S7 E7: Exploring Social Anxiety

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• EPISODE RESOURCES

• EPISODE TAKEAWAYS

  • Social anxiety often reflects a strong desire for something so normal, the desire for social connection, which we all need and seek out throughout our entire lifetime.

  • Some of the best moments of our life oftentimes involve a connection or relationship with another person.

  • There can be so much ambiguity and uncertainty when it comes to social interaction and relationships, which can fuel social anxiety. This can exist within the context of face to face and even more during online interactions. Try to not judge yourself so harshly for experiencing social anxiety. 

  • Everyone has social anxiety to a degree. Even the most popular or famous people could simply be masking their social anxiety and fear of judgment.

  • Social anxiety can feel like a problem when it interferes with life; such as, making a typical experience feel like a looming catastrophe, your mind could go blank, you may avoid opportunities to connect with other despite a desire to connect. 

  • Instead of seeing social anxiety and the emotion of anxiety as an ‘enemy’ you are trying to get rid of, this episode can help you to better understand the nature of social anxiety and perhaps makes some shifts and changes to how you experience and relate with others, which by doing so may alter the way in which social anxiety is experienced. 

  • Social anxiety is a fear of judgment or rejection from others. 

  • It helps to break down an abstract idea like social anxiety into smaller parts in order to understand what makes up the experience of becoming anxious around other people. 

  • Social anxiety can occur before a social situation ruminating about and anticipating a potential negative experience. This can be a form of trying to feel more in control of an upcoming experience that may feel out of control.

  • Out of the womb we care about connection and not being rejected. It is hard wired to care. Children who cry when they perceive they are not liked by their peers is nearly the same experience adults have.

  • It helps to recognize the concerns and worries the person is trying to avoid. Then, recognize what is a real, accurate appraisal of a threat and what is less likely or an irrational appraisal of what is a threat. It also helps to recognize when the way others act toward or around you is not about you - i.e., personalizing it. 

  • It can help to accept that judgment very well may happen rather than expect that it will never happen, which is unrealistic.

  • It is impossible to predict every social situation as life, relationships, back stories, and context is constantly changing and evolving not only for you but for all the people around you. Variability is the norm. Trying to live up to some standard all the time does not seem reasonable. 

  • Social media has created a platform for labeling interpersonal experiences across a whole spectrum of what is considered positive to negative. This can create so much pressure to not do something “wrong” or judged in a certain way. It can create a hypervigilance that inhibits natural social interactions. While it can help to avoid harming others or being harmed, taken to an extreme can contribute to unnecessary anxiety and even prevent positive experiences. 

  • Aiming to have simple positive intentions, such as being kind and getting to know someone, without an agenda, can make it easier to interact without social anxiety when breaking the ice to meet someone new. 

  • It can help to take the pressure off from making everything a goal and task in interactions. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) guides people to focus more on values and intentions rather than outcomes and goals.

  • Social anxiety can also come from not having clarity around a sense of self and/or not being able to communicate that. We can also get lost in labels that we think others will value. 

  • It can be a vicious cycle where you do everything you could to fit in and be liked rather than being more authentic, leading to a constant attempt to change yourself to be liked, contributing to social anxiety rather than relieving it.

  • Values and authenticity does not have to be performative or even too rigid in how you present yourself. It's just a way of living and being, and it can even evolve and shift over time and across contexts. 

  • It can help to peel the layer of the onion back to understand values. For example, wanting to be popular may actually be hiding the value of wanting simply to feel connected to others. Popularity may not even lead to genuine connection with others.

  • Genuine confidence and genuine connection may not be superficial interactions. 

  • It can be difficult or conflicting to not fit the mold in a particular context or group. A person may not be one thing or have just one part of their personality and being. It can take some negotiation and resolution within yourself to figure out how to be yourself in these situations.

  • Connection is one the 6 C-s of the positive youth development literature. 

  • There are so many different ways to connect with others that we can consider rather than assume there is only one way, which can create pressure. It can be so taxing and draining trying to connect in just one way.

  • Healthy planning and anticipating could bleed into ruminating, obsessing, and anxiety when its beyond what is reasonable to predict everything. Its sort of like sport psychology - and athlete who already knows how to play their sport could overly plan leading to a lack of confidence and not being present in the performance. Similar to social situations, it can help to accept that over preparing (or fixating on outcomes) can interfere with confidence and trusting that you can simply do the best you can and that is enough. Getting too hooked on what is planned can interfere with spontaneity and naturally being in the flow of the interaction.

  • After a social interaction try to avoid obsessing over the perceived outcomes. Rather, reflect on the situation in terms of how your mind was working in those moments so you can learn and adjust for next time. You can understand what goes through your mind, your intentions, your perceptions, expectations, assumptions, etc. that contributed to feeling socially anxious. Then, make shifts for next time.

  • Alexis likes the children's book “Thanks for the Feedback,” by Julia Cook, where the main character gets used to getting feedback about his interactions to make adjustments. 

  • Its a long term process to work through social anxiety.

  • It can help to not put too much expectation on the other person too fulfill too much of your own needs.

  • Being clear around expectations could help.

  • There are so many ways people can avoid the perceived possibility of being judged. For example, avoiding an activity, avoiding attention on yourself,  overdoing something, using substances, trying to portray yourself as perfect, ending a conversation prematurely, etc. 

  • Social anxiety can make an everyday interaction feel as if its a make or break experience or as of other people truly care so much about something so inconsequential. 

  • It can help to break the patterns of avoidance, even the subtle forms of avoidance. The more something is avoided the more the anxiety can fester as imagination and overthinking runs wild. 

  • Exposure therapy helps to realize that 1) the perceived danger was not as bad as expected and now the anxiety can recalibrate to not be so triggered so intensely and 2) even if something perceived as negative happens that it can be coped with and not be the worst possible thing to happen. Again, you can do exposure in a way that is based in your values and aiming to be more self confident rather than trying to get others to like you. Small steps of reducing avoidance can feel more possible and even feel very satisfying. 

  • It can help to be patient in uncomfortable or awkward situations as things can become more natural over time. It can help to not make generalizations and give up completely. 

  • It makes sense why social anxiety has gotten worse in the digital age where everyone has a camera and it seems like everyone knows everything about everyone.

  • Social anxiety can lead people to think about yourself so much, its almost like becoming self centered. 

  • Another way to help social anxiety is to begin the process of feeling self assured. It takes time to love oneself and allow yourself to feel not only strong but also allowed to be vulnerable.

  • Some people could avoid therapy due to social anxiety when therapy is the very thing that could help with social anxiety in the long run. Its important to know that therapists are not there to judge you. Ideally, therapy is a non judgmental safe space.

  • Sometimes people could have gone through invalidating, manipulative, or traumatic experiences that contribute to social anxiety. This can lead to social anxiety behaviors as protective coping mechanisms from these past experiences. It could be difficult to trust others.

  • You can ask is your action driven by fear or intention? Anxiety or intuition?

  • You can approach social situations and even conflict in smaller doses to make it feel more manageable. Even going out for a shorter period of time and/or advocating for your needs to make a social situation feel more comfortable. Learn how to navigate conflict to feel more secure. Practice.

• TRANSCRIPTION

  Gerald Reid  00:05

  Welcome back to season seven of the Reid Connect-ED Podcast co hosted by myself, licensed psychologist Dr Gerald Reid and my sister educational therapist Alexis, Reid providing resources on topics related to mental health education and sport and performance psychology, firstly, the desire to belong and feel connection is paramount. If you're human, you care about connection. Maybe your desire for connection and experience of connection varies and fluctuates across your lifetime, but straight out of the womb. We seek connection. It is so important to our human experience. Now, if you experience social anxiety, that means you truly care a lot about something that is just so normal to care about human connection. And the best moments of our life usually revolve around other people. Some of the best moments in life could be when you feel comfortable around other people with shared experiences, and it's common to have social anxiety. We are social beings. It's not easy to feel comfortable with other people. Feeling trust is something that could take time to build or discover, and to varying degrees for different people based on their lived experiences, it's hard to figure out how you fit in with other people or in different types of groups, and generally it's simply difficult to understand social dynamics. What does someone think about you? I don't know. They never tell me. Are they acting this way towards me because it's something about me, or is this something about maybe they're just acting out their own stuff, or maybe they're projecting or displacing something onto me. Will this interaction lead to a relationship? I don't know. Will we end up liking each other? Are we going to have conflict? Should I advocate for myself, or should I maintain harmony within the group or within the relationship? Will they like me if they learned about different parts of me that I'm embarrassed about? Okay, you get it. These questions create uncertainty because there is often no clear answer to these questions, and sometimes it can take time for these questions to be answered. So hence, with this uncertainty comes anxiety. And by the way, all of these questions can be applied, not only during face to face interactions, but they can also happen within the context of online or virtual messaging, which can become even more complicated. So don't beat yourself up if you're feeling social anxiety. It's very common. It is a human experience. We all have it to varying degrees. Some just mask it better than others. In fact, even the most famous or popular people you may know or heard of, they may even be hiding their own social anxiety without you knowing it's very easily masked. And social anxiety can feel so interfering in our lives.

  Gerald Reid  02:50

  You know this is where the problem comes into play. It can make an otherwise typical experience feel like you're standing on the edge of a cliff. It can make your mind go blank. It can make you avoid opportunities to connect, when, ironically, the very thing that you want to do is to connect. Imagine that avoiding what you actually want because of this anxiety. It's heartbreaking and so many potential friendships, potential job opportunities, potential romantic partners, even hobbies sometimes do not come to be simply because of this experience of social anxiety that we may have a hard time grappling with or understanding or working through. And again, social anxiety is very common right now. There's tons of youth, young adults, adults of all ages, who wish they could be more connected with other people. I want to be clear, social anxiety is not a monster. I don't want this to sound like the emotion of anxiety is your enemy. Rather, we hope, through this episode that we can learn about social anxiety. You can learn about yourself, perhaps, and by doing so, you can make some shifts around the way that you experience interactions with other people, and social connection knowledge is power, especially when it comes with a little bit of courage, little bit of encouragement and a little bit of support. We have to see social anxiety for what it is and make sense of it. And it's understandable how you can feel devastated when you don't feel like things are working out socially, but look, life is a long term process. Hopefully, this episode will give you some hope, some ideas that you can take with you in your social life, one day at a time, one month at a time, one year at a time, even one segment or chapter of your life at a time we are all learning, we are all growing, and it doesn't happen fast. Life requires patience as we grow and as we evolve. So this is part two. Alexis and I are going to be talking about social anxiety for the second time on this podcast. This time we're in the amazing cyberstand Recording Studios.

  Gerald Reid  05:00

  Is with our producer, Rob Whitaker, and in this version of the episode, we're going to try to provide you with some ideas that you can consider and perhaps even incorporate into your own therapeutic process, or in terms of just your life as you work through social anxiety.

  Alexis Reid  05:22

  You

  Alexis Reid  05:25

  Jen, so before we get started, what is the context of today? The reason why Jerry and I really wanted to come back and revisit social anxiety is because right now, we're in November of 2025

  Alexis Reid  05:38

  and in our practices and even in our personal lives, we've been interacting with so many people who are describing their experience of feeling really just minimized in different social situations, minimized in a way that they feel like they don't always feel comfortable fully expressing and Being themselves, or they're not even sure how to interact in different social settings or context in general, whether it's a student at school in a traditional educational environment, whether it's somebody at work, somebody in you know, we're going into the Thanksgiving holiday as we're recording, you know, thinking about going into a familial environment, where you might not see people all the time, and all of a sudden you're going to be together, or maybe you're going to be alone in a smaller, more intimate setting. And in all these different contexts, it can feel really uncomfortable, right? There's a lot of things that come up. So in the context of today, as we're talking about social anxiety. I we're going to paint this picture even further, but just before we get started, I really want us to think about and reflect on these different situations where some kind of social anxiety, some anticipation of being judged in a social setting or environment, makes us feel stifled, makes us feel like we have to inhibit and pause, or maybe hide or mask parts of ourselves, because it just feels so uncomfortable for so many different reasons. So before we dive more into social anxiety, Gerald, I'm going to put you on the spot a lot here today, because you're the expert in this from your mental health background, and we're gonna be very careful not to go into Professor role, but I'm sure part of that will come out here too. Can you define, actually, what social anxiety is? Because, as we're even introducing this episode, in my head, I keep thinking about how I often teach teachers and caregivers and parents not to always use the word anxiety, right? We've talked about that a lot here on the podcast, that sometimes if we give this word or label too much power, it can sometimes feel more clinical than maybe our experience actually is. But for social anxiety, it's actually a pretty common term that almost any of us can experience across our lives, even if we're not diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the definition of social anxiety and maybe the differentiation and how we even use that term. You know, that's really interesting, even when I work with people who have social anxiety in a clinical setting and therapy, the word social anxiety actually does not come up very often in our work together. Oh so interesting. Yeah, I would say it comes up in the context of monitoring their progress. You know, how is this the anxiety, you know, week by week, or month

  Alexis Reid  08:35

  to month, as colloquially, like we talk a lot about, like, Oh, I feel socially anxious. Or, you know this is coming up for me, just in a normal conversation with people.

  Gerald Reid  08:45

  Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, the reason how I think I talk about therapy with my students and how I understand therapy for myself is that, you know, you want to break down something abstract and something that feels overwhelming into smaller parts. And when we say social anxiety, you know, like I said, it's not a monster, it's not this thing that's your enemy. There's, there's parts to what the experience actually is. And so some of those parts, you know, if we were to actually break them down and these, this is where the work comes in, right? If you just say, I have social anxiety, there's not much you can do about that, right? Maybe you just want to, like, take some deep breaths or kind of try to get rid of it. But in terms of therapy, that's not necessarily just what therapy is. Therapy is to try to understand, where is this coming from, what are the parts of it, and how can we begin to resolve, you know, what's contributing to it, and how can you begin to work through and overcome, you know, the stuck points that you get into when it comes to your life situations.

  Alexis Reid  09:44

  So, so far, I'm hearing like it's important to label your experience and describe what's happening for you, but not just to, like, stop there with the label or the description.

  Gerald Reid  09:53

  Yes, I mean, certainly in the therapeutic setting, that's so important. You know, you know, my job is not to just, basically, just. Talk about the fact that they have social anxiety, that's not going to really do much for them. My job is to help them to begin to talk openly and honestly about all the components. So there's many components, right? There's, there's aspects of, you know, the thought process that people go into situations with. I mean, we've talked about this on the first episode, but social anxiety happens before a social situation. In terms of people will kind of ruminate and in some ways obsess over how a situation might go, and they kind of overly prepare, or they think so much about it, trying to prepare themselves for the situation. It happens before a situation.

  Alexis Reid  10:38

  This is the another term that I use frequently, again, even if somebody's not diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, is like this anticipatory stress or anxiety, like worrying about something that may or may not happen in the future Exactly.

  Gerald Reid  10:52

  And again, like, I won't just say, you know, you're anxious coming into the situation. I'm like, Okay, tell me what is actually going through your hip, what is your mind trying to do leading up to this situation? And, you know, oftentimes it revolves around some sort of wanting to feel safer or wanting to feel more in control of a situation that oftentimes does not feel in control. Because, as I said in the introduction, social situations are so uncertain. You know, there's no equation, a math equation to explain how every social situation is going to go, there's so much nuance to it, you know, and so, so, so there's a sense of not liking lack of control, and feeling, you know, the and the worry. And again, like worry is different than just feeling anxiety. Worry is a thought process. The worry is this fear of ultimate judgment, right, about being excluded and judged, right? Those are two of our as human beings, two of our biggest fears that we have. You know, up there with other physical harms that could be done to us, like feeling socially rejected and judged, devastating for people, right? Understandably so. And by the way, like I said, we come out of the womb worrying about this stuff. Like kids, you watch kids play, they feel like they're being mistreated, or people don't like them, like they're crying. They're crying for a reason, not because they're being childish, because, you know, we're all we're all adult kids ourselves. You know, we feel the same way, in different ways, and we just find ways to cope with it. And part of therapy is to, like, understand all these thought processes that go into it.

  Alexis Reid  12:25

  And the children, too, they probably don't have the language yet to articulate their experience. Going back to the the importance of describing what your experience is, to be able to know what to do with it next, absolutely so as you were talking about uncertainty, you know, I there's the token, you know, analogy of anxiety being like a wave, right, thinking about the ocean. And as you were talking, I was thinking about, you know, even fishermen and surfers and, you know, folks that do work or play on the water like they even care about the tides, right? They don't want to just go in and then all of a sudden a tidal wave comes, right? They're anticipating and planning and understanding the different shifts and changes that, you know, they could be unpredictable, but there's some predictability to it, and it's so similar to social settings, too, right? Like, like, if you're going into a classroom, you can expect that there's gonna be other students there. You can expect there might be a coach or a guide or a teacher, right? I'm just thinking of like all the different possibilities of what you can anticipate and expect. So there's like, a level of predictability. But can you predict what everybody's gonna say, what you're gonna be learning every day, in every situation, in context? And you could, you know, again, contextually, we could think about this in so many different settings. But you know, the idea of being able to control and predict everything, even though sometimes it makes people feel safer, is really impossible, totally.

  Gerald Reid  13:57

  That's why we went to a music concert. We went to music concert once, and the artist kind of had to stop the show because of some technical difficulties. And she's like, Yeah, you know, I was using AI for therapy. And she's like, but don't use it too much. The reason I'm saying this is because, you know, like, there's a reason that I'm glad that people are acknowledging that, because if you try to obsess over something and try to control, like, how to predict something, right? I'm just imagining, if you have social anxiety, you're gonna try to predict and control every aspect of what you're gonna go into a situation with to understand it. And like you said, like, we're saying you can't, right? And so a big part of working with people in therapy is like, Okay, we got we want to know what the fear is, What's the worry, the concern, whatever you want to call it, what's your concern? What's your worry, what's your fear? Different words resonate with different people, but oftentimes it comes down to, like I said, I'm going to be judged and I'm going to be excluded, right? Which is truly heartbreaking for people. And so, as it relates to anticipating the future, you. You're anticipating, ways to prevent that from happening. And part of therapy is to understand what is a real, valid threat, or at least to what extent is it a valid threat, and what is a more irrational, or perhaps unnecessary concern that you're having about how you potentially could be hurt in a situation, right? And so there's different ways to look at it, like, as I said, it is hurtful to feel like people are judging you or treating you poorly. But number one, it doesn't always happen the way that you expect it to happen. And it may not always happen as much as you think it's going to happen. But number two, and this is kind of the hard part about therapy, is like, kind of accepting that it might actually happen. So there's really two parts to it is, one is to try to, like, you know, almost like, recalibrate your brain in the way that you perceive situations so that you're not overly sensitive to cues or to ideas that people are actually treating you poorly. And, you know, the classic example is like, you know, the person you know didn't smile at you that day. That means they hate you, right? You know you're you're it's possible that they don't like you, right? But it's also possible that they're just having a terrible day, and they just don't want to be bothered by anybody, and they have has nothing to do with you, right? So, so again, there's two parts to it. Is kind of anticipating. People are anticipating worry in a social situation. One is just really getting used to what thinking traps you get into. Like, are you often assuming the worst? Are you often making generalizations about what's happening and assuming it's about you, assuming it means people are judging you? And then secondly, like, I said, like, also, we have to also really, truly learn how to accept that we may be judged like we don't want to have a false reality that nobody's ever going to judge you and that you're always going to be treated perfectly well. And you know, there's ways to help people with that as well.

  Alexis Reid  16:49

  Okay, so I feel like between your introduction and your explanation just there, we can end the episode and be done. But there's so many threads that I want to pull on and talk a little bit more about. I can't let the AI comment go without talking about it for a moment because, like, there's a reason why people are asking AI for their opinion to predict what possibly could be happening and going on. And you know, despite what your thoughts or opinions might be on it, like you, the audience, the society in general, right there, there are people who are inquiring about things that they don't feel comfortable asking other humans about. Yeah, right. So this idea of, like, you know, the artists you're referring to, saying, Oh, I was asking my AI therapists these questions. I think that's a really important point that I want us to double click on in a moment, but I want to talk about how, you know, I think there are a lot of questions in predicting what's going to happen in the future. And I just want to also add that I don't think that even AI models and technology can predict every possible outcome social situations, especially in social situations, right? Because, you know, from a human perspective, there's so many different little aspects of our lives that lead us to different trajectories or different experiences or different interactions that, like you know that the way you wake up in the morning can dictate if you smile at somebody when you first see them, when you when you leave your home. Yeah, right. I'll give you a good example. There's somebody who works in my building who I am so grateful for, because sometimes I'm walking out the door in the morning and he starts cheering, laughing, and it like it just shifts and changes your whole day. And then there's some days where that, you know, he might not be in that great of a mood, and not that it makes me feel bad, because I usually try to cheer him up the way he does for me. But you know that one interaction can dictate the rest of my interactions for the day sometimes. So when we think about like the prediction of and trying to gain more information. There's something really important there that I want to just validate for anybody listening and for any human who might be uncertain in social situations, that there are so many different examples of what could happen. Variability is, as we say in the UDL world, the variability is the norm. It's not the exception. And if we are expecting that, we need to live up to some standard all the time, yeah, we're never gonna meet that standard. So of course, this makes sense, that again, going back to the context of where we are right now today, that we're hearing so much about people feeling uncomfortable in social situations, it makes a lot of sense,

  Gerald Reid  19:50

  absolutely and and when you think about the way social media over the past 10 years has almost narrated social situations, or narrated. Norms, you know, like, there's me, yeah, there's memes about things. There's just like people saying, This is what this is. If this happens, this is what this is, right? And there there's, there is like, great, great benefit to people doing that, because we can now give language, perhaps, to like, bad things that happen between people, right? Which is great, let's say

  Alexis Reid  20:23

  uncomfortable or perhaps negatively emotional impact kind of settings and situations. You know, I don't love good, good or bad scenarios.

  Gerald Reid  20:33

  Well, well, I mean, what I'm pointing out here is that, you know, like, there's a whole spectrum of interpersonal interactions, right? And some can be considered, you know, abusive, right? We need to acknowledge, like, no, that stuff's not okay, yes, right? And I think, and at the same time, like, when we begin to label everything, and this, like I said, this is a spectrum. People can even have labels about what's cool, what's in, what's out, what's a fad, what's not a fad? What's What's this? What's that? Right? When everything is being fed to you about what is this or that? And by the way, when we were growing up, we would see that, because this is just part of life. But it wasn't like every second of our day. It was like, maybe MTV was on for like an hour,

  Alexis Reid  21:16

  allowed to watch MTV, right?

  Gerald Reid  21:19

  My friend sent me something funny the other day. He's, you know, something about, like, it was like, a, I don't know, like Adam Sandler movie quote. He's like, that, that joke had to last us five years back in the 1900s Right? Exactly, as our friend said yesterday. But, you know, to the point of this is like, yeah, like, so. So what I'm saying is, I think this, this idea that everything is labeled now, and kids are like, that's this. This is that. I think it creates pressure to feel like you're gonna do something wrong. Oh, yeah, right. And I hear this a lot is like, you know, young people saying, like, I don't want to, like, do something that's judged as weird or different or I don't want to make that person uncomfortable if I go up and talk to them, you know, I don't want to, like, break their boundary, or like, you know, this or that, and I don't blame people for feeling that way, right? There's this kind of, like, hyper vigilance around, like, what you should or shouldn't do in a social situation.

  Alexis Reid  22:16

  Well, we talked about this in a previous episode that my hypothesis on part of this is that we are so hyper focused and sensitive on being mindful not to do harm. Yes, that's a great way to put it right, which I think is a really beautiful idea and concept. And maybe we feel this more in the northeast, because it's, it's big part of conversations that we have here, especially in New England and the Boston area. But I think it's an important point that, like, the intention is not to do harm to others, but in turn, it almost ends up doing harm to ourselves, because we could fragilize the situation. We could walk on eggshells and be nervous and perhaps an over inhibit where we're not actually engaging in curiosity to show kindness. And I think that is a big part of this. And we talked about this in the previous episode, about social anxiety that, like even us as professors, or, you know, the people that those might go to for answers in some area and form of expertise that we have, that a lot of people and us, included in different situations at different points of our career, would feel like we have to have all the answers. Yeah, so like, if you don't think you know enough, and it might come across as offensive or potentially triggering or harmful. Sometimes people are just withholding and not even talking about anything. Yeah, disconnection happens. That becomes this disconnection. So all of this to say is that it makes sense why social anxiety has become so prevalent, I think, in society and across generations, because we're, you mentioned a lot of kids and social media and young people's exposure, but I would say this is across the board,

  Gerald Reid  24:09

  yeah, and it's not new. I think it's just amplified Absolutely And so, like, I've thought a lot about this, you know, because people come to me with this challenge and, you know, and it's also just the human experience that we all experience. And so one way I've tried to help people to grapple with this is your intentions are what matter. So if you're going to, you know, approach someone because you want to maybe make a friend, or you're interested in someone like, if you're simply, if your intention is simply just to be kind and get to know them and truly just be kind and get to know them, right? Pretty basic fundamental intentions. There's nothing else you don't get ahead of yourself. You're not like, you know, oh, they have to be my best friend, or this or that, or like, there's no agenda, right? Other than like, oh, they seem like an interesting person. I'd like to, you know, just cross paths with them, get to know them. If your intention is that you don't really have to worry so much about, Oh, am I going to make them uncomfortable, or this or that, you're going to get feedback, right? I mean, you'll find out, right, if they wanted to continue to interact with you or not, and that's part of the uncertainty that you got to grapple with. We all have to, but breaking the ice is often the hardest part. With social anxiety, people have a hard time breaking the ice to interact with somebody new.

  Alexis Reid  25:23

  I'm gonna press pause because I do want to talk about breaking the ice and more of these, like ideas of how to help. Yeah, but I still want to double click on what you're saying here, because I would argue that in our society, and I work with a lot of you know, young people thinking about college or a new career, where every move they make has to be so plan full because they only see the goal and outcome in mind. Oh yeah, instead of appreciating the process and the journey of learning until they get to that point, and I have this conversation frequently. In fact, I just had it with my friend and colleague who's here today, and I was talking about this idea of a goal, and that I'm trying not to use that term as often or without describing context. And it's difficult for me, because in the Universal Design for Learning world, the UDL world, we talk a lot about goals, being clear about our goals, but what I'm finding in my work and in life in general, is that we are all assigning goals to all the things we think we need to do, as if it's like a checklist, or like I need to get here before I get there, and If I don't do this, then I'm not gonna experience that. And it becomes more pressure that we lose sight of, like, every step to get to that goal.

  Gerald Reid  26:51

  Yeah, I love this. So actually Acceptance and Commitment Therapy act, yeah, really speaks to this, because it suggests, hey, like, pull back from so much focus and obsession around your goals or outcomes, and focus more on what your values are. And you know, you speak a lot about this with your clients as well. And so as it relates to what I was saying before about intentions, get clear about what your intentions are as it relates to people and interactions with people,

  Alexis Reid  27:16

  I'm gonna take a step further, because I think we all, as humans, get caught up in the Oh, my intention is just good, and we could all justify almost anything we do as a good intention if we wanted to. No, that's true, and it could be problematic, because it's not always going to lead to a positive outcome that's going to be healthy and helpful to everybody and ourselves. But I think you know your point is a really important one and I and I am noticing, and this is coming up in so many conversations, again, in work and in life, that a lot of us are losing a sense of ourselves and and I do this work frequently, and I've been doing a deeper dive into it lately, just at this phase of my life where I think it's so important for us to take inventory about who we are, like, genuinely like, not the things I like, the things I've done or participated in, or the people that are around me or the stuff I have, but like, truly and authentically who we are as People, you know, because I think we get so sucked into the things we do and the people that are around us, that we get subsumed by the stuff around us, that we lose sense of ourselves. And I, I honestly think that this is a big proponent of why we're so anxious in social situations because we're not clear about ourselves. Well, yes, everything becomes a goal, because the intention might be, I need to network with this person because they know so and so, or they might know a job, and believe me, I'm a big proponent of that in my work, and I I encourage a lot of young people to just talk to others, to create a network to just learn about other people's lives, to gain different perspective that they might not have yet. And so, like, the goal can get caught up in that, but the process is really, like the meat of it, but, but I think that a lot of the anxiety comes from I don't really know who I am, right? How am I going to relate to other people or communicate that to other people, right? And I think, you know, again, another part of a conversation I'm so blessed to have with friends and colleagues that I had earlier today too, was, you know, we go around labeling who we are, yeah, like saying I am this, I am not. I come from this. This is what I need. And it's a beautiful thing to be able to share that articulately, which we didn't when we were younger. We didn't really do that totally, but I think we get lost in the labels, yeah, that we lose who we really are. And I think it's it's really important for us to to honor and appreciate and take some time not just to look at like a. Social media thread or a list of things we've done, or our resumes to describe an experience and fully express who we are, because I think we're getting lost in again, those goals, those checkpoints, that profile, because that's become such a part of our life, is this front facing persona of ourselves, that it makes it more difficult to interact with and connect with people, you know, as us old people say, like IRL, in the real world, in real life, it's it's difficult to be able to really fully appreciate and understand that. And I think this is leading to a lot of social confusion. I will call you know, I know we're talking about social anxiety, but I think there's probably a precursor to it in this social confusion, because there's a lack of an ownership, appreciation or authenticity in ourselves of who we are.

  Gerald Reid  30:56

  Well, I mean, think about it's kind of a, it's kind of a vicious cycle, right? If you're anxious about fitting in, and therefore your goal, as we say, is to just fit in and be liked. You're gonna do everything you can to appear that you're gonna be liked or fit in, perhaps at the expense of being your authentic self, and also probably driven by a ton of anxiety, because you're always gonna be trying to figure out how to manipulate, ways to get people to like you, or how to fit in, right? I'm not saying that like is all bad. Like, you know, like fitting in and like finding ways to kind of fit into the norm of what other people are doing, whether you know how they're dressing, how they're talking, whatever, like that's I'm not saying that's bad, and we're both not saying that's bad. It's kind of just normal, right? I mean, it's part of like living within a group or within a society is like finding a ways to to not like, just be like an isolated person who doesn't like, have any way of you know, no, that's the opposite of what we're trying to say. Yeah, right, but, but what you're saying, I think, is, you know who you are at your core, maybe, maybe the best way to do that is to think about what your values are, because values are not like something that you know you go around showcasing in, like a tangible way. They're just inside of you, and they're kind of just ways of navigating the world right

  Alexis Reid  32:11

  in an act. We call it like the compass, almost right, like it's, it's what guides you in the decisions you make and the interactions you have and the experiences you have. But I think you know, it's, interesting thinking about values and again, going back to that idea of we label ourselves and we lead with our labels or our resume, and I keep hearing in my head what we tell young people as they're learning to write, Show, don't tell, yeah, right. Show it, live it. Experience, prove it, embody it, right? Don't just say it, yeah.

  Gerald Reid  32:45

  You don't have to perform it, yeah, yeah. And so like, that goes back, like, when you're interacting with someone, if you you know and your values can adapt and change. They're not, like, fixed things. So like, I think sometimes people can latch really strongly onto a value and be like, this is now who I am, and everything kind of revolves around it maybe too rigidly, and that could be sometimes a problem if it's too rigid.

  Alexis Reid  33:04

  I'm going to put you behind the lectern for a second, because I even find and I've been trained in Act, and I integrate it into a lot of the work I do. But when I have to define what a value is for the people I'm working with, sometimes I find that it's difficult, right? Because there's a value. Yeah, you know, I've I value nice things versus I value relationships. Yeah, can you define a little bit of what you mean when you say values? And I'm saying this out loud, in case anybody else has a similar question. Well, I'll

  Gerald Reid  33:39

  put this in the context of someone with social anxiety, if, like, if someone social anxiety says, I really value being popular. Okay, well, I would ask them, Well, what does being popular do for you? Yeah, what's behind it, exactly, and so what is the value behind that? And if you kind of peel the onion back, the layers of the onion back, you realize they don't really care about being popular as much as they want to actually feel connected and maybe like there's a sense of value in the relationship. Yes, you feel valued. You value someone else, right? I mean,

  Alexis Reid  34:07

  can we highlight that for a minute, that you value being connected? You value relationship? Yeah.

  Gerald Reid  34:13

  I mean, there's no better evidence than people who become famous like they get everything they ever wanted and they're unhappy because maybe they don't have real, genuine connection with people, not everybody,

  Alexis Reid  34:24

  everybody, but not everybody. Right? A lot of the stories you hear, right, either in interviews or memoirs,

  Gerald Reid  34:30

  absolutely repeat that story. I mean, there's people who work their entire lives, you know? Maybe you know that's a value driven thing that they want to work hard provide for their family, whatever it is, but they spend their entire life working so hard they have no real relationship with their family or this or that, right? I'm not talking bad about people. I'm just saying this is what happens. And I think at the end of the day, what we really value, at the end of the day, is connection, and we have to be clear about is what we're doing leading to connection or not? And so when it comes to social. Anxiety, you know, I think that this can help in terms of the tangible step of how people can help themselves. Is, like, really think deeply about who you trying to impress, Who you trying to please, Who you trying to get to like you. And is, you know, if, how is that working? You know, is this making you feel good? Is this actually leading to a real relationship that you actually want, or is it just kind of a dopamine hit, like, oh, that cool person said I had a cool jacket today. You know, I feel so good about myself now, right? That's not genuine confidence, and that's also not genuine connection. That person may not, you know, really be a good fit for you in terms of your relationships that you're seeking. So part of this is taking a deep dive into yourself, of like, what kind of relationship you want, what kind of what type of people do you feel connect well with you, as opposed to, you know, trying to fit in with something that, which could be very tricky. Like, let's take, you know, sports as an example. Like, maybe you're just an athlete, and everybody around you is kind of this, like, type a hyper masculine or hyper assertive person, and you're just not that you're just kind of like more of a laid back kind person, right? That it could be conflicting for you, right, to figure out how you're going to fit into a group like that. But that's not to say that you should change who you are or pretend to be something that you're not. I think a lot of socializing is to figure out, how can you be yourself in a way that's genuine, while also still finding a way to connect with other people. I think, you know, both things could happen.

  Alexis Reid  36:27

  Okay, I just noted three things because my working memory is taxed at the moment. Because you're, you're lighting up so many parts of my brain of different things that are really resonating. So I we're gonna, we're gonna break apart some of what you said a little bit, and I want to start with this question that I have, because I'm finding myself thinking I should know the answer to this. But I want to say it out loud and ask you, and if anybody in the audience knows better than either of us, please let us know I was thinking about what you said, about what do we value in connections, and how our values might change over time. And I was thinking about, because, as a developmentalist, and having a lot of training in developmental psychology, I'm thinking about a lot of these stage theories. And I was thinking about how I was wondering if, because I don't know the answer to this, is there a stage theory for connection, like understanding the different levels and experiences that we may have across different aspects of our life in terms of connection, because we talk about attachment, and a lot of times when we talk about connection and development, we Talk about, like, the negative, the detrimental aspects of connection, rather than the positive aspects. And connection is one of the 6c of positive youth development, and it shows up in a lot of the positive psychology literature. But I'm trying to think of like, is there anything that describes, and I don't think it would ever fully explain, but anything that describes different levels of connection that would be beneficial across the lifespan. Do you know about that?

  Gerald Reid  38:08

  No, I love that, and actually made some notes about just that. So I'm glad you brought it up. Did you good? Yeah, because we're talking about how to connect to people, and I think you're right. It's, it's almost like saying what love is like. How do you explain love like? And, you know, they say there's different love languages, right?

  Alexis Reid  38:25

  It's like Carl Jung's work on be love, which I love so much. We should have a whole episode just on that. Yeah, that sounds nice,

  Gerald Reid  38:33

  but, and also, you know, as we're saying, like connection could come in so many forms. And in my opinion, when I'm working with people in therapy, I'm always trying to think, what are different ways of getting your needs met? Because it's not always like the one thing you think it is. Yes. So as I went back, you know, to the other example, going back to the other example, like, if you're just trying to impress one person to make connection, it's like, how much energy are you spending trying to do that, and that could come with romantic partners too. Whatever it is that you know, you could be expending so much thought and energy into something that's just not serving you. And so diversify the way you connect with people. And that can come in different forms, with different people. And how great is this for humanity, that we can all find different people, can find different ways to connect with each other, and we can go through some examples of what that looks like at a young level and an older level.

  Alexis Reid  39:26

  Before you do that, can I ask a question? Because you were talking about how you can, you can kind of get stuck in thinking about what these connections might be like, or what you're trying to get from them. And I just want to differentiate again, it's going back to the definition of social anxiety and anxiety in general, because I always picturing, as you were describing that you know, a person who is starting a new relationship, whether it's romantic or not, and they just are constantly replaying all the interactions that they had with that person or what. Potentially could happen, and how, when we just get really stuck in our minds and ruminating or overthinking things, that's kind of like I think, and please correct me if I'm wrong. Slash, reinforce what the accuracy is of this. This is where I think anxiety, it goes from like healthy planning and preparing for a relational connection to anxiety,

  Gerald Reid  40:28

  for sure. Yeah, so, I mean, let's look at it from an exposure therapy standpoint. So if you're going to go into situation, you're going to try to plan and plan and think and think and think, and at the end of the day, you just have to do the thing right?

  Alexis Reid  40:41

  Do the planning. Is helpful, though, isn't it? Like a little bit of preparation a practice, especially if you're worried about communication style and things like that?

  Gerald Reid  40:49

  It's an executive function strategy. Thank you for validating. It's a great way. Like, okay, here's some things I can talk about. Here's some things I've been doing. You know, if you have a hard time remembering stories that you want to share, that's it's completely it's great. It's Helpful.

  Alexis Reid  41:03

  Helpful until it's not helpful until it takes over.

  Gerald Reid  41:07

  So think about it like from a sports and performance perspective, perspective. So an athlete goes into a game if they're thinking so much that they become worried and they lose their confidence to just be in the situation and just kind of figure out what to do in the moment rather than trying to plan it, they're not going to play very well. And the reason for that is because if you constantly think and think and think, you're distracting yourself, and you're not in the flow of what's actually happening, and so it's really important to begin to expose yourself. And I'm not saying you just, you know, do the hardest thing and, you know, like, go on a million dates, or do this or that. Like, immediately, what I'm saying is, once you expose yourself to a situation where you get socially anxious, you're gonna learn so much about yourself.

  Alexis Reid  41:50

  Well, I think I wanna actually press pause on that, because you're talking about, like, the way in which overthinking can impact performance. I was actually thinking about the step before that, like, even just getting totally caught in, like, our thoughts about something that hasn't even happened yet, that's still anticipatory, yeah, anxiety and worry about it.

  Gerald Reid  42:13

  Well, it's all connected to what I'm saying, though. So imagine, like, you know, like, once you when you're an athlete, you already know how to play the sport. And so part of that is having the courage and the trust that you know what you're doing. And so if you don't believe that you can be in a situation and just do the best that you can, you're going to try to over prepare and over plan, because you lost trust in your ability to just do your best and whatever's going to happen is going to happen. So it's a lack

  Alexis Reid  42:36

  of acceptance. Yes, absolutely I appreciate that. And I actually talked about this on the first episode about social anxiety, when I was talking about when I, you know, go out and do a big talk, whether it's like a small school locally, or if it's like a big organization or a keynote speech like, you know, and sometimes I'm in a completely unfamiliar context, a different part of the world, or I don't even know exactly how the systems run yet, because I haven't gotten to know them enough yet. And and for me, sometimes when I over prepare or overthink about something, I get hooked on what I was planning to do, versus just being present in the moment, right? That acceptance of like I am prepared and ready, versus like have I worked and reworked and overworked all the things, and I think I was, I was just focusing on because I don't think it gets discussed enough, the in between, right? And I love talking about the in between. I talk about it from the meditation, Buddhist mindset that I talk about with my teacher of the Bardo, like the in between, almost like the in between your in breath and your out breath, like there's a spot in between that's just kind of uncomfortable. It's not necessarily that anything's really happening, but I think those are the moments where we can get trapped in our own thoughts. Yeah, so that's what I'm referring to.

  Gerald Reid  43:58

  Yeah, totally. And again, I think that if you're aiming, if you're aiming for something, as we said before, don't aim for controlling everything. Aim for confidence in these situations. And the only way to do that is to be in a situation where you expose yourself to being social that you're afraid of, and afterwards, don't ruminate about what went wrong, because that's what people's social anxiety will do everybody does this. Oh my god. Why did I do that? I wish I could have done this differently. What were they thinking when they said that? You just analyze everything that is not the point, that's not going to help you, that's just going to make you more anxious and just kind of, maybe even depressed. Instead, what I'm suggesting is use that situation of being in an anxious situation, in a situation that makes it anxious, and reflect on how your mind was working, that is so much important information that you will learn that you could not learn unless you actually are in this situation. Right, right? You can't really have an avatar and predict how you're going to feel, how you're going to think, what. What you can do. I was

  Alexis Reid  45:01

  just gonna say that, could we potentially play out and role play all these situations to figure out exactly what we need to do in the future?

  Gerald Reid  45:09

  Yeah, no, and that's what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is you actually learn about how you react emotionally and cognitively and behaviorally. So as an example, right? You can say, Okay, I was in this group of people, and we were all hanging out and like they were saying jokes, and I really wanted to say a joke, and I didn't say anything, because I was too afraid that they wouldn't like my joke, right? Okay, come back. Let's talk about that. This is great that you in the situation, like it's not a failure, that you didn't make your joke. This is all just information. Let's learn from it. What was going through your mind? How did you begin to second guess yourself when you were about to say the joke and then you stopped yourself? How did you feel after that? What do you want to do next time you know? What was your What were you thinking about? Were you focused on? Were you looking for cues that they might not like you, right? Were you expecting them not to like you? Whatever it is, right? How did you feel going into the situation in the first place? Right? So all that information is great, and it's not about the outcome, like just when you're reflecting on social situations, don't ruminate on the outcome or what actually happened. It's more about what you're reflecting, about how you felt, what you were thinking, your approach, your goals, your values, your intention. You know what you learned about how to interact with people. That's that's all it is. It's all learning.

  Alexis Reid  46:26

  I don't usually promote a lot of tools and resources because, you know, there's never one thing that's going to help with everything. But I am going to name drop for a second because there's this beautiful children's book that I use all the time across going back to developmental stages, across every stage of the lifespan, right? Regardless of how old somebody, somebody is, this story always lands, especially if you set it up properly. It's, it's a children's book by Julia Cook, who has a lot of really great explanations of different scenarios that especially kids might experience, and it breaks things down in a really nice way. But the book is called thanks for the feedback, and it's a book where the character, the main character, RJ, is having all these different interactions throughout his day at school, on the soccer field, and people are either giving him feedback that he's doing well, or giving him feedback that he could improve and in his head, like the story goes over and over. I won't share too much to spoil it, but you know that he keeps getting stuck in his own head and he says, he says, As soon as these words come into my head I don't like it turns into like, a pool of all these different things that get him disorganized and dysregulated, that he doesn't feel comfortable when feedback comes in. And ultimately, the advice his dad gives him is that, hey, RJ, feedback is just information that helps us to learn and grow. And as we've talked about several times on the podcast, and we talk about all the time with our clients and each other, is that a lot of folks have a very difficult time taking feedback or giving it or giving it right in an effective way, that it makes us feel very uncomfortable and essentially, in social situations, it's all feedback. Yeah, right. Did somebody laugh at my joke? Did they smile when they saw me? You know, are they did they talk to me for a long time? Did they not? Did they avoid me? Like, should I have done or said something different, like you were giving in the example, it's, it's, it's a lot of feedback. And I would argue, as we talked about in the first episode of season seven, about about regulation, that the amount of information that we're getting on a daily basis is creating so much noise in our existence as we navigate through each day that it makes it more and more difficult to filter out the noise, to appreciate the feedback that does help us to learn and grow

  Gerald Reid  49:11

  totally and so. And I would say, if you're focused so much on that feedback all the time, you're probably going to get even more anxious. Absolutely, great point you're just constantly monitoring, which is, again, like, think of an athlete, you can't just monitor things all the time. You have to just act Yes, exactly. And so that's where that again, like, aim for confidence in being yourself. If you can be in every situation just continuously. Aim to feel self assured and present with the people with your values about how you want to be with them, and hopefully your values are, you know, have some positivity to them, about how you want to treat other people. But again, like that, that overthinking, it is a lot, and it's a long term process about overcoming social anxiety, about working through it. You know, it's it gets better over time when you work on being consistent. Mm. And you stop worrying about the outcomes, right? If you continuously think, Oh, I'm only successful if I make a friend, or if this person wants to date me, or for this or that, right? If you continuously think that way, you're just always going to be, you know, measuring up against some outcome that you're going to be disappointed, and you're going to, oh, I'm disappointed, therefore going to think worse about myself. And then the worst thing that I think could have, one of the worst things that could happen with social anxiety, is you begin to judge your entire begin to judge your entire life and pity yourself and say, like, oh, like, my life is so much worse than everybody else. And then you begin to act as if that's true. And so it's really, really, really important to be careful about falling over that slippery slope, about beginning to just judge your life in general, because then you lose all of your confidence and that you project that onto how you interact with other people.

  Alexis Reid  50:44

  So I want to go back to this idea of expecting to fit in with other people's groups and situations. And I think that one of the other aspects of social anxiety that I see showing up, especially for young people, college aged, young adults, right literally across the lifespan, I would argue that probably even adults are experiencing this too. Is that, whether it's because of social media or not, I think there's a perception of, I need to be friends with a group like this, and this is what it should look like. Yeah, that's true. And there's, there's oftentimes this expectation that people put so much into just achieving that as a goal that they lose track of the fact that sometimes relationships and interactions are you don't you can't put an expectation on one person or one group to be everything for you. I think this is actually similar in relationships, and I hope we can have an episode on this specifically too. There's a couple experts that come to mind that I would love to have this conversation with, because I think we put too much pressure on one person or one group being everything for us, right? Like this. I'm going to just use relationships as an example, because I think it's easier to consolidate, like my partner is going to be my best friend. We're going to help each other financially, we're going to help each other emotionally, we're gonna distribute different responsibilities in the household. We're gonna go on all of our trips together. We're gonna do all these things that I love is just like unrealistic. Well, not even I would say, I would argue that a lot of people are looking for one person to fill all of those roles, and I think that's a lot of pressure that we put on ourselves to find that ideal and also to put on somebody else. And I think the same goes with any any relationship you can you can replace that example with my boss, my mentor, my best friend, my colleague, that you expect you know this ideal version of who they are and what they're gonna do to help support you, or what they're gonna serve as a part of your life. And the reality is that as humans, none of us are gonna ever really live up to all of that all the time.

  Gerald Reid  53:13

  So let's bring that back to connection then. So let's think about this way. There's so many different ways to connect with different people, yes. So if you have a one relationship, you can think, well, here's how I can connect with them in different ways. Here's other people in my life. And maybe think more critically about how you can engage in different ways, right? And connection is everything it could be. Let's go, you know, do an activity together. Let's This is the person I have jokes with. This is the person I have fun with. This is the person I feel respected by. This is the person I learned from. This is and it can all be within the same person in some ways, but like, if you can diversify the way in which you see what connection is, not only with various people, but even with the same person. So you don't feel like everything's kind of built in this one thing about you know what it's going to do for you or the other person.

  Alexis Reid  54:00

  I think that goes back to this acceptance and understanding of ourselves as individuals, right, knowing who we are and accepting ourselves so that we can accept who other people are, instead of like trying to make people into the ideal of who we think they should be and the function of their relationship. Because I would argue that, and from the conversation that I have, and it might not be across everybody, but I would imagine, not gonna say, are you? I would imagine that a lot of people get caught in this, I don't know if fantasy is the right word, but caught up in this imagination of what they're aiming for in different social situations that they're trying to achieve in relationships that you can get really caught on this isn't exactly the way I wanted it to be. Therefore, something's going wrong in this interaction socially that perpetuates this anxiety around taking your. Risk and being in different social settings because it didn't work exactly the way you expected it last time. Does that make sense?

  Gerald Reid  55:05

  It does make sense, and I would suggest that people communicating better will make this a lot easier for everybody. So give me some examples. I think part of social anxiety also is just not feeling confident that you can say what you want to say yes, and that goes on both sides right. Let's say you want to, you know, get closer with someone, and they don't necessarily want to get necessarily closer, but they still want to maintain friendship, right? If both parties can just communicate about something like that, it's very helpful to release that uncertainty that creates the anxiety in the first place. And I think in any type of social situation, when you feel like you you're if you feel like you don't have the words or you don't feel empowered to speak up and to communicate what you feel like you want to say, it's going to make you so, so much more anxious in the situation. So part of that is practicing. Part of that is like figuring out how to be clear in what you want to say, how you want to say it, and also the person on the other end, you just, you know, try to make it easier for the other person too. Like, just be clear and be kind and respectful in terms of how you communicate. I think a lot of these kids, I feel so bad for them, you know, like, you know, like groups of kids or girls or boys, a lot of the girls can be relational in this way. They can, like, exclude someone in such, like, a way that feels so hurtful, you know, they'll ignore them. They'll kind of like, you know, act as if they're not there, though, this or that, right? And it's just, it's not a kind of way or respectful way of communicating. There's different ways that this could look in social situations, but I think if you know on both ends of communication could happen, it would just make it a lot easier, you know?

  Alexis Reid  56:36

  So I'm gonna press pause and I'm gonna bring us back to the definition of social anxiety, because I want to give you an opportunity to just succinctly define it, and then any other aspects or attributes of social anxiety you want to touch upon. And then can we maybe end with a couple ideas of how we can tune into and support ourselves if we experience social anxiety, maybe how we help to support others who might be exhibiting social anxiety. And I'm going to use this as a plug too, because we talk a lot about social anxiety through the perfectionism episodes too, which you know, we can talk about here as well, but it might be more helpful for the listeners to dive into those episodes, or the original social anxiety episode, but, but as we conclude this episode, Gerald, can you take a minute to again succinctly define what social anxiety is? And then let's, let's highlight a couple key aspects we talked about a few as we went through our conversation today. But maybe we can kind of just share a few to recap as we close things out.

  Gerald Reid  57:43

  Yeah, so at its core social anxiety is fear of being judged or excluded from a group or people, and it creates this dynamic where people will have a lot of worry both leading up to situation. They'll have a lot of worry in a social situation, and they'll have a lot of worry or perhaps regret after a social situation. And there's a lot of ways that people cope with this uncomfortable feeling. They may avoid situations. I didn't even get into this yet. There's so many ways we can avoid things that are uncomfortable to us. We can not go to a party we're invited to, or we can avoid talking to people who approach us. Or we can avoid classes. We can avoid classes. We can avoid talking to our teacher. We can avoid, you know, meetings, meetings, like literally any crowds, even, you know, asking for what you want from somebody else, right? And so there's so many ways, and the avoidance gets even so much more subtler. And you know, this podcast is not going to be able to explain everything about social anxiety. That's why, if you want to learn more, go to therapy about it, learn about the nuances of it, not only in therapy, but also about yourself. Like there's so many subtle ways, like you can be in a conversation with someone and just end the conversation abruptly or quickly, or try to change the subject, or try to avoid the attention on yourself, or try to, you know, act as if you know something that you don't know, or try to portray yourself in a certain way. Like these are all forms of avoidance of being judged, and they're all driven by fear, and life driven by fear is not a very fulfilling life. That's when you go back to values. You can let your life be driven by values rather than fear. Another part of it is social anxiety, and kind of the way people think when they become socially anxious can be very irrational, and it's really, really important not to look at a normal situation. I don't use the word normal, but there's a situation every day, an everyday situation, or a situation that is just par for the course, for being human and treating as if, like I said, you're like, looking down the edge of a cliff, right? It's or as if it's like a maker breaks. Situation of your entire life, or as if people care so much about this one thing that, like, nobody isn't even thinking twice about. And so there's also this, like cognitive restructuring, around how do you perceive and think about what is actually happening in situations? And there's so many examples of it that you know, requires you to reflect on yourself and talk to, you know, perhaps a therapist to understand the nuances of it as it relates to yourself. We call these safety behaviors. We call them avoidant behaviors, right? There's different terms for it, but they all feeds into the cycle of social anxiety until we break these patterns. And so that's the cognitive part, and I can go a bit deeper about kind of deeper aspects that contribute, that I'd like to get into before we end. But that's kind of the, you know, the cognitive behavioral aspect of it, and like, you know, as we talked about in the exposure therapy episodes and the facing your fears and the episode about parenting anxious youth episode, you know, exposure therapy helps, because when you avoid something so much, you become more and more and more anxious. The more you avoid something, the more anxious you are, because it builds up all these expectations about all these bad things you think are going to happen. And the reason exposure therapy happens in small doses and kind of gradually building yourself up. You don't have to go to a party, you don't have to, like, give a speech, just do little, small acts of bravery, you begin to realize, Oh, that's not really as bad as I imagined. Or if it didn't work out, that's totally okay. I can just figure something else out, rather than what I wanted to happen. Even if it didn't happen, I can try something else, right? That's kind of like breaking this cycle of avoidance, and by doing so, the anxiety inside of you realizes, Oh, I don't need to be activated so much. I don't need to, like be a 10 out of 10 all the time, because I'm realizing through experience, it's really not what I thought it was. And I'm recalibrating. You know, it's like the alarm inside of you is recalibrating. It's learning from experience that doesn't need to be triggered so easily and so intensely.

  Alexis Reid  1:01:56

  I think, to your point before that, you know, even values and the level and amplification of our values across different points in time may change. Our comfort and familiarity with different situations might change. And I just want to emphasize that just because something felt uncomfortable at one point in life does not mean it's always going to be that way every single time or in the future or even ever again. I think we get really stuck on this idea of like, I tried this, it didn't go well, you know, I gave this speech and, you know, I fell flat, or I stumbled, or I put myself out there and tried to give somebody my number or introduce myself, and they didn't respond the way I wanted to so therefore I'm never going to do it again. And I think that's a really slippery slope that I think contextually Now it makes sense why that might be amplified. Because, you know, we we've hyper focused on a lot of it over the past five years or so, since covid, since everything became digital and another point that it's really important to understand and validate. A friend and colleague of ours was talking about something her son said, who's in college, you know? She asked him, if you know, do people go out and dance these days, and if there's situations where people are dancing. Does anybody ever go up to somebody else and say, Hey, do you want to dance with me? And he said, No, but his insight was incredibly valuable. And I don't know if we think about this as much as maybe we should. His insight was that nobody wants to dance or do something stupid because everybody has a video camera in their pocket. Oh, yeah, totally that it could be captured, and not only will the people next to you see it, but the whole world could potentially see it.

  Gerald Reid  1:03:50

  It makes me feel like everybody knows everybody, and therefore everybody knows everything exactly.

  Alexis Reid  1:03:55

  So I want to validate that, like some of this anxiety does make sense, because there are some things that might be intimate or private that get captured and get blown up and shared with the world in a way that is very difficult to erase once things are on the internet or social media

  Gerald Reid  1:04:13

  and not even, not even, like a video capture, just it seems like, you know people are so connected online, at least, yes, everybody might know someone who knows somebody at this point, whereas, like, when we're younger, it's like, you know, there's benefit to that, right? If someone's really, like, doing terrible things people, it might be helpful to, you know, for people to, like, be aware so that, like, also just doing normal things that you're embarrassed by. That's like, okay, that's just typical human behavior. And you're like, Oh, someone's gonna, like, use that against me in like, a negative way because bored, or they're just letting their insecurities out by being mean to you. It's like, yeah, I get that. That's scary. Great. How many silly

  Alexis Reid  1:04:48

  and stupid things did we do when we were younger that thank God they weren't captured, because it could have blown up and become something bigger, or you get embarrassed once. But actually it diffuses and doesn't matter. Couple days later, because nobody remembers it totally versus it being captured and solidified in some digital way. So I want to validate the context of why social anxiety might feel so heavy and be so prevalent now. And also, you know, Jerry, if you want to share some more of that nuance that you wanted to capture, I would like to also, you know, get to that hope part of like, hey, there are some things we could do. I love your example of thinking about exposures, doing small exposures every day, whether it's, you know, ordering something at a cafe, or saying hello to somebody that you've never met before, or just simply passing a smile on someone that you pass on the street. Or another example, I always say, and I'm just gonna emphasize this so I don't forget myself before the end of this episode. If you see something that you like or you appreciate, don't just hold it on. Hold on to it in your head. Share it out loud. Yeah. And in fact, that's an exposure and practice in communicating, connecting with somebody.

  Gerald Reid  1:06:01

  Nice way to connect with people too, you know, you remember things about people, and you bring it up like that makes people feel valued and important Absolutely. If you're worried about being judged, you're actually you might become too self centered in how you think about things too. Like, part of this is like, stop thinking about yourself so much, you know, I'm serious, nobody

  Alexis Reid  1:06:19

  else is thinking about you as much as you're thinking about yourself.

  Gerald Reid  1:06:23

  Everyone does this. I'm not judging the people who do this. It's just like, it's important to realize, Wait, I'm being I'm actually becoming self centered, like I need to stop thinking about myself so much.

  Alexis Reid  1:06:33

  We're not in The Truman Show.

  Gerald Reid  1:06:34

  No, right? You know, you're not. You know. And so I like to categorize three ways to help people with social anxiety. The first is more of a cognitive behavioral standpoint. When we talked about changing the way you think and perceive situations, exposure to take small steps to, you know, face the thing you're afraid of in real and again, do it in a way that you're building confidence. Don't do it with like, oh, I have to make this friend, I have to make this situation happen. Like, there's no end result. The only, the only thing you care about is living your values out and being more confident and realizing that your worries are not founded in reality. A lot of times process like, that's like, yeah, like, that's the way you can kind of recalibrate your your the way that your brain is processing to realize you don't have to be so anxious, right? By learning through experience, changing your perceptions and changing your your thought process, right? That's that's a cognitive behavioral standpoint. That's number one. Number two, we talked about this, learning how to be yourself. That's a lifelong process. It's not like it's going to come naturally or easily or quickly, learn how to be comfortable with who you are. If you don't feel comfortable with who you are, how do you expect anybody you're not gonna expect other people to be comfortable with you either.

  Alexis Reid  1:07:52

  Well, I would also add that if you're not comfortable with who you are, that's a signal to maybe find some assistance in helping you get clear about who you are or who you want to be, because I think that's the other beauty in humanity, is that we also can choose our trajectory, a lot of times where we can find some specialized and expert support to help guide us right? And I think that also is sometimes lost in the fear of connecting and talking to others and being vulnerable. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

  Gerald Reid  1:08:28

  The only way that, the only way to like yourself and be comfortable yourself, there's no other way but to begin to become vulnerable with even with yourself or with other people you know, with someone you can begin to trust. Which is the irony here. This is why some people with social anxiety don't get help. Is get help is because they're too afraid to be vulnerable in therapy, and they don't go to therapy sessions.

  Alexis Reid  1:08:47

  I was just gonna add too that I think sometimes the things, at least that I hear in my work and even personally through conversations, that people don't like sometimes, is more habits or behaviors they don't like, versus just inherent traits like sometimes, you know, it depends, right? I'm not going to generalize and say for everybody, this is usually what happens. But you know, the majority of what I hear, at least anecdotally, are people who don't necessarily like certain behaviors or habits that often are learned behaviors, right? Which, as an executive function coach, an educational therapist, I will say that those are aspects of our life that we can work on. We can think differently about. There are other possibilities, even if we've been doing things forever, like I said, I work across the lifespan with people of all ages. You know this work of reframing, and I call it rewiring our brains a little bit to be able to do things differently. We know from neuroplasticity that, in their understanding of neuroscience, that our brains are plastic. You know, they can shift and change. Change with with identification of the habit, we want to change practice and some cognitive restructuring through the practice to be able to make these changes. But I think to your point, Jerry, I think people fear being vulnerable because they might not have faith, or they might not have heard an experience where people have made these changes in their life, they might feel like, Oh, this is just how I'm going to be. This is just who I am. Instead of being able to say, as you and I constantly tell people, hey, if this is really bothering you, there's something we could do with it, right? This means it's a work we can do. Doesn't mean it's going to be a huge 180 to change who you are. But we can, we can work on some of these patterns of behavior and some of these aspects of life or habits that we have to be able to, you know, we call it workable. It's workable.

  Gerald Reid  1:10:54

  That's why one of the most powerful things I think I try to bring to therapy is when someone brings their vulnerabilities up. I ask them, you know, how do you think I'm thinking about that, as you told me, because there's times when they'll say, I think, you know, I'm afraid you're gonna judge me.

  Alexis Reid  1:11:08

  I was gonna say, Does that scare people? When you ask them that question, it gives them

  Gerald Reid  1:11:12

  permission to admit it. Wow, yeah, that's powerful, because they're feeling that way, probably with everybody, not just me, yeah, but that gives permission to be vulnerable with me and to remind them I'm not. I have absolutely no reason to judge you. I'm here to support you and to understand you unconditionally and to make sense of what's happening, rather than to judge it. That's really not what I'm here for. So it's, you know, opens things up so and

  Alexis Reid  1:11:37

  for the record, as people in this field doing this work every day. Gerald, I'll speak for myself, and you can share your opinion and perspective. I often will say that I understand how hard it is to be vulnerable, and I work on that every day for myself too. I try to honor and be authentic to the process for myself, because I know how difficult it is to ask somebody else to do that too.

  Gerald Reid  1:12:02

  Yeah, you try to do too much by yourself. You're going to become anxious. It's just the way it is. You feel like you're carrying too much weight because you're trying to prove yourself, or like, not like, admit your vulnerabilities. You're going to become anxious and just, that's not a sign of strength. That's a sign of, you know, covering up your vulnerability. And that's not the same thing as strength. Sometimes it's great to, you know, push away your vulnerability and push through and and work really hard. Like, that's actually, like, helpful sometimes, but sometimes it's really just a mask, and it's driven by fear. It's not driven by strength at all. Well, it's very relieving to, like, let go of that burden that you carry.

  Alexis Reid  1:12:35

  This is another conversation for another time. But like, grit can only take us so far. Sometimes, we have to actually, like, understand what's happening underneath the surface to identify what we need to do next.

  Gerald Reid  1:12:46

  There's, there's no, there's no better feeling than just realizing, oh, other people also are vulnerable, and I am too. Wow. What a relief.

  Alexis Reid  1:12:53

  Yeah, so I'm here to say we too, have to do our own work. Yeah, even as professionals in the field, to be vulnerable, to constantly evolve and learn and grow

  Gerald Reid  1:13:05

  absolutely so we got one more thing to get through. So the first one was a cognitive behavioral therapy standpoint, in terms of social anxiety. The second was more about learning how to understand and accept yourself and appreciate yourself so you feel more comfortable wherever you are, because you feel, you know, you appreciate who you are. And then the third is, you know, and we didn't really get into this, and I'm not going to go too deep into this, but you know, there could be aspects of life that have conditioned you to feel anxious around people that is not just like a random, oh, I'm an anxious person, like, there could be experiences they've had. Some could be traumatic. Some could be, you know, just kind of, like, validating, yeah, so, like, some examples, right? You can kind of grow up in in a culture or an environment or a family structure, whatever, where we're a school system, whatever, where the expectations are, like, dramatically high, like incredibly high and almost impossibly high, where, like, everybody is supposed to somehow reach this unbelievable, highly, high expectation and do everything they can to reach it, at the expense of their own, whatever, you know, at the expense of whatever they're sacrificing to get there, right? So, so that could, you know, in of itself, create a lot of social anxiety like, oh my god, can I really, you know, fit into this mold and sacrifice everything to get there?

  Alexis Reid  1:14:28

  I will say too Gerald that that aspect of social anxiety is very closely related to these perfectionistic tendencies that we talked on, for sure, the perfectionism episodes about for sure. So for sure, even though we didn't dive too deeply into it here, understanding how the environment for which we exist in, we live in, we grow up in, might set these expectations or those expectations, and the bars that we set for ourselves might. Also create and perpetuate social anxiety.

  Gerald Reid  1:15:03

  Yeah, and it goes back to what I said earlier in the introduction, about trust. Social anxiety, a lot of times, is about trust, and if you don't trust that people are going to unconditionally care about you and accept and respect and appreciate you, if you even if you're not perfect all the time, that's going to create a lack of trust around people, ie social anxiety.

  Alexis Reid  1:15:23

  We're not always going to have that ideal where people are going to honestly, genuinely have our best interests at heart.

  Gerald Reid  1:15:31

  No, but what I'm saying is that, if it's just a chronic condition where you never feel that way, yes, that's going to create this sense of, like, constant anxiety around people, right? And that, again, I'm talking about trust. You know, trust is something that forms over time. Trust can happen even in traumatic situations, right? Like someone abused you, someone bullied you, someone you know, like in a family structure where there's a lot of chaos and you felt like you couldn't trust the people around you. You know, you can begin to inherently feel like a sense of shame around people, like, I'm a bad person. You know, people don't like me. I'm mistreated. I deserve to be mistreated. All these like, you know, traumatic like, stuck points people fall into that they bring with them into social situations can look like just, you know, run in the middle of social anxiety, when really it's rooted in something deeper than that, that people have to kind of go back and really work through, oh, like, wow. Why did that? Why did that person treat me that way? Like, what? Why was that not about me? Why did I not deserve, you know, all the, all the processing that really helps to work through that type of trauma, and even something as simple as, like, you know, you're in a relationship with someone who's impossible to please, or someone who's manipulative, right? That like makes you feel like you're never good enough. He's whatever it is,

  Alexis Reid  1:16:48

  whether it's a caregiver or a parent or romantic partner, right, that could show up in all those situations because someone,

  Gerald Reid  1:16:55

  anyone in position of power, a coach, right, an athletic coach, that's like, never enough. You always have to continuously reach someone you know, like, you know, belittling people in an abusive way, right? So, so, like all these things, we have to be mindful when we're understanding, you know, that's why therapy is so important. When I teach people about how to do therapy, so you got to understand the person's full life and really get to know where are these patterns coming from. That doesn't mean that you don't focus on the present and help them to work through it and to be brave and to use exposure therapy. But also, people could get stuck, and if they haven't processed somewhere where they got stuck in their life, they may still kind of be in that same mindset that they were when things were really going poorly, when they were being mistreated.

  Alexis Reid  1:17:41

  I think that's a really important point, Jerry and again, to go back to what we said at the beginning about the delineation between these are some social anxieties that come up for us in our everyday life, typical situations, which, again, anxiety is a signal that helps us to pay attention differently to how we're feeling and how we're experiencing a moment, but to really understand that, if it is incredibly impactful, to a point where maybe you are avoiding situations, and I don't mean just like physically avoiding being in different spaces, but also, you know, numbing yourself, there are a lot of people who might use substances to numb their experience, or, quote, unquote, feel more comfortable like, oh, I'll just have a drink or take a thing and it'll make me feel better and be more open to a situation where, in the short term, it might be true, but in the long term, are you really targeting that which Is impairing your ability to feel comfortable in social situations.

  Gerald Reid  1:18:43

  Yeah, even, even so, absolutely. So many people at parties will will drink or use substances excessively, as if they they think they want to to have fun, when the reality is they're just doing it to master social anxiety. People sacrifice themselves. They first for the sake of trying to be liked. You know, I'm gonna do everything for this other person so they like me and they like lose sleep or they neglect their own needs to take care of somebody else. They call that fawning, right? Well, no, I would say codependence, in some ways, is like, you know, you do too much because you're trying to overcompensate for the fear of not being liked, and then you sacrifice yourself, and you maybe just overdo trying to help other people rather than take care of yourself, right? That could, in some ways look like social anxiety, because it could be driven by a fear that people are not going to like you, and it's not driven by intention or values. It's driven simply by a fear, oh, I have to do this so they like me, right? As opposed to like I'm doing this because I'm a kind person and I

  Alexis Reid  1:19:38

  care about them standard that others expect of me, yeah,

  Gerald Reid  1:19:43

  or just like, this is the only way that I'll be liked is to like now do something excessive and like, there's so many forms that social anxiety can come in, and if I were to just boil it down, it's just think, is this driven by fear or intention? Fear or intention? Because fear is. Comes from a million different places.

  Alexis Reid  1:20:01

  Yeah. And the thing that I keep saying to myself, at least, is, you know, is this, is this anxiety, or is this intuition, right? Is this something that genuinely is like giving me a signal of, okay, maybe I need to prepare for this moment differently, or maybe I need to use some strategies to calm my my senses, right, to calm my stress level in this moment. Or is this something I need to pay attention to differently? You know, I don't want us to say, just like, ignore any of these anxious moments in different situations, because we do want to be safe. But, you know, just be mindful, check the facts and like we always do, Jerry, like you know, just at the very least, take a breath to be able to calm your nervous system down, to think clearly. Get out of that emotion mind, as they say in DBT, out of your emotion mind and into more of a wise minded state to be able to make a decision to be on a more mindful path and journey

  Gerald Reid  1:21:03

  and yeah, the last thing I'll say about that is, you know, do this in a way that works for you. If you feel like, pressure to go out with somebody and hang out for like, three hours, or, like, hang out all night, don't do it. Just be like, I have two hours in me. Let's hang out for two hours. That's the most I can feel comfortable with. Then do that if even just for an hour, like, you know, put this kind of goes back to when you feel like you can speak up for yourself, you could be less socially anxious because you feel like you have more agency around a situation, even with conflict, like, how, like, learn how to handle conflict, then, therefore you feel less anxious about conflict happening.

  Alexis Reid  1:21:37

  Let's have a whole episode on conflict. But you know, I love a Vygotsky reference, right? Sometimes, when we think about taking on a situation that feels uncomfortable, we might not need to take a huge leap. Maybe we take one step at a time. We scaffold it, we break it down into smaller parts until we get to the bigger thing that maybe has been feeling overwhelming. You don't need to do it all at once. You can break it down into smaller parts, like you were describing with exposure therapy. But with anything, we could break everything down into smaller parts until we get to the bigger accomplishment that we're aiming for totally so I just want to wrap things up in saying that number one, it makes sense why people feel more social anxiety, especially right now. We're living in a very digital world that can feel isolating, but our encouragement here is to tune in to the things that are important to us, especially our values, right get clear on your identity. If you have the opportunity to do some of that work, there are a lot of great resources available, or people to talk to, to be able to dive into that work. And also, you know, take those little moments to interact with other people. Right, a smile on the street, an act of kindness, sharing a compliment, right? Those were all precursors to feeling more comfortable in bigger, sometimes more overwhelming situations. But we need practice. We need the opportunity to engage and interact with each other so that we can find that connection that I think we all are craving, especially today,

  Gerald Reid  1:23:23

  definitely great conversation again. Lex, this is social anxiety, 2.0

  Alexis Reid  1:23:29

  probably more to come. I'd anticipate, yeah, I can, I could predict that probably is going to be the truth. Thanks, Gerald, well done.

  Gerald Reid  1:25:59

  Thanks for tuning in to the Reid Connect-ED podcast. Please remember that this is a podcast intended to educate and share ideas, but it is not a substitute for professional care that may be beneficial to you at different points of your life. If you are needed support, please contact your primary care physician, local hospital, educational institution, or support staff at your place of employment to seek out referrals for what may be most helpful for you. ideas shared here have been shaped by many years of training, incredible mentors research theory, evidence based practices and our work with individuals over the years, but it's not intended to represent the opinions of those we work with or who we are affiliated with. The reconnected podcast is hosted by siblings Alexis Reid and Dr. Gerald Reid. Original music is written and recorded by Gerald Reid (www.Jerapy.com) recording was done by Cyber Sound Studios. If you want to follow along on this journey with us the Reid Connect-ED podcast. we'll be releasing new episodes every two weeks each season so please subscribe for updates and notifications. Feel free to also follow us on Instagram @ReidConnectEdPodcast that's @ReidconnectEdPodcast and Twitter @ReidconnectEd. We are grateful for you joining us and look forward future episodes. In the meanwhile be curious, be open, and be well.
  

In this episode, Gerald and Alexis explore the experience of social anxiety for the second time on this podcast. In this discussion, we try to normalize social anxiety as it relates to the internal human drive for connection. We provide context and nuance as to how and when social anxiety can become triggered. Gerald describes how he addresses social anxiety for his patients in psychotherapy pulling from multiple theoretical and practical viewpoints. Sub-topics discussed in this episode include social media's impact on social anxiety, communication patterns, identity, values, intentions, and mindsets. 

Summary

• Defining and understanding social anxiety

• Contexts and triggers of social anxiety

• Influences of social anxiety

• Gaining self-awareness through reflection

• Ways to feel more socially comfortable

Be curious. Be Open. Be well.

The Reid Connect-Ed Podcast is hosted by Siblings, educational therapist, Alexis Reid, M.A. and licensed psychologist, Dr. Gerald Reid, produced by CyberSound Recording Studios, and original music is written and recorded by www.Jerapy.com

*Please note that different practitioners may have different opinions- this is our perspective and is intended to educate you on what may be possible.