How to Handle Networking Events Without Dread
Few situations concentrate social-anxiety triggers like a networking event: a room full of strangers, an explicit expectation to introduce yourself and mak...
The blog
Articles
Practical, honest guides to quieting the fear of being judged and building real connection.
How to Keep Friendships Alive When Reaching Out Feels Hard
Making a friend is one challenge; keeping the friendship alive is another, and for people who fear being a burden or who freeze at reaching out, existing f...
Mindfulness for Social Anxiety: Watching Thoughts Without Believing Them
Mindfulness has become a popular word, but for social anxiety it points to something specific and genuinely useful: the ability to notice your anxious thou...
How to Stop Comparing Your Social Life to Everyone Else's
Few things make social anxiety heavier than comparison: the sense that everyone else has the effortless friendships, the packed calendar, the belonging you...
How to Speak Up in Group Conversations
One on one, a socially anxious person can often manage. The group is where the fear multiplies. Around a table of several people, in a meeting, at a party,...
The Three Phases of Social Anxiety: Before, During, and After
Fear is not a single event. It is a system, a loop with moving parts. An anxious mind experiences its social fear as one solid wall of dread. A skilled min...
How to Accept a Compliment Without Deflecting
Someone pays you a genuine compliment, and before it can land, you deflect: oh, it was nothing, or you are just being nice, or you turn it into a joke. For...
Social Anxiety, Shyness, and Introversion Are Not the Same Thing
People use three words almost interchangeably when they talk about struggling socially: shy, introverted, and anxious. They are not the same, and untanglin...
Why Self-Compassion Beats Self-Criticism
Many anxious people believe that self-criticism is what keeps them functioning, and that if they eased up on themselves they would collapse into laziness a...
Anticipatory Anxiety: Why the Dread Before an Event Is So Bad
For many people with social anxiety, the worst part is not the event itself. It is the days before it. You have something on Saturday, and by Tuesday the d...