Self-Steps to Overcoming Social Anxiety

Chapter 4: Self-Steps to Overcoming Social Anxiety


“Nerves and butterflies are fine — they're a physical sign that you're mentally ready and eager. You have to get the butterflies to fly in formation, that's the trick.”

- Steve Bull



While CBT and ACT have shown some success in treating some people with social anxiety, the number one reason cited for people not getting treatment is they do not seek it. Of course, that really is not surprising since, by definition, those with social anxiety will tend to avoid situations in which they will be “exposed to unfamiliar people or to possible scrutiny by others.11” Asking someone with social anxiety to walk into a clinic so that a stranger can evaluate him for a potential disorder may be asking for more than what the anxious person is capable of doing at the present.

Thankfully there is a systematic strategy which the person with social anxiety can successfully employ in relative seclusion or with a trusted friend. This strategy is based on the counseling technique put forth by Dr. Charles Kollar 12 and is not dependent upon either person having a complex or deep understanding of cognitive psychoanalysis theory.

The strategy can be broken out into a series of steps which, if done honestly and consistently, will lead the socially anxious person to self-direct himself into a socially successful person.



Step 0: Determine Your Specific Focus


This step is really not part of the strategy steps per se, but it is necessary to bring focus to your application of the strategy. This step is based on an African riddle.

Question: How can a man swallow an elephant?

Answer: One bite at a time.

The idea here is that social anxiety is complex. And since most people who have it have lived with it more than ten years, it is very likely that your social anxiety and the neural pathways psycho-chemically etched into your brain by which your anxiety is“triggered”are quite well-worn. You will therefore want to focus on one key social situation at a time.

So, in this step, get a new notebook and write down at the top of the first page in what social setting, exactly, would you like to achieve success. Choose prudently: not only are you going to change the way you think and feel in an anxiety-producing situation, but you are also learning the system for making those changes. The best choice is something that only produces moderate anxiety (relative to your worst social setting). You can always address other socialsettings later. But for now–and especially for starting–just take one bite of the proverbial elephant.



Step 1: Evaluate Your Present Condition


Once you have determined your focus you need to evaluate your level of anxiety in that specific situation. There are three specific situations in which you should do this evaluation.

Your first evaluation should be when you are calm, relaxed, thinking clearly, and free from symptoms of anxiety. This will give you a rational baseline. Assuming, then, that you have chosen to overcome your apprehension with public speaking, conduct this self-assessment when there are no speaking engagements on your calendar and your last speaking engagement is sufficiently behind you so that it is not producing anxiety reactions. Jot down everything you can think of regarding your previous public speaking experiences.

As you recall as many details of your previous experiences as possible, allow yourself to become aware of how you are both thinking about and feeling about those experiences. Jot down the details of your self-awareness, making every effort to neither judge nor push away any particular thought or feeling. Just allow yourself to become aware of them and record them.

Assuming again that you are focused on overcoming your anxiety about public speaking, do this step again (even several times) as you approach a speaking engagement in order to capture a picture of your increasing apprehension. And do it again (even several times) as your apprehension diminishes after your speaking engagement.

You do not need to go out and“force”the social situation upon which you are focusing. That is, do not go out and purposefully set yourself up with a speaking engagement just to have something which you can jot down in your journal. If you have chosen prudently the social situation upon which you are focusing will come up soon enough. And there is much work to be done before that happens.



Step 2: Define Your End-Points


Again, when you are away from the selected social situation, find a moment when you are calm, relaxed, thinking clearly, and free from symptoms of anxiety.

On your notebook, draw a horizontal line in the middle of a page. This represents a continuum of potential realities regarding your selected social setting. On the far left mark a“1.”This is the worst-case scenario–worse than what you have previously experienced. At this level, a (hypothetical) person experiencing anxiety will fall over, gasp for breath, and die in front of everyone. This level is unbelievably bad. Write down what constitutes a“1”in your own words.

You are not at a“1.”

On the far right side of the line mark a“10.”This is the best possible scenario–far better than you have ever experienced. At this level, a (hypothetical) person is so free from anxiety, that he is able to go on a national speaking tour telling others how to overcome social anxiety. This level is unimaginably great.Write down what constitutes a“10”in your own words.

Divide your line into equal parts between your 1 and your 10. These are the mile markers we will define later.



Step 3: Define Your Current Location


By definition you are somewhere on this spectrum. Considering what you wrote down in step 1, place a mark where you believe your current level of anxiety in the specific social setting places you.There is absolutely no right or wrong answer–the only quality required by the system is that you answer honestly. Typical answers at the start of this system are in the range of 2–3. Answers of around 5 indicate ambivalence about the process. In that case you should go back to step one and consider if you have fully examined your previous experiences in this situation and your reactions to your thinking and feeling about those prior experiences. If you place yourself higher than a 7 it is unlikely that the chosen social situation is causing significant anxiety; you should consider looking at a different social situation.

Summarize what you wrote down in Step 1. This is where you are currently on the spectrum. Do not be discouraged–you’ve done tremendous work to get this far, and it only gets better from here!!



Step 4: Define the Next Mile Marker


Wherever you placed yourself on the continuum, the next number (marked out in step 2) needs to be defined. Ask yourself what it would look like, what it would feel like, how your thinking would be different if you were at that next mile marker. This is a very important step. It is where you begin to take control of what defines success and wellness in your specified social situation. Take as much time here as you need to be certain that your definition is right for you–and that you’re not asking yourself to swallow the elephant’s leg whole.

For example, suppose a person decides he is a“2”on the spectrum (with the endpoints as previously defined in step 2). As a“2”he experiences an inability to speak coherently, his gut is in painful cramps, and he fears his knees will give out on him whenever he is at the podium before a crowd. Those are symptomsof his anxiety–not the causes– and are only useful for gauging that is going on with his thoughts and feelings. As a“2”he reports (based on the work he did in step 1) that believes it is highly likely that he will make a fool of himself, that he will demonstrate an utter lack of understanding of his subject matter, and that someone in the audience will publically call him out and challenge his main points. His feelings as a“2,”based on these thoughts, are a cloudy, indistinct jumble of undefinable fears. The thoughts and feelings as he describes them to himself are the definition of mile marker 2. The physical symptoms of his anxiety just give verification of his internal state.

Having defined his“2,” our sociallyanxious person might define his“3”as a small but significant improvements in his internal state. For example, he may declare that at a“3”the indistinct fearscan be separately identified–that there is a clearing of the emotional fog. In addition, he may also declare that at a“3”he can articulate with a trusted person his various negative thoughts.

However you define your next mile marker, it must be“right”for you and it must provide a small but significant set of improvements in your core mile marker definition of how you are thinking and feeling about the specific social situation.



Step 5: Define How to Get to the Next Mile Marker


This step is where you empower yourself to achieve social success. Document under your definition of your current mile marker one or more specific things you yourself can do to move to the next mile marker. It is absolutely critical that you write down only those things which you personally can do. For example, you might be tempted to say that you could achieve clarity in your feelings about public speaking if everyone else around you went on high alert to be extra nice to you. But that is, obviously, not something that you have any ability to affect–and this step is all about your empowerment. Be sure also to date the action steps you have written down.

The actions steps should be things that you can do preferably outside the specified social situation and they should be specific to the social situation. Write down a brief plan to of when and how you will do these steps, as well as how long you reasonably think it will take you to go through your action plan (no longer than two weeks) –doing so helps you keep yourself accountable as you make progress toward your definition of resolution.

Considering our (hypothetical) person who is seeking to become more comfortable with public speaking, he defined his boundaries (step 2), he defined where he was on the continuum (steps 1 and 3), and he defined what the next mile marker is like (step 4). Now he must determine how he will go from being a“2”to becoming a“3.”As a“2”his feelings are an indistinct blur of many fears (current experience when speaking publicly), and he has decided that at a“3”he should be able to distinguish between different fears–that is, his fear of embarrassment, his fear of being called out, etc.

In this case an external set of actions steps would be appropriate. He could, for instance, decide that for 10 minutes each day over the next two weeks he is going to think about what it would be like if someone from the audience actually did call him out publicly. When he does this he is going to take very careful notes about how he could respond to this person in a confident manner. He might make a list of possible questions that may arise along with answers for each one.

Be sure to document, for your own reference, how well you did in carrying out your action plan.



Step 6: Review The Results: Did You Make Progress?


Once you have made your best effort at achieving your action plan to get to the next step, it is time to evaluate your results.

Go back to your definition of where you started, written down in step 1. Read through it carefully, thoughtfully. Have your reactions to the previous social experiences changed? If so, document how. Does the change you experienced correlate to your defined next mile marker? If you think you have achieved your next mile marker, it is time to test it in a live (but controlled) social situation. If you are overcoming anxiety about social speaking, for example, you could arrange to give a presentation to your family. Be sure to document your pre- and post- social experience thoughts and feelings as outlined in step 1.

If you do not believe you have achieved progress toward your mile marker after completing your action plan, try to determine why not. Document your considerations.

In the same way, if you did not change but do not think you arrived at your next mile marker as you previously defined, determine if the change you did achieve is superior or inferior to the change that defined the next mile marker. Document your considerations.

If the change is superior, consider doing a controlled live test as described above. Otherwise, if the change is inferior or you did not realize any desirable change, go back to step 5 and create a new action plan.

It is very important to note that there is no right or wrong path here, no proper speed at which one progresses along the continuum toward becoming a“10.”You are in absolute control of this situation, from defining its outcomes to determining your plan of action.

Because of the large degree of freedom this system allows, if you are not making the progress you desire or are getting frustrated at the process, take time to speak about it with a trusted friend who can provide some useful and supportive perspective. Often we make progress but cannot perceive it in ourselves, because we are too close to the trees to notice the forest.



Step 7: Go Through the Process Again


This is a progressive system which allows you to define the definition of success and the steps you take to get there. But remember, we are not looking merely to take a bite of an elephant, we want to eat the whole thing! Successfully moving from where you were when you started the process to the next mile marker is a significant step and worthy of celebration. But one step is not the whole journey. You must learn to continuously evaluate where you are and how you will get to the next step. That is the only way to succeed.



There are some important points to note here.

First, it is possible that as you progress forward you will experience temporary setbacks. These should not be of concern–they happen. Commit yourself to going forward from where you are today, not from where you imagine you“should be”or“could be”if everything was on track. This is a process–a dynamic process in which you cannot control or even identify all the variables. So don’t worry about occasional set back; just keep applying the steps with a commitment to moving forward.

Second, as you cycle through the steps and take opportunities for live tests of progress, it will be useful and therapeutic if you occasionally reflect on how often the imagined negative consequences actually occurred, or whether their severity was as bad as you dreaded. For example, our person working to get past anxiety over public speaking has (hypothetically) feared that someone would rise up from the audience and publicly call him out. This can be demonstrated to be an irrational fear if, in fact, there is no occurrence of it actually happening.

Third, as you continuously make progress toward your defined“10”endpoint your previous success will begin to generate more success. In other words, you will begin to“pick up speed”in your progress from social anxiety to social success. It is likely that as your speed picks up, doing all the many documentation steps of the system as outlined above will become burdensome. At that point (and only at that point) it is ok to relax your documenting routine, perhaps taking it down to simple daily journaling then to simple weekly journaling.

Fourth, as you begin to build momentumin progressing from one mile marker to another in your selected social situation, you will be able to take on another specific social situation. You do not have to wait until you reach a“10”on the first situation before you address another situation–in fact, you should not wait. Your success in dealing with one situation will most effectively translate into success for dealing with another specific situation if you begin to work the above system for the new situation when you are experiencing the most success in dealing with the first situation. Just as success breeds success, forward progress generates more forward progress.

Fifth, always remember that whatever you set your sights on, that is the target you are most likely to hit. A growing body of studies supports this notion. If the ultimate goal is to transform a life of social anxiety marked by fear, shyness, and low self-esteem into a life of social success marked by confidence, charisma, and self-love, then these must be the“Level10”targets you continuously keep in your sights as you progress from one mile marker to the next. And each mile marker should bring you closer to being able to fully express these behaviors

Finally, and most importantly–you can do it! You can transform your social anxiety, marked with fear, shyness, and low self-esteem into social success, confidence, charisma, and self-love. While you do need to accept where you are currently as a starting point, you do not have to resign yourself to a life of anxiety. With the right work persistently applied, you can bring about the change you want in yourself.

You CAN do it!!