Treatment for Social Anxiety in Georgia
I’m Cheryl Delaney, and I’m a therapist who treats social anxiety using video therapy throughout Georgia.
Always On Edge Around People? Do you avoid conflict like your life depends on it?
It’s exhausting to constantly be on high alert, looking for any sign of conflict or disapproval. Social anxiety doesn’t always manifest as shyness or awkwardness. Many people excel at appearing happy and competent in social situations, while internally, they may be berating themselves for not being smart, witty, or interesting enough.
Feeling uneasy around other people can be particularly challenging because it’s hard to avoid social interactions altogether. And when we do successfully avoid them, we often end up feeling depressed.
Your discomfort is incredibly common and arises for good reasons. We’ve all felt the pain of exclusion, and our brains want us to avoid that experience at all costs. Unfortunately, this instinct can go too far and create the suffering of self-consciousness, panic, or increasing isolation.
If you're ready to feel more at ease and connected in all areas of your life, consider scheduling a free consultation. We can discuss your goals and what the process would look like for you specifically.
What Does Perfectionism Have to do with Social Anxiety?
If perfectionism is the suffering created by punishingly high standards, it’s understandable that it would cause problems in our relationships. We reasonably but mistakenly believe that we need to be impressive or funny, quick or confident, or else people won’t like us. We hustle to divert every possible disagreement or negative feeling to preserve our relationships as they are.
Perfectionism tells us we need high status or unimpeachable excellence to feel safe, so we spin our wheels trying to get everything right. All the while, it’s got the story exactly wrong. Following that script can never give us safety. It’s only when we can let our guard down, stop surveilling ourselves, and allow ourselves to be flawed (and amazing!) human beings that we can finally feel safe.
Feel at home as yourself, exactly as you are right now.
How Social Anxiety Therapy Can Help
That safety and comfort of real connection is so appealing, isn’t it? I’ve dealt with social anxiety myself, and I know how draining it is and how small it has made my life at times.
It’s possible to develop such a deep faith in yourself that the circumstances that trip you up today will instead be exciting.
It will take perseverance and courage on your part - you’ll have to face your biggest fears, and no one ever finds that easy. If you can find it in yourself to do that, you can experience the world and your relationships in entirely new ways.
Imagine feeling warm, at ease, and connected around people.
What would trips to the grocery store be like? How about parties or public speaking? And your closest relationships?
Social Anxiety has lots of components, and we can approach it using a few different models. Most likely, we'll use a combination of the approaches described below. We'll identify the unconscious scripts that are holding you back, understand the motivations driving the status quo, face your biggest fears, and consider the possibility that your anxiety is covering up another negative emotion.
Social Anxiety Treatment Using TEAM-CBT
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“This lady is judging me right now.” “I can’t believe I just said that! What was I thinking?” “God, I’m so awkward.” “They better not criticize me. I’ve done everything right.”
These might not be exactly the thoughts that run through your head, but I’m guessing they’re not too far off. They’re enough to wake you up in the middle of the night and get you to replay the conversations you had the previous day, looking for all your missteps and the people who are secretly angry with you.
Crushing your negative thoughts isn’t just a matter of “looking on the bright side.” We’ll see that there’s almost certainly a kernel of truth in each negative thought but that there are some parts of it that are unnecessarily harmful or lower your anxiety. We’ll use powerful techniques to sort out the true from the harmful. The TEAM-CBT model overall is complex but you don’t need to understand it all immediately for it to be effective.
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Exposure won't be sufficient on its own, but you will have to be willing to face your fears to recover fully. Some of the work I’ve done to decrease my social anxiety has included starting conversations with strangers on the street, standing on a bench waving my arms around on a busy street corner, and dancing by myself in a mall. None of these exact activities is a requirement–we’ll design our experiments together, based on your readiness and the relevance for you in particular–but I include them to give you a sense of what I’m talking about when I say ‘face your fears.’
If you have a fear like “if people knew what I’m really like, they would reject me,” testing that out will be part of treatment. If facing that down sounds horrifying, that's a good sign: it would likely give us results! At the same time, you'd be right to feel hesitant. We avoid the things we fear for excellent reasons.
If it sounds both horrifying and worth it in order to feel comfortable in your own skin, we’ll do great work together.
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The most powerful source of social anxiety is the desire to feel connected. We want to belong!
At the right intensity, that’s an incredible feature! (Humanity! I love us!) But when it’s turned all the way up, the fear that we don’t belong, that we can’t connect, it creates so much suffering.
Thinking through the good reasons the status quo is a crucial part of overcoming the unconscious resistance we all feel to changing these deeply held fears.
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Sometimes anxiety shows up to help us avoid other negative emotions–especially ones we think we aren’t supposed to have. Social anxiety usually comes with a heaping side order of conflict avoidance, in particular, and the intense urge to stay miles away from any conflict.
One moving and powerful element of treatment is relationship work. Learning to navigate difficult conversations and express your negative emotions skillfully will have ripple effects that are hard to imagine from where you are now.
What would it be like if you felt steady and calm during disagreements and capable of handling them in ways that brought you closer to the other person? What would it be like if you didn’t have to monitor every conversation for risks that it might head in the direction of conflict? Or if arguments with your partner were loving and kind?
This isn’t a scam or an empty promise–I feel confident that if you take on this work, it will be one of the most challenging things you ever do. I also feel confident that it will be one of the most rewarding.
Treating Your Anxiety Together
The process we’ll follow is methodical and flexible. It’s never exactly identical for any two people, but the big picture is repeatable, and the results are dependable. I’ve followed this path before, for myself and with clients, and it works.
My goal is not just to resolve the problem you’re facing today but to give you tools you can apply to the next problems that show up. When you leave therapy, I want you to know how to be your own therapist for life.
Let’s Talk.
Click below to schedule a free, 20-minute consultation.