Characteristics and Treatment of Social Anxiety

Individuals who suffer from social anxiety internalise negative assumptions that they have developed about themselves.  Within social situations sufferers can interpret social cues as negative evaluations from others.  Individuals will closely monitor and observe themselves and develop a distorted negative image of how they believe they are perceived.  This leads to anxiety and attention is drawn to associated physiological and cognitive symptoms.  Safety seeking behaviours attempt to control how they are being perceived by others and relieve the unpleasant discomfort of anxiety.

Within social anxiety the individual’s focus of attention is centred on their perception of themselves and how they are being perceived by others, the physiological symptoms of anxiety and safety seeking behaviours.  This leads to feeling increasingly self-conscious.  Self-focus is fundamental in maintaining social anxiety.

Successful treatment of social anxiety encourages clients to drop safety behaviours and shift their focus of attention to their external environment. This is done through imagined scenarios, exposure and behavioural experiments.  Treatment targets anxious predictions associated with social events as well as post event processing.  It also helps clients to restructure assumptions and beliefs that they hold about themselves.

References

Clark, D.M. (2001).  A Cognitive Perspective on Social Phobia.  In Crozier, W.R. & Alden, L.E., International Handbook of Social Anxiety: Concepts , Research & Interventions relating to the Self and Shyness. Wiley