Attitudes, Behaviors, and Beliefs That Maintain Social Anxiety
- Believing your thoughts
- Fusing thoughts and actions
- Believing you are not able to handle certain situations
- Believing you are not able to handle your anxiety
- Not being aware of thoughts
- Trying to avoid anxious thoughts or triggering environments
- Believing that physiological reactions means you are in danger and need to take action to avoid danger
- In the moment, making the anxiety you feel the main focus rather than the task at hand
- Hoping anxiety doesn’t happen
- Doing what the anxiety tells you to do
- Relying on feelings rather than facts
- Striving for 100% certainty
- Believing 100% certainty is obtainable
- Pretending the anxiety isn’t there
- Struggling and fighting the anxiety
- Trying to control anxiety
- White knuckling it through triggering situations
- Believing that you are going crazy, losing it, having a mental breakdown
- Believing your anxiety will go on forever
- Successfully exposing yourself to a triggering situation, coming out the other end of it, but attributing success to external resources: coping skills, relaxation techniques, your therapist, a friends’ comforting words.
- Using coping skills or relaxation techniques in attempt to take away anxiety
- Formulating an escape plan, just in case your anxiety gets too intense
- Focusing more on what people think of you during a conversation
- Pursuing perfection
- Rushing through anxious situations