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Areas › Worry and anxiety › Being seen and judged
Without it the mind files the whole thing under special circumstances: they were being kind, it was a safe room, it does not count. Keep the going over concrete. What did you say, what did they say, what did you expect, what happened instead. Facts in that order are much harder to argue away than a vague sense that it went alright.
do not be distressed at what they say: We know what they conceal and what they reveal (Quran 36:76). The dread of hidden judgement is answered by what is genuinely known, not by what you imagine was thought.
يس
فَلَا يَحۡزُنكَ قَوۡلُهُمۡۘ إِنَّا نَعۡلَمُ مَا يُسِرُّونَ وَمَا يُعۡلِنُونَ
So [Prophet] do not be distressed at what they say: We know what they conceal and what they reveal
Qur’an 36:76read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
An experimental study of how socially anxious people think about a past social event found that the mode of thinking mattered more than whether they thought about it at all. Abstract analytical going over carried different costs from concrete recall of what actually happened. That is one line of experimental work rather than a treatment trial, but it supports keeping the review specific and factual instead of open ended.
Wong QJ, Moulds ML. (2012). Processing mode during repetitive thinking in socially anxious individuals: evidence for a maladaptive experiential mode.. Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
An experience only moves a belief when you spell out what it proved.
You will probably not feel yourself getting better. One day you will be halfway through a chat with a stranger and realise you are doing the thing you could not do.
Sometimes a parent who seemed cold or impossible to please turns out to have been working with a different wiring altogether. Learning that can loosen something no amount of arguing with yourself would.
Friends who know what this feels like are worth a great deal. Leaning on them as your therapy is a different thing, and it tends to go badly for everyone.