How can Social Anxiety Treatment in California help me? (Part 2)
You’re probably here because you’re tired of being anxious in social situations. It’s getting in the way of your life. You suspect your symptoms to be related to Social Anxiety Disorder (also known as Social Phobia) and you’re wondering how a Social Anxiety Therapist in California could help. Many of my clients have benefited from Social Anxiety treatment and below are some skills that they’ve learned in therapy. You can learn how to apply these in your life as well.
If you missed Part 1, check out some of the other skills you can learn in Social Anxiety Treatment here.
Social Anxiety Treatment in California can help you:
Step out of your comfort zone and engage in things you value
In Part 1, I discussed how Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for social anxiety can be beneficial. I focused primarily on how reframing thoughts (the ‘C’ in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) can lead to behavioral changes. It works the other way too. Initiating behavioral changes (the ‘B’ in CBT) can lead to modification of unhelpful thinking patterns. Engaging in different behaviors reinforces new and more accurate conclusions about ourselves and our feared situations. This is where stepping out of our comfort zone comes into play.
An integral part of CBT for social anxiety is gradually exposing yourself to feared situations.
As a Social Anxiety Therapist in California, I often have clients start in a safe and controlled environment (i.e., a therapy session) before moving on to public spaces or trying it out in real life. You will likely learn two things as you repeatedly engage in new behaviors. The first is that the feared consequence was probably not as catastrophic as social anxiety convinced you. The second is that you were more capable of handling the scary situation than your social anxiety led you to believe.
Let’s look at an example of CBT for social anxiety with an emphasis on the ‘B’.
Let’s say you’re very anxious in work team meetings, and the constant fear of being judged prevents you from sharing your ideas or providing feedback. You want to change this because speaking up could help your career growth. This goal is in line with your values. But the belief “People are going to think my ideas are stupid. It’ll be humiliating” keeps you stuck. Normally, you buy into this belief. And as a result, you stay quiet and keep your ideas and opinions to yourself. You do this at every meeting and reinforce this belief each time. Changing your behavior (as scary as it is) creates an opportunity. This is an opportunity to see if what your mind is telling you is accurate. Think of this like a ‘behavioral experiment’. Your mind theorizes something, and now you will test this hypothesis.
You’ve practiced and done some role-playing with your Social Anxiety Therapist in session. Now you will share one idea in your next team meeting. You might learn that some of your colleagues are receptive to the idea, even though not everyone is on board. Perhaps this leads to an interesting group discussion that wouldn’t have otherwise taken place. Maybe your manager thanks you for sharing this idea, and there is no humiliation. Maybe you experience physical discomfort in your body, or your voice cracks once or twice. But the moment passes and you survive it. As you reflect on the outcome of your behavioral experiment, you learn that the initial thought of “People are going to think my ideas are stupid. It’ll be humiliating” wasn’t completely accurate. A more realistic reframe might be, “People might have varying opinions about my ideas and that’s ok. Sharing them can still provide value. I can handle discomfort. Not everything will lead to humiliation.”
Establishing values-based goals is important.
When pushing out of your comfort zone and doing hard things, having internal motivation can be a driving force. That internal motivation often comes from knowing there is something worthwhile on the other side. Maybe that’s meeting new people, going on dates, engaging in a new hobby, or just feeling more confident. A Social Anxiety Therapist in California can help you develop social anxiety exposure exercises that align with what’s meaningful and important to you, like in the example above. This makes confronting your fears much more rewarding and gets you closer to your goals.
Learn mindfulness skills
Let’s face it: it’s not easy dealing with discomfort. At some point, we have all pushed away uncomfortable thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. We use distraction, avoidance, and other ways to escape.
We can get into a heavy battle trying to make discomfort go away.
And on the other side of the spectrum, we seek out and elicit pleasure. Emotions like joy, excitement, and confidence are ones we welcome. Emotions like anxiety, guilt, and anger get the front door shut on them. This leads to a push-and-pull relationship with our emotions. It can also cause our experiences to be more magnified and challenging to cope with. If you are anxious and working so hard to figure out why and how to get rid of the anxiety, you are probably intensifying it in the process. You are likely adding layers of frustration, hopelessness, and more.
Mindfulness skills can be helpful with this.
Changing how you relate to difficult thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations can create flexibility. Accepting a challenging emotion, without judgment, can lead to a healthier emotional response. By accepting, you are choosing not to fight its existence. And you are less likely to turn that existing emotional pain into suffering. A Social Anxiety Therapist in California can help you develop a more mindful and accepting stance. Practicing mindfulness skills, like acknowledgment without judgment, can increase the ease of navigating emotional challenges without feeling like a hostage to them. And that will increase the likelihood of living a more fulfilling life.
Acknowledging without judgment is also the first step in building self-compassion.
Self-compassion is also known as kindness towards oneself. Therapy and personal growth can be hard! It takes a lot of work to change patterns and do things differently. Social interactions don’t always go as we hope, and that could bring up some difficult feelings. Developing a stance of curiosity, rather than self-criticism, can decrease the likelihood of getting caught in shame spirals. Self-compassion is integral in lifting oneself even in the most challenging parts of Social Anxiety Treatment.
Develop social skills and self-confidence
We know that social anxiety can cause avoidance of feared social situations. Avoiding feared social situations leads to fewer opportunities and experiences to develop social skills. Underdeveloped social skills lead to feelings of self-doubt and reinforcement of beliefs like, “I’m so bad at socializing.” These feelings and beliefs lead to more anxiety and avoidance of feared social situations. And there you go, a feedback loop is created and reinforced.
But there is a way to break from this social anxiety feedback loop!
As a Social Anxiety Therapist in California, I often help clients learn social skills like how to:
Initiate conversations
Improve engagement and active listening (focus more on what others are saying in interactions)
Make eye contact
Improve non-verbal communication (the use of body language and gestures during interactions)
Be more assertive (communicating thoughts and needs firmly, directly, and kindly)
As clients begin to practice social skills in session, it starts to feel easier and more natural. That eventually builds enough confidence to apply it in the real world.
Rely on yourself rather than safety behaviors
When there is anxiety, there are generally safety behaviors at play as well. Safety behaviors are things you do to reduce anxiety and provide a sense of safety. They are not necessarily things you want to do, they are things you believe you need to do to get through a feared situation. Safety behaviors can be anything from bringing a ‘safe’ person to accompany you to social events, hanging out by the exit for an easy escape, and over-rehearsing before a social interaction. The problem with safety behaviors is that when you engage in them too much, you can over-rely on them. They can be time-consuming and get in the way of things you want to do if you cannot perform the behavior. They can cause you to be less engaged in social interactions. They also reinforce the belief that social situations are something to fear and that you can’t handle. A Social Anxiety Therapist in California can help you develop trust in yourself so you do not have to rely on safety behaviors.
And there you have it, 4 more ways that Social Anxiety Treatment can help! Check out other skills you can learn in How can Social Anxiety Treatment in California help me? (Part 1).
Looking for a Social Anxiety Therapist in Los Angeles? I’d love to help.
I offer online OCD and Anxiety therapy to adults anywhere in California and New York. My services include:
Learn more about me as an Anxiety and OCD therapist! If you’re ready to schedule your complimentary intro call, connect below.
