Overcoming Social Anxiety Step by Step + Mindfulness audio tapes?

shinghan

Active member
Has anyone tried this combination of treatments at the same time? In my mind I'm thinking that they'd kind of contradict each other. The first is CBT and the next is mindfulness. One is challenging/refuting negative thoughts whereas the other is accepting them for what they are, just thoughts and letting them float by without any judgement.
 

jaim38

Well-known member
I tried mindfulness but those negative thoughts kept coming and I find myself obsessively dwelling over them. So now I'm taking another approach, which is blocking negative thoughts, nip them early in the bud.
 

Quinzio

Active member
Has anyone tried this combination of treatments at the same time? In my mind I'm thinking that they'd kind of contradict each other. The first is CBT and the next is mindfulness. One is challenging/refuting negative thoughts whereas the other is accepting them for what they are, just thoughts and letting them float by without any judgement.

Your brain is a massive electric circuit.
You can't control your thoughts with so called will power just as you can't transform your Pentium IV into a Pentium V by running any software.

Unless you have cleared all hardware problems in your brain, provided it's possible, doing CBT is a useless waste of time.
 

IntheLabyrinth

Well-known member
Since you don't prescribe to CBT, how do you think one can overcome social anxiety? When you say cleared all of the hardware problems, do you mean getting rid of the memories or are you talking about replacing specific parasympathetic related nervous system structures? I think CBT is much harder to use for SA as opposed to something like spiders or clowns, but I wouldn't say it is worthless.
 

GinaBeana

New member
Has anyone tried this combination of treatments at the same time? In my mind I'm thinking that they'd kind of contradict each other. The first is CBT and the next is mindfulness. One is challenging/refuting negative thoughts whereas the other is accepting them for what they are, just thoughts and letting them float by without any judgement.

I own the series Overcoming Social Anxiety Step By Step from Thomas Richards, and I think it offers a good combination of negative thought stoppage and mindfulness. It teaches us to gently say to ourselves something along the lines of, "Oh, I'm having those negative, irrational thoughts again. They always lead me in the wrong direction. I'm going to focus on something else (an interesting, positive distraction) to take my mind off of these unhealthy, unhelpful thoughts." I've tried a few different methods of overcoming SA and this series has worked the best for me.
 
Top