How CBT Therapy Can Help with Your Social Anxiety Symptoms
CBT therapy is one of the top recommended treatments for social anxiety symptoms. This is because CBT therapy targets these three key elements of social anxiety that keep you stuck in the cycle:
Your anxious thought spiral that kicks off the whole system of social anxiety. This can include thoughts like “I’m going to look so stupid. Everyone will think I don’t belong there. I’m going to say something dumb or get tripped up on my words and embarrass myself.”
Your physical social anxiety symptoms, which only seem to escalate the more nervous you get. This can include things like blushing, sweating, feeling dizzy or jittery, ringing in your ears, tightness in your chest, or upset stomach..
Your behaviors that keep the cycle going… and getting worse. This most commonly includes avoidance (such as avoiding making plans) and safety behaviors. Safety behaviors are anything you use to help you endure anxious situations such as avoiding eye contact by playing on your phone the whole time, busying yourself with cleaning up instead of chatting with people at the table after a meal, or using straws to avoid lifting your glass with a shaky hand to keep people from seeing that you’re nervous.
How Does CBT therapy Work Exactly?
CBT for social anxiety uses two main approaches to target social anxiety symptoms: cognitive skills and behavioral “retraining.”
Social Anxiety Symptoms: Dealing with Anxious Thoughts
Because thoughts play such an important role in creating your social anxiety symptoms, in CBT therapy we work with clients to help you master the skills of changing your thinking habits. This begins with identifying the types of thoughts that trigger your social anxiety symptoms. Then we can teach you techniques to re-evaluate those thoughts. The goal here is learning to talk to yourself in a more realistic and helpful way, which has been shown to decrease social anxiety symptoms.
This is NOT the same thing as getting rid of negative thoughts and forcing yourself to think positively. Research has shown that doesn’t work anyway. Instead, it’s important for thoughts to be realistic and believable. We work together to examine evidence instead of assumptions, to set more realistic goals and expectations for yourself, and provide you with tools to help cope through anxious moments.
Research has shown that the more realistic your thoughts are, the less frightening social situations will feel, and the less physical symptoms you will experience. Additionally, this frees up more of your attention, so you can focus less on your anxiety and more on the situation and people in front of you.
Behaviors: Increasing Social Skills & Decreasing Avoidance
The other main component of CBT therapy is based around behavioral skills… in other words – we guide you through actual practice. Research has shown that CBT therapy can reduce anxiety by slowly facing situations that make us anxious and practicing coping through them, rather than avoiding them.
In this way, you get a chance to learn practical steps for how to respond to your anxious thoughts IN THE MOMENT during practice situations, with the support of your therapist right there to guide you. We always start small and build on your successes as you go, only moving on to face tougher situations once you’ve built some confidence in your skills.
The real purpose of the CBT therapy approach is to give your body the opportunity to learn through experience. This way you truly learn that you can handle social situations, instead of feeling like you’re trying to “convince yourself.” Over time, this can go a long way toward reducing your social anxiety as your body learns that social situations aren’t actually as dangerous as you once believed them to be.
We can help.
If you or someone you know is struggling to overcome social anxiety, please give us a call or reach out. Our therapists specialize in working with social anxiety and we offer free consultations to get you the right fit, fast.
