Avoidance: Our Worst Enemy
The biggest obstacle to our progress against social anxiety is something we’ve been doing most of our life: avoiding. It is natural that when we are anxious, we avoid. It is also natural that when we have avoided situations for many years, this avoidance becomes habitual (i.e., a habit). For example, we may be avoiding some events today more because of habit than because of anxiety...
Behavioral Therapy Activities
Here are just some of the behavioral activities we do at SAI during the group, and outside in the "real world": Group Conversations about general matters, Introductions – formal and informal, Proactivity reports, Slowing Down When Reading, Talking, Answering Questions, Impromptu Talks: any little thing, Staying calm and rational in the situation, Ask a worker for help or information, Eye Contact: Sit, stand, or walk and catch a strangers’ eye for one or two seconds...
Comprehensive CBT For Social Anxiety
Large-scale, long-range (i.e., longitudinal) studies over the past decade have consistently shown cognitive – behavioral therapy to be the only therapy that can be dependably relied upon to help people overcome clinical anxiety disorders. CBT is a combination or a "pulling together" of any and all methods, strategies, and techniques that work to help people successfully overcome their particular emotional problems. The cognitive part of the therapy refers to thinking or learning and is the part of therapy that can be "taught" to the person...
Procrastination: Wasting Our Time and Increasing Our Anxiety
It’s a simple fact of life that most of us procrastinate. When there’s something that we don’t want to do, it’s amazing what our brains can come up with to avoid doing what needs to be done. When I needed to be studying for my graduate school tests, it's amazing how fun I found vacuuming the house to be! It’s an ironic situation because we all realize that procrastination only makes us feel worse and continues to nag away at our mind, so we can’t fully enjoy what we’re doing anyway...
Questions to Ask Therapists About Social Anxiety
These are some general questions to ask potential psychologists or therapists you are considering seeing. These questions may help you assess how much they understand about social anxiety and its treatment.
1. "How much of your practice is geared toward people with social anxiety?
2. "I have been told that my problem is social anxiety, but I am not sure. Can you explain to me what the major symptoms of social anxiety are?"...
Therapy: Taking the Initiative and Being Proactive
Because we know that focusing internally on our own old anxiety thoughts and beliefs only reinforces our problems … we need to focus externally … on the other person, other people, or on the physical task in front of us. We also need to act first, to take the initiative, rather than always RESPONDING to life’s events. By being an active player in life’s events, we will feel better about ourselves, our self-esteem will rise, and we will feel more confident...
Why Behavioral Therapy Alone Does Not Work For Social Anxiety
If simply “doing” things over and over again were enough to help us overcome social anxiety, then we would all have overcome it long ago. Some questions: Do you still have anxiety about speaking to people even though you’ve done it dozens and dozens of times? Are you still self conscious about speaking up in public … even though you’ve done it over and over again? Many of us have done the things that cause us anxiety hundreds and hundreds of times and we’re still anxious!...
Why CBT Works
The word "cognitive" refers to learning, so this leads us back to the brain, since the brain processes information (i.e., consciousness, remembering, etc.) and enables us to "learn" new things. It would be nice if we could take a pill or get an injection and have all this "learning" added to our brain all at once. But that is not how the human brain works. The brain must learn new information and this takes time because to really learn something well, a lot of repetition is involved...
Why it is Important to be Calm when Doing Therapy
Your mind must be prepared before you can get the new cognitive ideas, strategies, methods, and concepts to "drop gently" (step by step) into your brain. If you are anxious or nervous or too worried about something, your brain is already working overtime ... and there is no room for the cognitive therapy that you want to sink down into your brain. That is why I emphasize on the series that it is best to be alone while doing therapy -- somewhere you can be less self-conscious -- so that you are relatively calm and at peace.