Procedural Pattern: Social Anxiety and Avoidance

A common repetition or procedural pattern for my clients who struggle with social anxiety is avoidance. Through past painful encounters, a person might learn that it feels better to avoid a situation than face the feelings of rejection or hurt that might arise if they try to connect with a new friend or engage in a new activity.

The impulse to avoid is strong and it offers an immediate reinforcement: they feel relieved as soon as they avoid. Yet once the immediate relief subsides, they typically feel the old embarrassment, remorse, or loneliness connected with the avoidance. Often my clients will attack themselves with aggressive thoughts that put them down for not trying to engage in the new connection.

And the cycle continues.

The cycle in social anxiety can be interrupted at any point. We can predict that we are entering into a situation that could cue the old feelings. We could anticipate that the old pattern of avoidance might arise as our stress related to the potential for connection increases. If we act on the avoidance, we can notice that we are doing it and encourage ourselves to lean into the fear and do the opposite of how we feel.

When we act in a new way, especially in the heat of a pattern, the potential for change is big. We can actively interrupt the pattern by acting in a new way. This new action creates new pathways in the brain and lays the groundwork for new responses in the future, making it easier for us to stop avoiding and continue to respond in new ways. Even if we engage in the old pattern of avoidance, we can still interrupt of the pattern when we get into the aftereffects of the behavior.

When the shame, guilt or self-attack arises, we have an opportunity to change our pattern by being thoughtful, understanding instead of judging, and talking it through, changing the shame or guilt into self-understanding creates a new experience of self-compassion. If the pattern is to be hard on ourselves after we’ve reacted in the same old way, we can interrupt this by choosing to be gentle, kind and understanding. This changes our brains too making the chances higher that the next time we are in this pattern, we might be more likely to do something different.