does exposure really work?

[waine]

I know this lad who went to uni with me. He was a couple of years older than me. Now the thing is he said he had social anxiety. He was knowledgable about the course we were on and always answered questions in lessons. In breaks and lunchtime he would go with the course group (minus four or five people; there were 12 people on our course). He seemed to love talking. He had worked in retail prior to uni. He got on particularly well with a guy about 40 who to be honest i couldnt stand; he was one of those who loved talking and was a loudmouth too. He would often say out loud to the group that i wasnt talking much as if to get me to talk. (Little did he know that i was completely stressed out and paralysed by fear). At this time i was tired all the time from depression as well (and wasnt on paroxetine). I dont really rate exposure because i always tried.
I tried to go with the group at lunch. I dont tend to talk much and dont really enjoy talking. Even at home i am quiet.

Anyway the lad with social anxiety has since finishing uni gone to another uni for a phd (with his girlfriend who he met at the uni i went to) and been away to Austria without his girlfriend.

I just dont understand. Is it he has less severe social anxiety or has somehow overcome problem.

Has exposure e.g. at work helped you at all or made it somewhat easier at all

 

[Dronee]

To some degree yes... When the amount of exposure is just enough, but not overwhelming...

 

[sevenroses]

It works but you have to change you way of thinking first. Also when you do exposures it's best to start off filling out an exposure hierarchy with low-challenge exposures (level 0-3), medium challenge exposures (level 4-6), and high challenge exposures (level 8-10). It's best to start off with low challenge exposures then work your way up so you can be challenged but not overwhelmed. If you have a sense that you can repeat the exposure without major difficulty, you can then go to the next exposure on your exposure hierarchy.

What's important though is that exposure won't work if you aren't changing your maladaptive or inaccurate thoughts. If you're not changing the way you think about a situation, you're just exposing yourself to a situation over and over again and basically the less time you did it, you will feel the same amount of anxiety and fear that you did than the first time of you doing it, so it really gets you nowhere. It's nice to turn those maladaptive thoughts around and replace then with neutral/realistic/believable coping thoughts in their place. You don't wanna go too positive because your brain isn't going to believe that.

Also other tips about exposure is that it's best to stay in the fear-producing situation until your anxiety level starts to drop.

Another tip is try not to sabotage your recovery by diving into high challenge exposures right off the bat.

 

[Ignace]

Everyone has 'Social Anxiety' in some way. Who isn't shy when his pants drop in public ? No exceptions calculated. But you can barely call it anxiety, it's just shyness.

 

[tweetebird]

Waine - I wouldn't compare yourself to anyone else. I have noticed there are huge variances in the extent of someone's social phobia. Some are just shy sometimes, around strangers in a new place, while others are paralyzed by their phobia of people so much they can't leave their home, have no friends or way to support themselves. I have thought about exposure therapy with social anxiety. The fear we have is actually in our own minds, not just, say, a scary spider on the wall in front of us. It's a more complicated phobia because it is basically self inflicted. Yes, sometimes this is because of negative experiences, but everyone has negative experiences socially speaking, without it leading to such devastating states of mind. I think before exposure therapy, one must identify those sabotaging thoughts FIRST, because simply putting ourselves into anxiety inducing situations will only backfire if we are not prepared. Afterall, it is usually the anxiety itself that causes us to be awkward, say the wrong thing, go blank, shake etc..

Once we figure out that those thoughts are what we are combating, and we have a game plan on how to replace those thoughts with healthy thoughts based on truth rather than fears, then exposure therapy should begin, to put it into practice.

This is where I am still stuck. Those fears of mine have been validated so many times, I don't know if it is based in truth or not.