social anxiety

Adapted from an excerpt from The Mindfulness & Acceptance Workbook for Teen Anxiety

Clients may become anxious and experience other somatic symptoms (e.g., rapid breathing and sweating) when discussing events they perceive as threatening. Remember that this is the basic fight or flight response and it can be a signal that the client perceives great threat.

Notice and describe these symptoms as they emerge in session. For example, “I’m noticing that as we discuss this topic you’ve started to breathe rapidly and are visibly very anxious.”

Inclusion in tribes was a condition of survival in earlier eras of human history. As a result, our ancestors grew extremely sensitive to the threat of rejection from the group, and we retain sensitivity to social exclusion to this day. But most of us no longer have strong group bonds akin to those that exist in tribes, and we are also potentially able to be in contact with cast numbers of other humans. Thus each and every individual we encounter can represent either a source of great comfort and safety or a looming threat of social exclusion.