In this article, I discuss how the two elements of catastrophic thinking manifest themselves in social anxiety and how to reduce social anxiety by addressing them.
In my last two articles, I discussed how anxiety can be reduced by targeting the two elements of catastrophic thinking which contribute to it—the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of negative events occurring and to underestimate your ability to cope with these events if they were to occur. While this approach is helpful in reducing anxiety stemming from concerns over events of a non-social nature such as one’s job or finances, it is also effective in reducing anxiety in social situations. In the following sections, I will discuss how you can use this approach to reduce social anxiety. It is an approach I use with success in helping my clients in social anxiety counselling as a Calgary psychologist and a Cochrane psychologist.
The first element of catastrophic thinking in social anxiety: Overestimating judgment and criticism
One of the reasons some people suffer from social anxiety concerns is that they tend to overestimate the degree to which other people are judging and criticizing them. For example, at a party such people are more likely to assume that other people who are looking at them are evaluating them when there is either no or insufficient evidence to warrant such a conclusion. In addition, they are more likely to assume that others are evaluating them negatively or criticizing them in their thoughts or to others when the evidence does not necessarily support this view.
It is pretty easy to see how overestimating judgment and criticism can lead people to feel anxious in social situations. How can you be relaxed when you are constantly on guard as a result of people around you evaluating and criticizing you? Not surprisingly, a person’s social anxiety tends to drop significantly when they realize that most people are not evaluating and criticizing them. It’s as if a big weight has been removed from their shoulders, allowing them to relax in social situations.
An effective way to reduce the tendency to overestimate how much people are judging and criticizing you is to look for clear evidence that they are doing so–such as making negative comments about you—before making such a conclusion. People who use this strategy discover that many of their beliefs that others are judging and criticizing them are not founded in evidence but are instead driven by cognitive distortions –the tendency to think in a manner which is skewed toward the negative. A cognitive distortion which plays a major role in social anxiety is ‘mind-reading’ in which a person assumes others are thinking something negative about them without sufficient evidence.
Jumping to conclusions about judgment and criticism are also fuelled by people’s overreliance on unreliable nonverbal cues such as ambiguous facial expressions and body language. Using reliable evidence as the basis of your conclusions and reminding yourself that socially anxious people tend to overestimate evaluations and criticisms are tactics which should reduce your social anxiety significantly with practice.
The second element of catastrophic thinking in social anxiety: Inability to cope with judgment and criticism
Although reducing the tendency to overestimate the degree to which you are being evaluated and criticized can be very helpful in addressing social anxiety, the fact remains that you will have to face judgment and criticism some of the time. If you believe you would be unable to cope with these judgments and criticisms, you are likely to suffer from social anxiety each time you are confronted with negative evaluations of this kind.
For this reason, addressing social anxiety also often involves using strategies to increase your confidence that you can cope with judgments and criticisms to reduce their negative emotional impact. In this regard, I teach my clients with social anxiety the ‘assertive defense of the self’ technique created by psychologist Dr. Christine Padesky. The technique features the following steps: (1) List specific criticisms or judgments you believe others may direct toward you or are thinking about you which are contributing to your social anxiety; (2) For each anticipated criticism or judgment, construct an ‘assertive defense’ to the criticism or judgment which lessens the negative impact of the criticism or judgment; (3) Practice, either by yourself or in role-plays with your psychologist or another person you trust, exposing yourself to each criticism or judgment and responding to it with the assertive defense you created.
There are different strategies you can use to construct your assertive defenses. One way is by using evidence to challenge the basis of the criticism. For example, if you were anxious because you were thinking others are criticizing you for being a bad parent, your assertive defense might involve reminding yourself of evidence of your good parenting behaviours and your plans to improve the areas in which you are lacking. A second way to construct assertive defenses is typically used when the evidence indicates that criticism has some validity. This technique involves acknowledging that the criticism is accurate but constructing a statement which allows you to feel good about yourself despite this acknowledgement. For example, if you were anxious in a social situation because you believed others were thinking negatively about you because you experience anxiety, your assertive defense might take the form of the following self-talk, “It’s true that I experience anxiety, but that’s OK because actually anxiety is an emotion we all experience.”
In your efforts to implement the ideas in this article, you may find it helpful to work with a psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioural therapy. Your psychologist can teach you the skills I discussed, give you homework assignments in which you apply the skills, and help you overcome any challenges in using the skills until you become proficient at them. Doing so will allow you to consistently target the two elements of catastrophic thinking fuelling social anxiety to the point that you can enjoy, rather than dread, social situations.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays,
-Dr. Pat
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