What to do
Identify your goals
Goals will guide you as you work through your social anxiety, so a good place to start is to think about what matters to you. Identify areas of your social life that you want to improve, such as:
- finding a romantic partner;
- making more friends;
- speaking up more in group settings;
- being more assertive; or
- meeting new people.
Reminding yourself of your ‘why’ (your goals) helps you stay motivated and keep at it.
Break unhelpful thinking habits
Social anxiety tricks you into believing that certain situations cause anxiety, but in reality, your thoughts about the situations drive your anxiety. The next step is therefore to consider and challenge your fearful thoughts.
Imagine that you’re about to meet a co-worker for lunch:
Scenario 1. You think: ‘I’m eager to get to know them better!’ When you walk into the restaurant, you feel excited. You update each other on new happenings in your lives. You leave feeling grateful.
Scenario 2. You think: ‘I have nothing interesting to say.’ When you walk into the restaurant, you feel anxious. You hold back during the conversation. You leave feeling embarrassed.
In these scenarios, the situation (lunch with a co-worker) is identical, but your thoughts about the event drastically differ. These thoughts drive your behaviour (what you said during the conversation), and your feelings during and after.
When you’re struggling with social anxiety, your social outings tend to resemble Scenario 2. You might view social events as unequivocally awful (‘Nothing went right’) or view ambiguous situations as catastrophes (‘My classmates must hate me because they didn’t include me in a group chat’).
These negative thinking patterns can occur before, during and after social situations. Even if your negative thoughts are sometimes factually correct, playing them on repeat usually just amplifies your anxiety and keeps you stuck in a cycle of avoidance. Here’s how to break them:
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Describe a social situation in which you felt anxious. Be specific by detailing who, what, when and where, such as: Party with Sarah at Bentley’s Bar on Friday night. I am standing alone in the corner sipping my drink.
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Describe your negative thoughts. I’m going to make a fool of myself.
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Question the evidence. Be honest with yourself: what data supports or contradicts your negative thoughts? Tip: recalling how you navigated similar situations in the past helps you more objectively weigh the evidence of your current situation.
Evidence that supports the thought ‘I’m going to make a fool of myself’: People have made fun of me before. Or, When I’m nervous, I have a hard time expressing myself.
Evidence that contradicts the thought ‘I’m going to make a fool of myself’: I don’t know for sure if I will do something foolish because I don’t have a crystal ball. Anything could happen. Or: I’m in control of my actions. I can choose to say or do certain things that might land well. Or: I’ve handled similar social situations well in the past.
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Generate a balanced alternative. How else could you think about this situation? Come up with balanced thoughts that take into account the evidence you listed above and what you want to achieve from the situation. Tip: be realistic. The quickest way for this to fail is by lying to yourself. I might say something awkward, which would be really embarrassing. But even if I make a few awkward comments, I could also say something funny or interesting. It’s certainly possible that I make a complete fool of myself. If that happened, it would be painful, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. This one night doesn’t define who I am, and I’ll have other opportunities to make friends. Regardless, it’s not helpful to keep worrying about making a fool of myself – doing so will just keep me stuck in my head and make it harder to make friends tonight.
Level up your conversational skills
If you’re avoiding social interactions, your conversational skills might be a little rusty.
Levelling up your social skills is just as important as any other tactic for addressing your social anxiety because here’s the hard truth: social anxiety can actually increase the very thing you fear – rejection.
Imagine you’re on a date, and you’re worrying about the dreaded awkward silence. Before the date, you generate a list of conversation topics and rehearse some answers. When you get to the date, you’re trembling with fear about the conversation dying. You pepper your date with questions. They are speaking and then pause, and you jump in to squash the silence – and you accidentally interrupt them. You do this a few times. The conversation has a staccato flow.
Your date might misinterpret your behaviour and think that you want to dominate the conversation or feel like you don’t care what they have to say. Of course, these interpretations are not true, but your social anxiety is telling them otherwise.
Here’s how to improve three social skills that will help build your social confidence:
Starting conversations
Initiating a conversation shows someone you’re interested in them and what they have to say. But you might be worried that you don’t know what to say or how to say it. You can take the pressure off: there is no secret codeword to start a conversation.
Instead of perseverating on how to start a conversation, focus on why you are starting it. What are you hoping to gain from the conversation? From there, decide on your opening volley. It’s often easiest to keep it simple. Aim for areas of common ground, such as a recent cultural event, a shared experience, or, yes, the weather.
Reading the room
Knowing how to read the room will help you navigate all types of social situations, including knowing when and how to jump into a conversation.
For example, in Western cultures, eye contact generally conveys interest. Is someone gazing at you to show interest in what you’re saying, or are their eyes drifting to the surrounding environment (perhaps indicating boredom) or their watch (indicating they might want to wrap it up)? Similarly, an open body posture, warm smile or nodding head might indicate that they are interested in you or your conversation, whereas a closed-off stance or frown might indicate a lack of interest.
An important caveat here: people’s moods and interest are not always decipherable, and you don’t want to hyper-analyse a person’s every muscle movement. Rather, use a person’s body language as a general guide for determining whether you should initiate and continue a conversation or redirect your efforts elsewhere.
Asking good questions
Asking good questions is key to keeping the conversation going. Try the AAA method:
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Attend: aim to be an ‘active listener’ – what are the main topics the person is mentioning? Are there certain topics that they seem excited about or want input on?
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Answer: when they stop speaking, show them you were listening by responding to something they said. It is usually better to respond to a main point instead of a tangential detail, but don’t worry about picking the ‘correct’ thing to respond to (this doesn’t exist). Pick whatever feels easiest or most natural to you.
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Ask: follow up with a question to show that you want to learn more about them. The question could be a simple follow-up (‘What was your favourite part of your trip?’) or something more personal (‘How did you feel when they said that to you?’). The AAA method is one tool to ask good questions, but it is not meant to be formulaic. It doesn’t matter if you lose track of the conversation (some people like to ramble!). If you are caught up on remembering every word a person said, you’ll probably sound distracted or inauthentic when it’s your time to speak. The most rewarding conversations are usually those that flow naturally. The idea here is to do your best to listen and respond to the main gist of what someone is saying.
Exposure: do the things that scare you
Exposure involves intentionally and repeatedly engaging in the social situations that you fear. Think about exposures as behavioural experiments to test out whether your dreaded Worst Case Scenario will come true. Spoiler alert: exposures work by showing you that your Worst Case Scenario probably won’t happen and that the situations you dread are probably not as bad as you thought.
One frustrating part about social anxiety is that it’s rarely cured with a one-and-done exposure. Instead, you have to keep practising. The more exposures you do, the better you will feel.
To get started, list all the social situations that make you anxious, such as:
- messaging someone on a dating app;
- introducing myself to a stranger;
- attending a work happy hour by myself;
- raising my hand in class; or
- giving a co-worker critical feedback.
Don’t filter; write down as many situations as come to mind.
Next, rate each situation from 0 (no anxiety) to 100 (maximum anxiety), and then rank-order each from least to most anxiety-provoking. When it comes to choosing your first attempt at exposure, start with one of the situations that is lower on your anxiety thermometer; later, work your way up the list gradually.
For each exposure, follow the step-by-step process below.
Before your exposure:
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Identify your biggest fear(s). What are you most afraid will happen in this specific situation? This could be something like being told you are stupid or getting laughed at.
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Make a plan. Where will you do the exposure? With whom? Sort out some details ahead of time, and then schedule a time to do the exposure. Planning makes it more likely that you’ll follow through.
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Set an achievable goal. Identify one thing you want to accomplish during the exposure. Pick an objective behaviour, such as ‘ask two questions’ or ‘invite them to coffee’. Avoid goals based on feelings (eg, ‘don’t get anxious’) because they are difficult to measure and don’t tell you whether an exposure was successful. You can feel very anxious and have a successful interaction! You also want to avoid goals about other people’s perceptions (eg, ‘appear smart’) because you’re not a mind reader and never really know what others think.
During your exposure:
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Monitor and eliminate what psychologists call ‘safety behaviours’. Safety behaviours are subtle things you do to feel more comfortable and avoid facing your fears head-on, such as checking your phone to avoid having a conversation, tightly gripping a drink to occupy trembling hands, or averting eye contact to avoid getting asked a question. Sometimes, people use substances such as alcohol or cannabis to feel more comfortable in social situations. For example, the phrase ‘liquid courage’ refers to the increased social confidence people feel when they drink alcohol. Using substances to feel less anxious can facilitate a problematic pattern where a person increasingly feels like they need substances to participate or enjoy a social situation. For exposures to work, you must fully encounter the situation – which means dropping your safety behaviours. If not, you teach yourself that you can get through the situation only if you avoid certain aspects of it.
After your exposure:
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Debrief. Answer two questions. First, did your biggest fear come true? Majority of the time, it won’t (or you simply don’t have enough evidence to determine if it did!). Second, what did you learn from the situation? Jot down a few insights. You might find, for example, that you felt less anxious than you anticipated or that you enjoyed some moment(s) of the interaction. Over time, as you repeat these exposures, you will ‘unlearn’ the terrifying aspects of socialising and ‘relearn’ new ones – including how wonderful social interactions can be.
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Reward yourself. You were brave enough to face your fears, and you’re probably a bit exhausted from it. You’ve earned a treat. Pick a reward that’s reinforcing as an extra dose of motivation for your next exposure.
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Plan for the next exposure. Keep up the momentum by planning for the next exposure. Avoidance is anxiety’s best friend – the longer the gap between exposures, the harder it will be to get going again. Make exposure a habit. And if you’re really struggling to get going with these exposure exercises, jump to the Learn More section below for some additional tips.
In sum, you can successfully tackle your social anxiety with three strategies: brushing up your conversational skills, catching and correcting your unhelpful thinking habits, and intentionally participating in scary social situations. As you work through your social anxiety, be sure to remind yourself why you’re doing this – and what your life might look like on the other side of your efforts.
