The Fear of Awkward Silences, and Why Pauses Are Normal
Ask a socially anxious person what they dread most in conversation, and many will say the silence: the pause when neither person is speaking, which feels l...
The blog
Articles
Practical, honest guides to quieting the fear of being judged and building real connection.
What to Do When Your Mind Goes Blank
Few things frighten an anxious conversationalist more than the blank mind: that moment when someone is looking at you, waiting, and there is simply nothing...
The Double Standard: Speak to Yourself Like a Friend
Here is a single exercise that reveals, in an instant, how unfair your inner critic is, and points directly at the remedy. It is called the double standard...
How to Meet New People Through Friends You Already Have
When you are trying to expand your social world, one of the most overlooked and lowest-stakes routes is the one that runs through the friends you already h...
How to Start a Conversation When You Are Nervous
Every conversation has a hardest moment, and it comes right at the start: the opening, the approach, the first words where there were none. For anxious peo...
How to Prepare Your Body and Mind Before a Feared Event
The hours before a feared social event are often the hardest, and how you spend them shapes how the event itself goes. A little deliberate preparation, of...
Why Rejection Hurts So Much
If you have ever wondered why rejection can leave you feeling almost physically injured, why a cool reply or a cancelled plan can ache for days, the answer...
Rejection as Redirection: Finding Meaning Without Forcing It
Once the immediate pain of a rejection has been felt and has begun to pass, there comes a point where you can do something remarkable with it: you can find...
The Fear of Being Seen as Boring
Of all the specific fears inside social anxiety, one of the most common and most paralyzing is the fear of being boring. It shows up as a frantic pressure...
Caffeine, Sleep, and the Body Beneath Social Anxiety
Social anxiety is not only a matter of thoughts and fears; it also rests on a physical baseline, and that baseline is shaped by ordinary things like how yo...