises encourage learning through behavioral changes. Changing behavior provides opportunities to disprove inaccurate thinking and reinforce more adaptive thinking. With practice, you will strengthen and reinforce these new ways of thinking and weaken the old ways. As a result, the social situations that felt hard to confront may begin to feel more manageable.
Let’s look at an example of how CBT for social anxiety can help.
Has your mind ever said, “I’m not going to know what to say. It’s going to be so awkward”? Many with social anxiety have this thought come up often. If you buy into this thought, you will likely feel anxious and you might engage in behaviors like avoiding social interactions. A more helpful reframe might be, “I’ve had some awkward interactions in the past, and I’ve also had interactions that weren't. I can’t predict how this one will go, but I'll get through it like I have in the past.” You might still feel some anxiety, which is OK and perfectly normal. But this reframe reminds you that it hasn't always been this way and that it’s not helpful to overgeneralize and take this thought as an immediate fact. You might then decide to give this social interaction a try.
By giving the social interaction a try and confronting it, you might learn a few things. Maybe the interaction went better than expected. Maybe you cracked a joke that was met with a laugh. Maybe some awkward moments did come up, but they weren’t as terrible as your mind had predicted. That new thought didn't intensify the anxiety and helped you feel more courageous. This increased your willingness to participate in something you would’ve normally avoided. You then had the opportunity to disprove the original thought of “I’m not going to know what to say. It’s going to be so awkward”. The more experiences you have like this one, the more you weaken the social anxiety cycle and reinforce more realistic beliefs.
Interrupt mental ruminations
Mental ruminations are loops of thinking that keep you stuck and tend to increase your anxiety. I like to call this “hamster wheel” thinking. You’re working hard and using mental energy, but it’s not taking you anywhere. Rumination is not problem-solving because the same thoughts tend to be replayed in circles. You're not gaining any resolution and they don’t offer new insights.
If you have social anxiety, there's a chance that you ruminate before and after social situations.
Before a social situation, you might find yourself mentally planning for all the things that could go wrong, how you will prevent embarrassing outcomes from occurring, or overanalyzing what you will say. This tends to magnify the anticipatory anxiety even before the social situation takes place. So while it may feel like productive planning and preparation, it’s none of that. We cannot possibly control or plan for every single potential outcome. After a social situation, you might find yourself thinking about the things that went wrong, your perceived mistakes, what others might be thinking, and future hypothetical situations. This can cause emotional distress, as there is often self-judgment and criticism that also takes place.
A Social Anxiety Therapist in California can help with rumination challenges.
Learning your triggers can aid in interrupting ruminations and preventing them. As mentioned above, CBT strategies can help develop adaptive reframes with your thoughts. Mindfulness skills can help you take an observer role with your thoughts. You can learn to not get caught up in judgmental evaluations and return to the present moment. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can be helpful with cognitive defusion strategies. You can learn to become less intertwined with your thoughts, create distance from them, and relate to them differently.
Create a balance between inward and outward attention
Individuals with social anxiety tend to direct their attention towards themselves. This is known as inward or self-focused attention. The fear of being judged or negatively evaluated can be intense. Inward attention is used to try and control appearance and behaviors that could lead to embarrassing outcomes.
Some examples of inward focus include:
Getting caught up in your thoughts and figuring out what others might be thinking or how you appear to them (Do they notice my voice quivering? Am I dressed ok? Hide your shaky hands!)
Monitoring everything you say and how you’re saying it (Is that an ok thing to say? Should I say it in a different tone? Just nod your head and smile, don’t say anything weird!)
Being hyperaware of what you’re doing with your body (What do I do with my hands? Am I fidgeting too much? Do I look distracted? Am I smiling enough? Stop biting your lip and make eye contact!)
Monitoring your physical sensations (Is my face turning red? I can feel myself getting hot. Oh gosh, how red am I? Am I sweating too much?)
Inward focus gives the false impression that you’re preparing for perceived socially threatening situations.
But it generally has the opposite effect. It keeps you preoccupied in your mind, increases self-consciousness, and magnifies your anxiety. You become less attentive and engaged, which ironically, increases the likelihood of appearing socially awkward (the very thing you were trying to prevent in the first place.)
Social Anxiety Treatment in California can teach you how to direct your attention to outward/external experiences.
For example, focusing more on what the other person is saying, what the other person looks like, and how the other person’s voice sounds. Widening your focus also includes paying more attention to what is happening around you and your environment. This outward focus will help you be more present, connected, and engaged in your social interactions. Being a more active listener can help the conversation flow more naturally. You might come up with more genuine responses, which can boost your social and conversational skills. Outward focus means less opportunity to get entangled in your self-judgment, which will help boost your confidence and keep anxiety at bay. With ongoing practice, social interactions won’t feel so threatening. A Social Anxiety Therapist in California can help you practice these skills in session before moving on to practicing with others in your day-to-day life.
