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Disclaimer: My content is NOT a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. When in doubt, ask a therapist!
Short answer: no.
Longer answer:
Forcing yourself out of social anxiety — or, forcing yourself into social situations — might sound like a good idea.
It’s what others recommend anyway, right? If you google social anxiety solutions, you will come across keywords like:
- “overcome”
- “eliminate”
- “beat”
- “get over”
As Shia Lebouf would say: “Just do it!!!”
While it’s important to face your social fears, the costs of forcing yourself can outweigh the benefits. Here’s why:
“Just do it” is just ineffective
Pushing yourself into social situations — without working on your anxiety-inducing thoughts and beliefs — is going for a run with 100-kg-weights on your feet: it’s not effective at all.
Larry A. Cohen, the co-founder of the National Social Anxiety Center, explained why that’s the case:
“Why do people with social anxiety disorder, despite being exposed to their anxiety triggers pretty much every day, still experience it all their lives? The thing that people with social anxiety are afraid of, judgment, is largely invisible. It’s not like people who are phobic about dogs — they will know if the dog bit them (or not)…
Even if an interaction goes well, a person with social anxiety disorder will often wonder: “Yeah, but what does this person really think of me?”
For the longest time, I pushed myself into social situations that made me feel uncomfortable. For example, I forced myself to interview hundreds of strangers on the street.
But even with the enormous amount of exposure I had, my anxiety was barely reduced, as I had the same unhelpful core beliefs! I was like a hamster spinning wheels, generating a lot of momentum but never moving forward.
(I wrote more about this here, if you’re interested.)
Here’s another big reason why white-knuckling yourself into social situations isn’t helpful:
Neuroscience: what you resist persists
By forcing yourself out of anxiety, you signal to yourself that “hey, I don’t want to feel this emotion”. In other words, you’re rejecting and even resisting your anxiety, which makes it much worse. Why?
According to neuroscience research, what you resist — or suppress — persists.
So what do you do instead? Acknowledge your anxiety.
Now, that’s easier said than done. You might still want your anxiety to go away, and that’s OK! But here’s the thing…
The mere act of acknowledging a difficult emotion — rather than denying or fighting against it — can help reduce your emotional suffering.
Here’s what you could try to foster an attitude of acknowledgment:
- Adopt a mindfulness or meditation practice: Here are my favorite mindfulness and meditation techniques.
- Try Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): A review of 11 studies shows that ACT— with one of its core elements being acceptance — can help reduce anxiety and avoidance behaviors. Learn more about ACT here.
The difference between forcing yourself and facing your anxiety
Having said all this…
You do need to take action even when it’s uncomfortable.
Two keys to taking effective action:
- Acknowledge your anxiety: As I mentioned above.
- Identify your anxiety-inducing beliefs and thoughts. See here and here. (It’s best to work with a therapist on this.)
Once you have done these two things, here’s what I’d recommend you do next:
Commit to a courage challenge.
But what’s a courage challenge?
It’s what therapists would call “exposure therapy”: you intentionally expose yourself to situations that trigger your social anxiety, which helps you learn that you’re capable of coping with the anxiety, and that it’s not as scary as you think.
Here are 51 challenge ideas to get you inspired 🤘
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