Social Anxiety
Social anxiety or social phobia is an anxiety disorder that manifests as a fear of negative evaluation by others.
While it is typical to feel nervous in certain situations, such as a job interview or a dinner with your partner’s parents, people with social phobia experience intense anxiety in everyday situations. These symptoms may be so severe that they hinder a person’s daily life like relationships, daily routines, work, school or other activities. This disorder typically begins in the early to mid-teens, though it can sometimes start in younger children or in adults.
Typical signs and symptoms of social anxiety disorder can include:
- Fear of situations in which you may be judged negatively
- Worry about embarrassing or humiliating yourself
- Intense fear of interacting or talking with strangers
- Fear that others will notice that you look anxious
- Fear of physical symptoms that may cause you embarrassment, such as blushing, sweating, trembling or having a shaky voice
- Avoidance of doing things or speaking to people out of fear of embarrassment
- Avoidance of situations where you might be the center of attention
- Anxiety in anticipation of a feared activity or event
- Intense fear or anxiety during social situations
- Ruminating about your performance and interactions after a social situation.
The NICE guidelines recommend Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as the evidence based treatment for Social Anxiety.
Lots of Psychotherapists have completed some brief CBT training and claim to be CBT Therapists but it’s important that you find a Therapist who is fully trained in CBT.
An experienced CBT Therapist will be able to assess your Social Anxiety and help you to overcome it. The good news is that in CBT we have a very good understanding of the factors that lead to the development of this condition as well as the factors (cognitions or thoughts and behaviours) that keep it going. The therapist will help you to identify your negative predictions (e.g people will think I’m weird, weak, or boring) and the safety behaviours and avoidant behaviours you engage in to try to stop those predictions coming true (e.g drinking alcohol in social situations to relax, rehearsing what you’re going to say in your head before saying it, staying quiet or in the edge of the group or asking lots of questions instead of talking about yourself to deflect attention away from you).
They will also teach you about Attention Training to help you to focus your attention outwardly rather than focusing your attention on yourself. It is well understood that self-focus of attention is one of the key maintaining factors in Social Anxiety. The therapist will then help you to carry out so called Behavioural Experiments to test out your predictions while dropping your safety behaviours. E.g. They might ask you to go into a social situation that you would typically avoid and talk about yourself instead of asking questions. They’ll also ask you to focus your attention on the other person/people instead of on yourself and to then rate your anxiety in contrast to when you use safety behaviours and are self-focused. This is a very succinct summary and it might not make total sense to you but that’s why it’s helpful to be guided by a therapist through the process.
At The Meyer Therapy Practice we specialise in CBT Therapy. We offer a free confidential phone consultation with one of the Clinical Directors and we then match you with one of our specialists in Social Anxiety treatment. Please contact us if you’d like to explore this option.
