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Areas › Worry and anxiety › Being seen and judged
One young woman put it as caring too much what people thought, when in fact they were all busy thinking about themselves. Nobody handed her that sentence. If you can produce your own version, you have something to reach for later, at the bus stop or outside a meeting, when there is no one around to remind you.
fear only Him and no other: God's reckoning is enough (Quran 33:39). The swap being made is in whose assessment you are living under.
الأحزاب
ٱلَّذِينَ يُبَلِّغُونَ رِسَٰلَٰتِ ٱللَّهِ وَيَخۡشَوۡنَهُۥ وَلَا يَخۡشَوۡنَ أَحَدًا إِلَّا ٱللَّهَۗ وَكَفَىٰ بِٱللَّهِ حَسِيبࣰ ا
[and with all] those who deliver God’s messages and fear only Him and no other: God’s reckoning is enough
Qur’an 33:39read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Reviews of the cognitive behavioural literature on social anxiety lay the maintaining parts out plainly: attention to threat, ambiguous signals read as hostile, and a distorted image of how you appear. Being able to describe that loop in ordinary language is what the cognitive part of treatment is aiming at. Whether saying it in your own words predicts staying well has not been shown directly, so take it as a good sign rather than a guarantee.
Morrison AS, Heimberg RG. (2013). Social anxiety and social anxiety disorder.. Annual review of clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
An explanation you built yourself is one you can actually retrieve when you need it.
Pick something ordinary you want to be able to do on your own, book your own appointment, buy your own shopping, and aim at that. It pulls harder than the goal of feeling less anxious.
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.
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.