The notification for the group chat shows up on Renee’s phone. It is an invite to a weekend on the lake with college friends. She has not seen them in years. Renee immediately starts thinking about all of the ways the weekend could go terribly wrong. And a familiar spike of anxiety hits her.
Does this reaction sound familiar? If so, you likely know that the season’s focus on gatherings can intensify social anxiety. And sometimes the disconnect between others’ excitement and our own feelings of dread can leave us feeling isolated and ashamed.
Fortunately, there are practical tools, grounded in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), that can help. You can take steps to overcome social anxiety and fully engage in your social calendar this summer.
Step 1: Identify specific situations. You may notice yourself dreading the “social calendar” of summer as a whole. Try breaking it down. Is it making small talk at your kid’s birthday party? Is it the idea of wearing summer clothing that fills you with dread? Or maybe you are nervous about events with a lot of new people. Whatever it is – being able to identify specific situations can help you take the next steps of addressing social anxiety.
Step 2: Explore your thoughts. Many people are surprised by the fact that it is actually our thoughts about situations that lead to our anxiety. Not the situations themselves. Try to identify any thoughts you have in relation to the specific situation you identified. This might be “They will think I’m boring.” Or “I might stumble on my words and sound stupid.” You can explore these thoughts with a few simple questions like:
- Do I know for sure that this thought is true?
- Imagine my thought is not true. Could this turn out okay or even well? What would that look like?
- Even if my thought is true, will this moment feel like a big in 5 years?
Step 3: Practice Fear-facing. Sometimes we find that we remain afraid of situations even after identifying problems with our thoughts. That is where Fear-facing comes in. Fear-facing means purposely putting ourselves in the situations we fear. And this helps us learn at a deeper level that we don’t have to be afraid. You can start small. Maybe you make a friendly comment to a stranger at a park. Then over time, you can work up to more challenging situations, like sparking conversations at a small gathering or attending your annual neighborhood barbecue.
There are resources to help you reduce anxiety and build confidence so that enjoying your summer schedule feels more manageable. And you may even start to look forward to those invitations to connect with others.
