What It Actually Feels Like
You've got a work event coming up. Nothing major—just drinks with colleagues. And yet, for days beforehand, there's this low-grade dread sitting in your stomach. You're already rehearsing conversations in your head, already imagining awkward silences, already planning your exit strategy.
When the day comes, you might force yourself to go. You stand near the edges of conversations, acutely aware of every word you say, monitoring yourself for signs that you're being boring or weird. Or maybe you cancel. Again. And feel that familiar mix of relief and self-disappointment.
Does this sound like you? Not wanting to be the centre of attention. Dreading small talk. Feeling like everyone else has some social manual you never received.
This is social anxiety. And if you experience it, you're far from alone.
That makes it one of the most common mental health conditions out there. Yet many people suffer in silence for years, assuming they're just "bad at socialising" or thinking they should be able to push through it if they just tried harder.
This Goes Beyond Normal Shyness
Everyone feels nervous sometimes. First dates, job interviews, speaking to a room full of people—it's normal to feel some butterflies. That's not what we're talking about here.
Social anxiety disorder is when the fear becomes so intense and persistent that it starts to shrink your life. When you turn down opportunities, avoid friendships, or stay silent when you have something to say—all because the fear of being judged feels unbearable.
"I'm not an introvert who recharges by being alone. I actually want to connect with people. I just can't seem to do it without feeling like I'm walking on a tightrope, one wrong word away from humiliating myself."
The difference between shyness and social anxiety isn't just about intensity—it's about interference. If fear of social judgment is affecting your career, your relationships, your daily decisions about where to go and what to do, that's when it's crossed into something that deserves attention.
What's Actually Happening Inside
If you have social anxiety, your experience in social situations is fundamentally different from someone who doesn't. Here's what's going on:
In Your Body
- Heart racing, sometimes pounding
- Blushing or feeling hot
- Sweating (especially palms)
- Shaky voice or hands
- Mind going blank
- Stomach churning
In Your Mind
- Predicting disaster before it happens
- Assuming others are judging you negatively
- Constant self-monitoring
- Replaying conversations afterwards
- Harsh self-criticism
- Certainty you've embarrassed yourself
In Your Behaviour
- Avoiding social situations
- Escaping events early
- Speaking quietly or not at all
- Avoiding eye contact
- Over-preparing for interactions
- Using alcohol to cope
In Your Feelings
- Dread before social events
- Shame about your anxiety
- Frustration at yourself
- Loneliness and isolation
- Hopelessness about change
- Exhaustion from constant vigilance
The cruel irony is that all this internal monitoring and worrying often makes you less present in conversations, not more. You're so busy tracking your own performance that you can't actually connect.
The Trap That Keeps It Going
Social anxiety is remarkably good at sustaining itself. Understanding how it does this is the first step to breaking free.
You Predict Disaster
Before the event, your mind floods with worst-case scenarios. "I'll have nothing to say. People will think I'm boring. I'll say something stupid. Everyone will notice I'm anxious."
Anxiety Spikes
These predictions trigger your threat system. Your body prepares for danger—heart rate up, palms sweating, mind racing. Except there's no actual danger, just other humans.
You Avoid or Use Safety Behaviours
You skip the event, or you go but stay silent, stick to the edges, leave early, or drink too much. These feel like they're helping. They're not.
You Never Learn the Truth
Because you avoided or protected yourself, you never discovered that the predicted disaster wouldn't have happened. Or that you could have coped if it did.
The Belief Strengthens
"See? It would have been terrible if I'd spoken up." The anxiety wins another round. The trap tightens.
This is why "just push through it" rarely works. If you push through while using safety behaviours—staying quiet, not making eye contact, holding a drink to have something to do with your hands—you don't get the corrective experience you need.
The Spotlight Effect (And Why It Lies)
People with social anxiety tend to massively overestimate how much others notice them. This is called the spotlight effect—feeling like there's a harsh light trained on you, with everyone watching and evaluating your every move.
What You Think
"Everyone noticed I blushed. They definitely saw my hands shaking. That pause before I answered was way too long. They're all thinking I'm awkward."
What's Likely True
Most people are far too focused on themselves to notice your symptoms. That blush you felt intensely? Others might not have seen it at all. That pause? Probably felt longer to you than it was.
Research consistently shows that anxious people overestimate how visible their symptoms are, how harshly others judge them, and how much their behaviours stand out. The internal experience is intense, but it's rarely as visible externally as it feels.
A Thought Experiment
Think about the last social gathering you attended. Can you remember any moment where someone else blushed, paused awkwardly, or seemed nervous? Probably not in much detail, right? That's because we're all too busy with our own experience to closely monitor others. Other people extend you the same lack of scrutiny.
Where Does This Come From?
Social anxiety doesn't appear from nowhere. Usually, there's a mix of factors:
Temperament
Some people are born with a more sensitive threat-detection system. They notice potential social dangers more quickly. This isn't a flaw—it probably helped our ancestors survive. But in a modern context with lots of social exposure, it can become overactive.
Early Experiences
Being bullied, teased, or humiliated—especially during formative years—can teach the brain that social situations are dangerous. Critical parents, social rejection, or feeling different from peers can all plant seeds of social fear.
Learning
If a parent modelled anxious behaviour in social situations, you might have absorbed the message that social settings are threatening. Sometimes social anxiety runs in families partly through what's demonstrated, not just what's inherited.
Negative Experiences
A particularly embarrassing moment can sometimes trigger social anxiety, especially if it confirms existing worries. One bad presentation can become the lens through which all future presentations are viewed.
Understanding where your anxiety comes from can be helpful, but here's the good news: you don't need to fully understand the origin to treat it effectively. What matters more is understanding how it's maintained now—because that's what treatment targets.
What Actually Works
The most effective treatment for social anxiety is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), specifically designed for social anxiety. It has the strongest evidence base and produces lasting change.
Here's what treatment typically involves:
Understanding Your Personal Pattern
We map out exactly how your social anxiety operates. What are your specific fears? What predictions do you make? What safety behaviours do you rely on? This creates a personalised picture we can work with.
Testing Your Predictions
Much of social anxiety is based on predictions that have never been properly tested. You predict disaster, then avoid, so you never find out what would actually happen. Treatment involves carefully designed experiments to test these predictions.
Dropping Safety Behaviours
Those things you do to feel safer—avoiding eye contact, speaking quietly, over-preparing—actually keep anxiety alive. We work on gradually letting go of these crutches so you can discover you don't need them.
Shifting Your Focus
Social anxiety involves too much attention turned inward—monitoring yourself, imagining how you appear to others. Treatment helps shift focus outward, onto the conversation, the other person, the actual content of the interaction.
Facing Fears Gradually
Exposure therapy—deliberately entering feared situations—is central to treatment. We start with moderately challenging situations and build up. Each success provides evidence that you can cope.
It Takes Work
I won't pretend treatment is easy. Facing your fears on purpose feels counterintuitive and uncomfortable. But the people who engage fully—who do the between-session work, who lean into the discomfort—are the ones who see lasting change.
Will It Ever Go Away?
Let me be honest: without treatment, social anxiety tends to persist. It often begins in adolescence and rarely resolves on its own. In fact, it tends to worsen over time as avoidance patterns become more entrenched and life becomes more constricted.
The Fear
"I'll always be this way. I've been anxious my whole life. Some people are just not meant for social situations."
The Evidence
Social anxiety responds very well to proper treatment. Most people see significant improvement. Many find that social situations go from sources of dread to sources of connection.
Recovery doesn't mean never feeling nervous. Some social anxiety is normal—even helpful. What changes is that anxiety no longer controls your choices. You can feel nervous and speak up anyway. You can feel uncertain and still show up.
The goal isn't to become someone who loves being the centre of attention. It's to live a life where fear of judgment doesn't dictate what you do, where you go, or who you connect with.
Taking the First Step
If you've been struggling with social anxiety, reaching out for help is itself a meaningful step. It takes courage to admit something is limiting you and to seek support for it.
Many people with social anxiety delay seeking help because—ironically—the thought of talking to a stranger about their problems feels socially frightening. If that's you, know that psychologists who work with social anxiety understand this. We don't expect you to walk in comfortable and chatty. That's the point.
You might be surprised how quickly things can shift. Sometimes just understanding the mechanism of social anxiety—seeing how it traps you—begins to loosen its grip. And with proper treatment, most people see meaningful improvement in a matter of months.
Life doesn't have to stay small. The connections, opportunities, and experiences you've been avoiding can become accessible again. It takes work, but it's work that pays off.
Ready to Start?
If social anxiety is limiting your life and you're ready to do something about it, I'd be glad to help you find a way forward.
Book a Session