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Areas › Worry and anxiety › Being seen and judged
Personal remarks are the feared category, because they cannot be passed off as neutral. Do it first with someone safe, a therapist, an easy relative, and watch what comes back. Almost always it is warm and a little self deprecating, and that reply is the evidence you carry out into harder rooms.
do not speak ill of one another; do not use offensive nicknames for one another (Quran 49:11). Kindness in speech is the standard asked of everyone around you, and it is usually what meets a light remark.
الحجرات
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ لَا يَسۡخَرۡ قَوۡمࣱ مِّن قَوۡمٍ عَسَىٰٓ أَن يَكُونُواْ خَيۡرࣰ ا مِّنۡهُمۡ وَلَا نِسَآءࣱ مِّن نِّسَآءٍ عَسَىٰٓ أَن يَكُنَّ خَيۡرࣰ ا مِّنۡهُنَّۖ وَلَا تَلۡمِزُوٓاْ أَنفُسَكُمۡ وَلَا تَنَابَزُواْ بِٱلۡأَلۡقَٰبِۖ بِئۡسَ ٱلِٱسۡمُ ٱلۡفُسُوقُ بَعۡدَ ٱلۡإِيمَٰنِۚ وَمَن لَّمۡ يَتُبۡ فَأُوْلَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلظَّٰلِمُونَ
Believers, no one group of men should jeer at another, who may after all be better than them; no one group of women should jeer at another, who may after all be better than them; do not speak ill of one another; do not use offensive nicknames for one another. How bad it is to be called a mischief-maker after accepting faith! Those who do not repent of this behaviour are evildoers
Qur’an 49:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
One early randomised trial gave people a drug that promotes fear extinction learning shortly before their exposure sessions, and social anxiety outcomes improved. The interest is less in the drug than in what it implies: exposure seems to work through new learning during the session, which is why what happens right after you speak matters so much. When all the trials were later pooled, the drug's advantage shrank to a small one, a fair reminder that early results usually look bigger than they turn out to be.
Hofmann SG, Meuret AE, Smits JA, Simon NM, Pollack MH, Eisenmenger K, Shiekh M, Otto MW. (2006). Augmentation of exposure therapy with D-cycloserine for social anxiety disorder.. Archives of general psychiatry doi
Mataix-Cols D, Fernández de la Cruz L, Monzani B, Rosenfield D, Andersson E, Pérez-Vigil A, Frumento P, de Kleine RA, Difede J, Dunlop BW, Farrell LJ, Geller D, Gerardi M, Guastella AJ, Hofmann SG, Hendriks GJ, Kushner MG, Lee FS, Lenze EJ, Levinson CA, McConnell H, Otto MW, Plag J, Pollack MH, Ressler KJ, Rodebaugh TL, Rothbaum BO, Scheeringa MS, Siewert-Siegmund A, Smits JAJ, Storch EA, Ströhle A, Tart CD, Tolin DF, van Minnen A, Waters AM, Weems CF, Wilhelm S, Wyka K, Davis M, Rück C, the DCS Anxiety Consortium, Altemus M, Anderson P, Cukor J, Finck C, Geffken GR, Golfels F, Goodman WK, Gutner C, Heyman I, Jovanovic T, Lewin AB, McNamara JP, Murphy TK, Norrholm S, Thuras P. (2017). D-Cycloserine Augmentation of Exposure-Based Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Individual Participant Data.. JAMA psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The fear survives on your never finding out what happens when you actually do it.
Build the ladder from what you do now, not from what you think you should be managing. If phone calls are currently impossible, the first rung sits somewhere below a phone call.
Going from talking online to talking in person is not one more step up the same ladder. It is a different ladder, and it deserves rungs of its own.
Social fear does not always look like hiding. Some people are the ones organising everything and talking to everyone, running a hard commentary on themselves the whole time.