TEAM-CBT for Social Anxiety and Perfectionism
What Does Social Anxiety Look Like?
Natalie was an excellent doctor - diligent and caring, dedicated to her work. She struggled with downtime, though. She couldn’t relax, and she couldn’t seem to motivate herself to do things that didn’t come with deadlines or affect her reputation at work. She felt hesitant to advocate for herself or to speak up in meetings, even to say non-controversial things.
Jim felt resentful and standoffish around extended family and neighborhood friends. He wanted to be excellent at everything he set his mind to and couldn’t always live up to his standards. He also felt the pressure of obligation when he was around people who might ask him for more than he felt confident he could do well.
Angela was happy in her marriage but felt intimidated by the other moms at her kids’ school. They all seemed to have high-powered jobs and expensive clothes, and she always noticed herself getting self-conscious around them and avoiding talking to them when she could.
Perfectionism and Social Anxiety
Almost all of my clients go to great lengths to hide their flaws, sometimes even from themselves. Oddly enough, perfectionism itself usually has a social component. Fear of getting a bad grade might be driven by the belief that without good grades, I won’t make the next move in my professional life, and no one will want to marry me or be my friend.
That might seem like a huge leap, but I see it over and over again in my practice. The deep fear of loneliness is at the heart of worries that seem completely unrelated.
To add insult to injury, we have such a widespread cultural rejection of negative emotions that the anxiety itself often feels like a flaw that needs to be hidden. We feel shame about any anxiety but especially social anxiety, because it feels like weakness or because it implies that we’re extremely awkward and no fun to be around. The desire to not be seen as someone with social anxiety might be one of the factors that makes it hard for us to see it.
Identifying Social Anxiety
There are even more reasons social anxiety is tricky to identify. Sometimes the picture that comes to mind might be of someone who’s unbearably shy. Maybe they live in their parents’ basement or never leave their apartment. You might imagine someone whose hair is always covering their eyes.
In reality, most of my clients - including the ones described above - are friendly and often seem to be at ease during our sessions. Most are married or in serious relationships; they have jobs and friendships that are important to them. Social anxiety wasn’t even something the people around them were aware they were dealing with.
Another confusing element is that some people don’t experience “social anxiety” as fear - they don’t shy away from events or feel nervous, exactly. They feel guarded and sometimes resentful toward people who might be critical and judgmental. Their primary experience is a sort of preemptive rejection - rejecting people or groups of people before they have a chance to be rejected themselves.
Finally, even for those of us who do get anxious instead of guarded, we don’t always feel the aversion to hanging out with people as a consciously anxious experience. It might just be a habit of minimizing parties by saying quick hellos and ducking out as soon as possible. Or we avoid giving presentations or appearing on camera.
TEAM-CBT can Help with Social Anxiety
One of the very first ways that TEAM-CBT can help is by helping us learn to recognize the emotional processes going on behind the scenes. So much of our internal experience happens outside of our awareness, and that makes social anxiety feel inevitable and permanent.
TEAM-CBT slows the whole process down, digging into the detailed experience of one specific moment in time. Slowing down allows us to see what’s going on under the surface in those tense interpersonal moments. We can start to recognize the complex range of emotions that come up and why each one of them is important.
This is just a small piece of the TEAM-CBT process but even those small steps at the beginning can go a long way. They decrease our sense of shame because we can start to see that our emotional response makes sense. They increase our sense of agency and power to influence our responses. We learn to see that what looked like a tidal wave of inescapable suffering is more understandable and more changeable than that.
Begin Counseling for Social Anxiety in Georgia
If you’ve recognized yourself here and you’d like to find out more, reach out. You can schedule a free 20-minute consultation call and find out how therapy for social anxiety could help.
Bit by Bit Counseling’s Other Services
If you’re struggling, but social anxiety doesn’t resonate with you, consider learning more about therapy for generalized anxiety, depression treatment, or couples counseling.
I love showing people how to feel more joy, more contentment, and a deeper sense of connection. I love watching people transform their emotional lives, develop genuine compassion for themselves and others, and feel more capable of moving confidently toward their goals.
If you have questions or want to find out what this would look like for you specifically, check out the Rates & Details page to see if it looks like a good fit, and schedule a free 20-minute consultation.
Note: Thank you for reading this far! If you’re ever feeling alone in your social anxiety, just look for photos of “talking at a party.” When searching for photos to use in this post, about 80% of the results included alcohol. The popularity of alcohol for making it easier or more fun to talk to people should give us some comfort - we are absolutely not alone! That’s not to say that every drink is a self-medicating act, but I do think it wouldn’t be quite so common if a lot of people didn’t find socializing somewhat stressful.
Cheryl Delaney, MS, LPC
Cheryl Delaney is a Georgia-based therapist specializing in therapy for perfectionism through online counseling. She’s had lots of different forms of anxiety herself (including tons of personal experience with feeling insecure in conversations) and loves showing other people the way out. If you’re curious, there’s lots more information about Cheryl and her approach (TEAM-CBT), and you can always schedule a free consultation to ask questions about how therapy might work for you.