Hidden habits that make your social anxiety worse - and how to break them

Mary, who has moved to start a postgraduate course, says she is currently managing her social anxiety more effectively. After completing her undergraduate degree she received support from the NHS in the form of a talking therapy known as CBT, which is widely regarded as the gold‑standard treatment for social anxiety and encourages individuals to reframe their thoughts and adjust their behaviours. Professor David Clark of the University of Oxford observes that while he would like to see more people pursue therapy, there are also self‑directed steps that can help. He identifies the first step as stopping obsessive self‑focus. “People with societal anxiousness often show themselves perpetually during societal situations. Am I blushing? Do I sound stupid? Do I look nervous?” he says. He advises shifting attention outward to the conversation, another person, or the surroundings. Clark also recommends testing fears through behavioural experiments—posing a question in a meeting or making a comment in a group and observing the outcome. “People with societal anxiousness often anticipate negative outcomes—that they will embarrass themselves or that others will find them boring. Testing that can help people break that cycle. It’s frightening, but it can truly help,” he notes. Another recommendation is to drop safety behaviours such as rehearsing every sentence, avoiding eye contact, or clinging to a single familiar person. Finally, he urges individuals to avoid post‑event rumination. “It’s so easy to distort what really happened,” he adds. Mary relates to this advice. “I used to play things over perpetually in my mind. What I’ve learnt is that dealing with social anxiety is simply a gradual process. The therapy truly helped me, but so did something a friend said to me a couple of years ago,” she explains. She recalls a specific conversation: “When I said I didn’t want to join her in gathering some of her friends, citing my poor social skills, she said she’d never thought that about me and that I shouldn’t undersell myself. I was flooded with emotion.” She continues, “I’m now pushing myself to engage more. It helps that in my postgraduate course we’re in smaller groups, but I’ve also joined an astronomy group. It’s still hard and it doesn’t always go how I want it to, but I’m learning to manage it.”