Social Anxiety Skills That Actually Help w/ Dr. Deborah Dobson

If you have social anxiety, you might struggle to talk to people, especially small talk. You might struggle to do public presentations or share your ideas. You might struggle to go places where you have to be around people or you might feel awkward or weird. Today, I'm really excited to have a special guest, Dr. Deborah Dobson. She is a specialist in social anxiety. She just wrote the book, Living Well with Social Anxiety. And I loved our conversation. I learned a ton from her about these really practical, easily approachable ways to work through social anxiety. So, I'm so excited to have this conversation. Thank you for being here and let's jump in. All right, Deb, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm so excited to talk about social anxiety. I feel like it's such a common uh situation that a lot of people deal with. So really grateful to have you here. Oh, thanks Emma. I'm really happy to be here today because this is one of my favorite topics to talk about social anxiety and also kind of related to social anxiety. Simply old shyness. Lots and lots of people are shy. socially anxious. It's a really, really common problem. Yeah. you affecting closing in on 8 to 10% of the population. Really, I'm not surprised. It seems to me like having a degree of anxiety around social situations is helpful. Like we should care what other people think. A little bit. We should be conscious of others and try to be concerned about maintaining good relationships with others. But at what point does it cross into being like not healthy? It's a really good question, Emma, because I think that people who are socially anxious have lots and lots of empathy. You know, they're really good at thinking about other people and what they're thinking. They're not so good at thinking about themselves. And so, a key component of social anxiety is worry about what other people think of you. And many people can relate to that. It would be kind of unusual if you didn't care at all about what other people think. But it's when it's so much that it's disabling. It's not caring only. It's thinking other people are judging. Other people are evaluating. Judging in a negative way, you know, not that other people think I'm great, but stupid. Other people think I'm awkward, uncomfortable. And so it's really being focused on other people negatively judging to the extent you're not even paying attention to other people. You're only focusing on how am I coming across? Am I embarrassing myself? Am I behaving stupidly or awkwardly or do I look uncomfortable? And so it's really being caught up in your own head. And that can really lead to lots and lots of avoidance. Social anxiety is avoidance of social situations and it can be all social situations or it can be quite specific might be only public speaking anxiety or but it could be all virtually all social situations leading to tremendous isolation. Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. And I really want to come back to this avoidance thing because avoidance fuels anxiety. Like I think my audience understands like how avoidance trains your brain to be more anxious. But can we step back just for a second? Would you say that thinking gets distorted? You mentioned that people with social anxiety, they think a lot of others and not of themselves, but then they often they also get stuck thinking about themselves and how they appear. What kind of common distortions do we see with this? Yeah, I'll just kind of list some of the common distortions because the many of the thoughts are distorted and focused on how you feel. So I look stupid. We don't know how we look to other people. I appear uncomfortable. I can't think of anything to say. Other people will judge me. Other people won't accept me. Other people will reject me. Nobody likes me. So those are some of the common distortions. So I better just be quiet. I better stay home. I'll never have relationships with other people. Mhm. Yeah. I remember as a kid I thought I was, and I know this term is not appropriate, but this is how I talked to myself as a teenager, was like, I'm a social retard. Like, I clearly am so awkward. I'm clearly incapable of having good friendships or things like that. Yeah. I think almost all adolescence and teens have those kinds of thoughts. And, you know, it's not until you really become self-aware. So anxiety kind of hits you at transition social anxiety at transition times like finishing high

school and moving on to the next step, you know, but it's easy to have those thoughts, you know, I'm a social reject. I am, you know, nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. Yeah, I guess I'll go eat worms. That's what I was going to say. But I did I'm not sure if people remember that song or not. Yeah. I don't know. I don't hear my kids singing that one anymore, so who knows? Sitting in the gardening worms. Yeah. Okay. So, so with social anxiety, people tend to assume other people are thinking terrible things about them. They tend to assume that there's something very weird or blaringly obvious that other people are noticing. Right. They tend to think that everyone's paying attention to them. Absolutely. Yeah. Everybody's staring at me. Yeah. And so those are some of the thoughts. And you know, we were just talking about the cycle of avoidance. So those thoughts lead to, well, I better not say anything. I better not go. And I think why would I go to a place where everybody hates me? And so I'm just going to avoid. Yeah. Can you give some examples of like what avoidance looks like? Because there's blatant avoidance which is like I'm not going to go out in public. do public speaking. I'm not going to speak in class. But there's also a lot more subtle forms of avoidance. Can you like describe some of both categories? Yeah, great question, Emma. There's all kinds of avoidance. So, the easiest one is I'm just not going to go. Um there's situation avoidance. So avoiding while you're actually in a social situation. So it might be sitting in the corner. It might be not saying anything, avoiding eye contact. It might be helping out in the kitchen, wanting to be useful, but you're avoiding the chitchat or the social interaction. It might be sitting in the basement playing video games with the kids. You know, it might be avoiding eye contact. It might be going for a few minutes and leaving early. It might also be relying on someone else. So relying on a confident person to do your talk. For example, going to a restaurant and having someone order for you. Yeah. Having someone else do the talking for you. And so there's lots and lots of kinds of avoidance. Other more subtle ones might be having a shot of alcohol before you go. Kind of having a way to loosen up, taking medication before you go. Um, you know, that might happen before the situation. The reason that's avoidance is it leads the person to avoid taking both the responsibility and the credit for what happens. So you can say, "Well, I did okay because of the alcohol or because of the drugs. It wasn't really me. " You know, and therapists have to be careful, too, because sometimes you can say, "Well, I couldn't do it without my therapist. I only was able to go to this event because my therapist told me what to say or what to do. " Avoidance is kind of tricky and it's sometimes hard to identify. That's so interesting. And it makes me think I can't put my finger on a specific movie, but I feel like there's these movies where the lead character is nervous or scared about something and then they're given a magical object, like this is your lucky stone, this is your magical object, and then they're able to like do the task, but then they attribute the ability to do the task to this magical stone. And then the climax is always like the stone gets lost or broken or something. And then they come to learn that they're able to do this on their own and they're going to be okay. You know, that's a really good point because it's really important for people to take credit for what they do and not give it away to some magical object. You know, we're talking here about what's called safety behaviors. And so that magical stone would be a safety behavior, like kind of like a good luck charm. You know, people use good luck charms all the time, but I'll give you an example that occurred to one of my clients. Um, she always came to an her appointment with the backpack and I never asked her what was in the backpack cuz she always carried the same things with her but she was carrying I think it was called the phobia and panic workbook in her backbook and it was interesting because it seems like well that's kind of a sensible thing to do. You know, I think if you're caught look up what to do but she was using that as her magic stone. She was thinking, well, I'm okay because I've got the an expert along with me in my backpack.

And she wasn't relying on herself to figure it out. And I think that the goal of living well with social anxiety is to take charge of it, to take responsibility for it, and trusting yourself. Hey, I'll be able to figure it out. And I think the key is not just learning how to avoid things less, but not give the credit away to things like therapists or other people like your confident friends, or, you know, things that have a certain magical quality to it. Yeah. Well, and I think my audience is familiar with this, but when we um believe or we have a thought that something's dangerous and then we take any kind of action to avoid that stimuli, to avoid people, whether that's like just looking at your phone or being really busy all the time, right? This avoidance can be very subtle. Yeah. Then after the social situation and we find out we survive, nothing bad happens our brain interprets this as meaning, oh, the only reason they didn't reject me is because I was like looking at my phone or the only reason I survived this interaction. Exactly. Is because I made sure to carry my panic and anxiety workbook in my backpack. And then our brain increases our anxiety around things. So the avoidance fuels actually greater anxiety and decreased confidence in our ability to handle situations. No, absolutely. And I think that avoidance helps in the short term. You know, it helps for those few moments that we're avoiding, but it really gets in the way in the long run. And I'm glad you mentioned the phone actually because I didn't mention that as probably the most common way to avoid. Um, it's so common and it's always accessible, but it really gets in the way. Um, you know, you want to take the credit and tell yourself, well, I survived and I didn't just survive because of my phone or because of my confident friend or because of the book in my backpack, but I survived and even not just survived, but did okay because of some things that I did, you know, not just because of these little behaviors. So, you know, I'd like to talk about some of the things one can do that are easy and accessible, you know, because when people hear about exposure therapy, you know, think that it's commonly used term and, you know, I've had lots of clients say, well, you know, on their first phone call, well, you're not going to make me do that exposure therapy, are you? You know, you know, it sounds kind of difficult and complicated and so, you know, I like to think about it is doing little things every day. You know, we don't do one big thing every six months. That's not going to help a whole lot. It's helpful to do little things every day. And, you know, sometimes I've called them random acts of exposure. You know, we hear the random acts of kindness campaign that is, you know, popular and it's good to be kind randomly, but random acts of exposure take advantage of everyday opportunities that arise. And you know, the main thing related to that is we have to remember to look around. You know, I think if we're anxious and focusing on how terrible we look, we're not going to look around. We're only going to be focusing on how am I coming across? What am I doing wrong? And so a easy antidote to that, you know, it's easier said than done is to really be present and really look around you and see what's going on in the world. Observe. You know, I think the first step is to observe your environment and observe other people. And related to that is little things like acknowledging someone else, smiling at someone else. And you know, sometimes people will say, "Well, I'll look stupid if I smile at someone else. " They're going to think I'm a you know, as you said earlier, social retard. But I think that if you take the risk of smiling at someone, they might just smile back. And you want to observe did they or didn't they? See it as a bit of an experiment. You know, a little bit easier than smiling might be just nodding. You know when you go on an elevator in the morning just nod at someone. You don't have to smile. And you could try eye contact. And I think that you know looking at them having eye contact you know and it's interesting online you know, it feels like eye contact but it's not exactly eye contact. And so you know an eye contact trick that I sometimes use, if you just look right between the eyes right at the forehead

it looks like eye contact but it's not quite. So it's a bit of a magic stone but it looks appropriate to the other person because if you're always, if you're always looking down, you'll see the sidewalk. You probably won't trip on the rocks, but you won't see anything else. And it feels like other people are staring at you. Yeah. So then if you look up, you kind of bring your bearing up, you notice people around you, and you spend a little bit of energy or focus on looking at other people, you realize they might be busy doing something else and not judging you. They might be like actually... They might be actually just happy to be there. They might be smiling. They might be dealing with their own issues. They might be upset for some other reason. But when we have our head down and we're just in our own heads, we think, "Well, I'm just such a terrible person or something like that. " Exactly. And it just feels like all eyes are on you. But if you look up, you realize they're not. You know, you, exactly. You know, it's surprising how little other people are thinking about you. Sometimes people have their own issues. They have their own thoughts or they might have their own anxieties, you know, they might be looking at and so, you know, and kind of interesting experiment is to walk through a place where there's quite a few people and kind of observe. You can play little games like how many people are looking at you, wearing glasses, hats, how many people look anxious, how many people don't. And so it forces the person to really be observant. Yeah. I love it. And then random acts of exposure like making yourself do a small hard thing every day. Is that what you... Well, yeah. I would say a small medium hard thing every day. Like, like a three or a four... Exactly. Yeah. So don't go for the hard things. Go for the slightly hard or medium things. Yeah. So you don't want to up and give a lecture to 300 people, you know, as your first step. Yeah. Right. So easy and often. Yeah. And I think, you know, there's a lot of things I don't do right as a parent, but I have a 10-year-old who is pretty anxious, and I consistently make her go to school or order her meal at the restaurant. It's within her window of tolerance, you know, but it's like make her go to an activity she feels nervous about with her church and then afterwards she usually has a great time. She's like, "Oh, that was actually amazing. " You know, and I think those are all great because, you know, I think often times people in their wanting to be kind will help people avoid and so order for a person or say, "Well, it's fine not to go. You can stay in home and play video games or watch TV" But that doesn't help in the long run. And so reducing avoidance regularly, frequently um you know to do regular everyday things is really helpful. I think that you know if a person you know it's great if she orders in the restaurant. Some people may find they choke up ordering and so ordering their drink rather than the whole meal. A step above that would be making a complaint about a meal, asking for hot sauce or something that's just slightly above the normal level. I sometimes say to people, you know, if it's easy if you're talking to the most confident person in the room because they're going to take steps to draw out the conversation. They'll probably be quite socially skilled and it's going to be easier, but that's a way of avoidance and that's going to make you feel less confident rather than more confident. So, an alternative is to look around the room, you know, and this could be true for your daughter, anyone. Pick up the most anxious looking person in the room and go talk to them because they will appreciate it and you'll feel better for it and you'll be able to practice some of the social skills. Yeah. So, do something that's a little bit difficult but not too difficult. Oh, I love that approach to exposure therapy. I mean, exposure therapy seems really intimidating. And it's interesting because everyone has their own things that make them comfortable and uncomfortable. I actually made a video a year or two ago about exposure therapy where I went and um practiced taking falls at the gym, rock climbing, like I'm a climber and I used to do lead climbing where you take bigger

falls and then I stopped when I had kids and I got very anxious about it. So I started practicing um by taking six-inch falls and then you know, 12-inch falls and that worked but nobody liked this video and I think it was because for them like the idea of rock climbing and taking falls was maybe like a 10 on their scale of distress. But for me, like taking a 10-ft fall would be much more comfortable than making a complaint at a restaurant. You know, it's interesting, Emma, I once had um a student that I was supervising and she was a climber cuz I'm in the Rockies as well. People do these outrageously difficult things like ice climbing, wall climbing and she gave me a gift of rock climbing lessons, which I actually went to. It was terrifying. But I once had a client who would do these outrageously difficult things. He would be able to jump out of an airplane with a parachute on a pair of skis. Okay, great. Yeah. Right. But he couldn't talk to people. He couldn't ask somebody on a date or to go for coffee. I think there's very little relationship between fear of physical situations and fear of social things. People fear being vulnerable in front of other people and being judged sharing their emotional response with other people. And so remember again small things, medium things regularly often. You know, it's like practicing learning a new language. With exposure therapy has a bit of a bad reputation, I think, but if you liken it to learning a new language, you know, we wouldn't expect ourselves to do it over a weekend. It takes time. It takes practice. It takes kind of retraining. And so, give yourself a break. It's going to take some time. And so if you focus on other people, looking at other people eye contact is not difficult, you know, say hello to a cashier at a grocery store. Start a conversation with someone on the bus. You know someone that you'll not meet ever again. You know that and you can say to yourself, well if they think I'm weird, so what? It doesn't have to matter. Yeah, that's some good advice. For me, like learning to be more assertive has been slow, like learning a language. And the other day I was coaching soccer. It's like little kids soccer. So the coaches are also the refs. And the other coach came in and was like, "Hey, I don't want to do corner kicks. Like we should just start like just keep the game moving. If the ball goes out of bounds, we just bring it back in and keep playing. " And I was like, "Well, my purpose with these seven-year-olds is to teach them like how the game works, actually works. Like, we're learning rules. It's not so much about scoring. It's like, let's learn how soccer works. " And he was like, "No, no, no. " Yeah. He's like, "No, it just slows the game down too much. " And I was like, "No, we're going to follow the rules. Like, we're going to use the rules. " Yeah. And he was like, "Okay, whatever. " And I was like, I did it. I was so proud of myself. Like, "No, we're going to do. A lot of it depends on the circumstances and the situation. It can be difficult with somebody that comes across as super confident. You may know that they're wrong. But if it's presented in a certain way, it's hard to say, "Hey, I think you're wrong. I don't want to do it that way. " A year ago, I would have just gone along with it. Yeah. So, it's like, it's like, I'm like, and it's not a big deal, right? It's freaking seven-year-old soccer. It's not a big deal. But all the other coaches were doing corner kicks and like that was the rules. Like that's what we're doing. Exactly. I was proud of myself for the slow and gradual progress I'm making, being more assertive. Exactly. You know, and I think you gave the example a few minutes ago about falling six inches and practicing that. You know, that's kind of like giving yourself permission to make mistakes as well or to literally kind of fall. You know, I had a client once who was practicing making mistakes. You know, for example, purposely spilling a drink in a restaurant. Or sending something back that you don't like or don't want. You know, I think it's easy to be taken advantage of and be really harsh on yourself. So, you want to give yourself credit. Yeah. Well, and that's like I don't want to spend too much time on my own stories because I've got some other questions I really want to ask you. But I think like as I've thought about my own anxiety and I've looked at how I was in the past and how I'm growing as a human being, I think in the past I was very much trying to control. I was

trying to control and make sure I never messed up hurt anyone's feelings and make sure I never looked awkward and make sure like that's what that was my goal. I was like, if I could only be perfect enough, then then I wouldn't feel anxious anymore. As I've matured and grown and worked, I've come to be more like trust is better than control. Like I trust that even if I do make a mistake or if other people judge me or if things go wrong, I'll still trust that like it'll be okay. And I had this experience a few weeks ago in the beginning of October. I was invited out to Harvard. Oh boy. To be on a panel and I for 10 years I've had four kids in 10 years. I've mostly just said no to all these speaking opportunities I've had. I don't love public speaking. I'm on YouTube, but I get to work in my own office on my computer by myself, right? So, I go out to Harvard. The topic was easy. It wasn't even like a mental health topic. It was like how to become a social media creator. I was like, cool. I know how to do that. And my main goals were like don't say something offensive and like do say something helpful. And somehow I managed to say something that like definitely landed wrong. And I was in a room full of social justice warriors who made sure to let me know. And it's not that they were wrong and I was right. It's that I showed my naivety in public at Harvard. And what was different for me was afterwards I felt like more embarrassed than I felt in like 10 years, right? It was a good, strong dose of embarrassment. And as I worked through that, I kept saying to myself, you know what, Emma, this is just an opportunity to keep practicing and like learning and like keep showing up. I wanted to never show my face again. Instead I went back and I kept talking with people and we had a lot of conversations where I was like, "Did I did I sound like a racist? " And they're like, "No, you did not sound like racist. " Like, I had all these opportunities to kind of clarify like my experience. And because I handled that embarrassment with more like I don't know, trust that it was going to be okay. Even if I did make the mistake, I was like, "Okay. " Like a day and a half later, I was like, "It's okay. It's okay. " Instead of like a year of suffering around this. Well, you know, that's a really good example because I mean, you went in giving yourself lots of instructions about what to do, what not to do, and the, you know, the more we focus on what not to do, it's more likely we're going to do it. You know, there's a Canadian novel where, you know, the main character is invited to the dinner of his fiance, and she gives him all kinds of directions about how to behave and what to do and what not to do. And of course, he finds himself extremely anxious because that's all going to heighten your anxiety. And he does all the wrong things. You know, he messes up and is so angry at himself. But you know a phrase that I sometimes like to use is be perfectly imperfect because perfection is not possible and it creates a whole lot of anxiety and perfectionism will create avoidance because if you expect yourself to be perfect, why do it? It's not possible. And another way to think about it too is if you see a perfect a perfectly socially skilled person, you're the most socially skilled person that you can imagine. Are they going to be likable? approachable? You know, are they going to be someone that you're going to talk to? And I think that if a person makes a few mistakes and takes responsibility for them, you know, that makes them more human. And it's kind of good to be human, I think, in all these situations. So, you know, I think we worry a lot. You know, you talk about the social justice warriors. I like that term, but I, you know, I've had that same thought, too. Am I going to use the wrong word or say something that is perceived as racist? You know, I think that terminology changes quite frequently and sometimes we get it incorrect or not up to date and we get called out on it. Yeah. And I just like, yeah. I made sure I apologized. I expressed that I have blind spots and I'm open to learning. And then we had more conversations and it was cool. And someone was like, "Yeah, let's go. " Like, "Let's have this conversation. " So, that's great. And I learned about an area I hadn't thought about before. But I think you're right. Like the most relatable the most enjoyable people to be around make a ton of social mistakes every

hour probably. Exactly. Yeah. They're the people we enjoy being with. Exactly. You know, they might be very funny, but they sometimes tell a joke that is a little bit off color or, you know, something. Or they interrupt someone or they like, yeah. They'll interrupt or they'll just kind of like not really notice what someone else is thinking or, you know, like or they might, yeah, not think about another perspective and we still like them, but we have this distortion around like ourselves. You know and I've done lots of social anxiety groups and I've had done an exercise that I call the fine art of interruption because socially anxious people, when you think about what do you do when you're feeling really anxious and want to join in, you know, you sit or stand at the periphery of a group of people and you maybe have a brilliant thought and you want to say it but you hesitate and the moment passes so you wait again and you wait again. I think it's important to be able to interrupt and learn how to do it gracefully and tactfully and sometimes not always. You know, I think that that's okay. Like the biggest thing is to be engaged in being observant of the world being observe people around you and look for opportunities to interact in some way. You know, starting at things that are slightly difficult like eye contact, smiling, starting a conversation, focus outward instead of inward. If someone's experiencing social anxiety, how or like physical signs of anxiety, maybe they're sweating or blushing, which people with social anxiety worry about so much. How can you still manage to be social when you're experiencing physical signs of anxiety? Yeah. No, great question because I think that physical signs of anxiety are common. Certainly blushing can be quite visible depending on, you know, the situation and the lighting and coloring and so on, but it can be visible. Um, it feels more visible than it actually is. But I think that blushing, trembling, like shaky hands, sweating a lot, having a really, really dry mouth so much that it's hard to speak. So, there's lots of physical signs of anxiety and they may be present much of the time or they may just hit you off guard. Like sometimes they just happen totally out of the blue. Giving a presentation and it suddenly hits you. It's okay to take a pause. I think that if depending on the circumstances, if you're doing a lecture, which most socially anxious people aren't going to be doing, but you might just have a drink of water, you might just take a deep breath. I think that it's just important to pause. I think that you can under certain circumstances take a break. For example, if you're having a panic attack, extreme anxiety, you can just excuse yourself for a few moments and go to the washroom. And while you're in the washroom, you know, give yourself a thought such as, you know, I'm giving a break. It's not that I look so stupid. It's that I'm truly, you know, be empathic towards yourself. But then a couple little things you can do while you're even in a situation sometimes do something that causes a different physical sensation. So in the bathroom, do 10 jumping jacks, shake your hands vigorously, run your hands under really cold water. You know, if you can't leave the situation, say that you're um sitting around boardroom table or are in a job interview or something, certain things you can do under the table. You can clench your hands always take a breath. You can always pause. Say, "Excuse me, could you repeat what you just said? " Um, some people like to um have really, really sour candy in their pocket. Something that causes an alternative sensation. It's kind of grounding and focuses you on something else. Yeah. An interesting thing about really sour candy is it makes you salivate, which is kind of the opposite of that sympathetic reaction and that can also trigger like nervous system calming because... Exactly. Yeah. And you know another kind of easy thing you can do is you can name your emotions. Oh, I'm feeling really anxious right now. It's kind of, you say you can say it out loud sometimes because naming something actually causes a bit of distance. Yeah. And it helps just a wee bit. I appreciate that. You know, I think people might be surprised to know this about me because I'm on social media, but really my work is in a room by myself with my computer much of the time. But like sometimes when I am presenting, I get shaky like I get quite shaky. Yeah. And um I like

to reframe it by saying this means I'm excited. Uhuh. I like that actually. So relabeling. Yeah. You know, and doing it you lots of different relabels. Like I think that if you suddenly won a lottery ticket or you suddenly were told, well, in 10 minutes you're catching a flight to Hawaii or something, you know, might get all shaky too, but you relabel it as anticipation, as excitement. This is great rather than this is awful. I think the thing that I see people getting stuck on is if they're like, "Oh my gosh, this is a catastrophe that I'm shaky or that I'm blushing. This is terrible. I can't do this. I have to make this go away. " That usually leads to more uh the anxiety cycle spinning. Sure. If you start to label it as awful, it'll you know, you'll probably leave. You know, I mentioned, you know, go to the bathroom for a few minutes to do some grounding. It's important to go back to the situation because if you leave, it's very, very difficult to go back next time. Right. And so go back, even if you go back just for a short time, but you want to make sure that the anxiety is a little bit better before you leave. Such good advice. I'm so glad you brought that up. And I think that does take us to like what do you say to yourself in these situations? I mean, I mentioned one of the things I say to myself like this just means I care a lot about these people and what I'm saying. But I think that's true. I think that if you didn't care, you wouldn't be anxious. Yeah. You know, people who are socially anxious have lots of empathy and really care about other people. And so, I think that's a good relabel. I'm anxious because I care. I think it's pretty natural to want other people to like you. But I sometimes will say to clients or people in general, you know, well, who are having the thought, well, they don't like me. And I'll say, well, do you like everybody you've ever met? And, you know, I think that would be, you know, no one's going to say, well, I just love everybody I've ever met. I think it's okay if some people don't like you so much. Does it have to matter? And so... And that takes us like that's Albert Ellis, right? Like Albert Ellis came up with his musts and he said, you know, a faulty form of thinking is to say everyone must like me and approve of me or else it's terrible. It's a catastrophe. I can't show up. I can't be myself. Exactly. I think that not everybody's going to like you or me, and that's okay. Um, I don't like everyone. I like most people, but there's some people that I might not. And so, you know, that's one thing to say to yourself. Tell yourself, too, that feelings are not facts. You know, I may or thoughts feel anxious doesn't mean I look anxious. You know, feeling a certain way doesn't mean at all that it's obvious to people. Even if you're blushing and trembling and sweating and have a super dry mouth, other people don't really notice. Often people are caught up in their own world and they're looking at you. You know, it's a bit daunting to say, "Well, people aren't thinking about me. They don't really care so much about me. " But it can be freeing as well. So thoughts are not facts. Feelings are not obvious. And it's important to be kind to yourself. You know, if you're trying the random acts of exposure, give yourself credit. Oh, yeah. Be kind to yourself. Be empathic towards yourself. You know, say things to yourself that you would say to somebody else that's having a hard time. Yeah. Can you give some examples of that? I think this is a great thing to finish up on. If we're taking the route, if we're not doing the avoidance route and we're doing the random tiny acts of exposure, how do you reinforce that positivity inside of yourself? I think that recognizing what you did, you know, I think somehow keeping track of it, you know, well, I did, you know, three random acts of exposure today and I did none last week. So recognize that you're making progress. You know, anxious people often say, "Well, I did that. It's no big deal. Everybody could do it and they all do it all the time. " And so recognizing... Constant minimizing. Exactly. So recognizing if it's tough for you, then it's hard and that means you're brave. So doing random acts of exposure, you're brave. I think if you show up, you're brave. And so being kind, being empathic, and not minimizing and trying to not catastrophize either because it's easy after you've done something. Like let's say you started a conversation in the supermarket and you go home think well I must have looked like the

stupidest geek ever. You know, why did I do that? Well, you know nobody talks to people in public places anymore and so say, well, I practiced and that's great. And if somebody doesn't like me or disapprove, I don't care and I don't know actually cuz we don't know what other people think. Yeah. Or we don't know how they see us. Right. And then what you did as well is you also got feedback in your example and so you asked a few people well, how did I come across? You know in certain circumstances, asking someone we trust that we can get feedback and that's useful and sometimes they'll say, well, you may say, well, you know, last week at that event, you know, I said the stupidest thing. What did you think about? And they'll say, well, what in the world was iot? So they have no memory of it whatsoever. Exactly. Like for other people it's not that big of a deal. Exactly. In that situation I got a lot of feedback from people saying, "Well, Emma, actually we knew exactly what you were trying to say. We were just taking issue with the wording or something like that, you know, with the nuance. " So a lot of people gave me feedback like that, but I still like felt it intensely and called my dad and cried. And he told me a story about a time he was in China and gave a speech and something awkward happened and he felt very ashamed to know. We've been there, done that. Yeah. Well, awesome. Can you tell us a little bit more about your book and where to find it? Okay. Well, I have a copy right here. I can hold it up. I had an opportunity to write this book actually. I really like the concept of the living well series that Guilford is putting out because it's the concept is that people with various kinds of mental health problems, including social anxiety, you know, certainly make can make great progress can recover well with therapy. However, they often will have residual symptoms and may during times of transition term times stresses may continue to have symptoms of social anxiety and people don't always have access to therapy either. And so I think the idea is that people um it's important to take ownership over whatever issues you have. We were talking about that earlier. It's important not to give away credit. You take both the responsibility and the ownership and the credit. And there's lots and lots of practical strategies, kind of little things people can do every day, like, we're talking about to help themselves with social anxiety. So this book can really do everyday things in terms of social skills, in terms of their thoughts, in terms of ways to reduce avoidance, and leading to practical strategies to deal with friendships, to deal with intimate situations with partners or dating, educational, and work situations. Just trying to be as practical and hands-on as I could to really help people struggling with social anxiety and with shyness. And it comes from having worked with socially anxious clients for decades actually trying to help them figure it out because sometimes therapy can be a little bit too general or theoretical, and clients are left saying, well, exactly what do I do? Yeah. Exactly how do I approach this? So that's kind of in a nutshell. In a nutshell. I love it. What the book is about. That's great. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for your time and bringing your expertise to our audience. We're so grateful to have you and um we'll definitely put a link to the book in the description and in the show notes and um you guys can all find it there. Okay. Well, thank you very much. My pleasure.