Why Fighting Against Social Anxiety Could Be Making It Worse

When we feel ourselves getting socially anxious, our knee-jerk reaction is often to try to avoid it. But if we welcome it in, the effect can be quite different from what we expect.

What Is Social Anxiety?

Most people have felt socially anxious at one time or another. Think about what’s going through your mind before giving a speech, during an important job interview, or, really, any situation where you worry about what others might think of you.

In addition to—and indeed connected to—these in-the-moment thoughts, there are physical sensations: butterflies in the stomach, trembling, or a dry mouth, to name but a few. When I interviewed socially anxious women as part of my research (Masters, 2024), many spoke about blushing and sweating (Farah*), while others described feeling nauseous (Daniella).

Mind, Body, and Feedback Loops

It might be tempting to think of social anxiety as having mental and physical aspects, and it’s likely so difficult to get away from this because we don’t really have a word—in common usage, at least—that conveys that we’re talking about the whole self.

Yet, thinking about the mental and the physical as existing independently might not be that helpful (despite what mind-body dualist philosopher Descartes would have us believe!), especially in this context. Another woman I interviewed, Amy, was herself pretty critical of the notion that the mind and body are distinct, calling it "a fallacy." Instead, Amy advocated for a more integrated or biopsychosocial view. An article by the Royal College of Psychiatrists (2016) explains this rather nicely in the case of social anxiety—that is, how emotions affect the body, and vice versa:

"Other people may be able to see some of the signs of this anxiety—the blushing, stammering, shaking and trembling.

These symptoms can be quite alarming and make your anxiety worse. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You worry so much about looking worried that you actually do look worried."

What we have here is a feedback loop being set up: You worry about what others think of you; you exhibit some of the physical signs of social anxiety; you then worry that others can see these signs and they’ll think badly of you; the social anxiety becomes worse; the physical symptoms are exacerbated; and so on.

Breaking the Cycle: Laying Out the Welcome Mat for It

The key to breaking this feedback loop could lie, counterintuitively, not in trying to prevent these physical manifestations, but in doing the opposite: embracing them. By way of example, those among you who are prone to blushing: Has there ever been a time when you’ve successfully managed to stop blushing simply by willing your cheeks to be less red, or trying really, really hard not to? Or have these strategies instead made the blushing worse?

The idea of turning toward, instead of turning away from, difficult sensations or emotions has its roots in some branches of meditation or mindfulness. I first came across this as part of my own journey in working through the book Overcoming Worry and Generalised Anxiety Disorder a few years ago. In the appendices, psychologists Mark Freeston and Kevin Meares signpost the reader to mindfulness, in particular citing Jon Kabat-Zinn and Mark Williams as names the reader might want to look up.

One of the key tenets of mindfulness is acceptance: that is, letting go of the tendency that we have to want things to be different from how they are. Alongside this, Jon Kabat-Zinn (2023) often advocates putting out the welcome mat for, or letting in, difficult experiences, such as emotional distress or physical pain.

Freeston and Meares themselves espouse a strategy akin to this in their book on generalised anxiety disorder, wherein they suggest the reader writes down their worries and sets aside some time later in their day especially to "have a good worry." The thinking here is that, with the attention lasered in on the worry, the worry dissolves: a bit like looking under your bed and seeing the proverbial monster—it’s far less scary than you thought when viewed head-on instead of catching mere glimpses of it.

Applying this to social anxiety, let’s say you become embarrassed. Your default reaction might be, "Oh no, I’m blushing and sweating, and my voice is trembling." Then you start to worry that people notice, which makes it (the blushing et al.) worse, and so forth—exactly as we saw in the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ article.

So how do we break this feedback loop? An alternative to resisting or bracing against these experiences could lie in embracing them, or welcoming them in. Next time you feel yourself becoming socially anxious, what happens if you lean into it—to whatever extent you’re comfortable doing so—and are curious about it? What are the sensations like? Exactly where are they? What qualities (shape/texture/temperature) do they have? What are the thoughts? Are they coming and going? How are they making themselves known? And how is all of this changing with time?

Following Freeston and Meares, what we’re doing here could be described not as letting ourselves "have a good worry," but as letting ourselves "have a good old experience of social anxiety." And while we may not be able to rid ourselves completely of the social anxiety itself (and all of its associated physical sensations)—at least not right away—letting it be there, instead of pushing it away, can be a very different, and perhaps less distressing, experience. As Kabat-Zinn (2019) has written in relation to dealing with life's difficulties: "You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf."

*Names have been changed to protect anonymity

References