Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook for Teens (14 page)

It was halfway through May, and school would be letting out in a few weeks. Bella knew that if she didn’t line up a job soon, she might be unemployed all summer. She decided to move up her ladder a couple of rungs and get a job application. Doing that was rated an 8, and Bella wasn’t looking forward to it one bit.

But Bella didn’t want to go back to her old avoidance behavior; she’d never get a job that way. To prepare herself, Bella took the time to fill out the following form.

Filling out the form really helped. It gave Bella just enough clarity and confidence to get her feet moving in the direction of the coffee shop.

Bella felt good. Getting the application without being humiliated was a surprise; none of her awful predictions had come true. “Even though I was blushing, the manager didn’t notice,” Bella thought. “Gotta love makeup!”

Oops!

There was something Bella had conveniently forgotten about. This time, she was wearing extra-heavy foundation to hide her blushing. If nobody could see her blushing, then she wasn’t really exposed.

All shy people use sneaky or subtle avoidances that keep them from being completely exposed. Using tons of deodorant to hide sweating, mumbling to avoid being heard, not initiating conversation at a party, and drinking to lower inhibitions are all techniques for playing it safe. These safety behaviors trick us into thinking we are engaged in the world when we are actually avoiding it.

For Bella to keep climbing her ladder toward her goal of getting a job, she was going to have to repeat this exposure without using her safety behavior, without makeup. So she went to another branch of the coffee shop chain to ask for an application. This barista was a guy who looked right at her as the color rose in her face. Bella felt embarrassed, but he acted normal and told her the shop was a cool place to work. If Bella hadn’t left right away, they might even have had a longer conversation. Bella felt relieved.

Here’s the chart she filled out to evaluate her experience.

After she filled out the chart, Bella filled out her application. But as satisfying as it was to have her potential future job in hand, the thought of actually going in for an interview was terrifying. A solid 10!

“I just can’t do it,” Bella thought. She was dead certain of what would happen to her in a job interview. But Bella couldn’t bear the thought of being unemployed and broke all summer. She decided that getting a shot at the long-term gain was worth some possible short-term pain. She and her friend Sandra got appointments to be interviewed at the coffee shop the same morning. Sandra dropped a bombshell at the last minute when she insisted that Bella comb her hair out of her face, saying, “So we can see you!”

“That’s just my hairstyle,” Bella insisted, but she realized that hiding behind her hair was a safety behavior, so before they left she added it to her chart.

Going into the interview with her hair pulled back felt like the hardest thing Bella had ever done in her life. Here’s the chart Bella filled out after the interview:

Bella didn’t get that job, but she continued to go to interviews until she was hired. Funny thing Bella noticed about the ladder, though: the higher she climbed, the more rungs there seemed to be. Working a busy shift at a new job and dealing with people all day long rated 11 on her exposure ladder. Off the chart! But after what Bella had gone through, it was manageable. Her new experience has prompted some new, confident thoughts that speak almost as loudly as the anxious ones. Now she loves following her compass and she is learning to accept herself, as well as the nickname her new boss gave her—Blushing Bella.

Exposures, like life, don’t always go as planned. In this chapter we will explore the three most common problems that happen during exposures and how to deal with them.

1. You planned an exposure and were psyched to do it, but when you got into the situation you felt much more anxious than you had predicted. Your impulse to avoid took over and you bailed. What to do?

It is possible that you picked something too high on your ladder. If you think that is the case, pick a lower rung. If you do not have anything lower, brainstorm and see if you can come up with something.

For example, Liz, who thinks she is a boring conversationalist, planned to join a couple of friends at lunch and share two things she did over the weekend. She did join her friends but when the time came for her to talk, she got sweaty and started thinking it would sound weird to suddenly start talking about herself. Before the exposure, she had thought this would be pretty easy, and she did not have anything else on her ladder. To move it down a rung for next time, Liz came up with two ideas:

1. She could change the situation by choosing people she felt more comfortable with or talking with one person instead of two.

2. She could change what she was going to do by asking two questions, which was easier for her, and sharing just one thing she did over the weekend.

     Liz decided to do the same exposure but with relatives who were coming over for dinner at her house.

Remember that it is perfectly normal to get anxious. In fact, if you are really anxious, you have picked something that you really need to work on. Conversely, if you aren’t feeling anxious, you’re ready for a higher rung. It is also normal that the more you do an exposure, the less anxious you will become and the more confidence you will gain, so at least you have that to look forward to.

Get a coach; sometimes involving a friend or even a parent can help you do your exposure. Just telling someone what you plan to do can help you stick to it. Depending on what your exposure is, you may be able to get someone to go with you when you do it. For example, when Bella went for a job interview, which she rated as a 10 in scariness, she took her friend Sandra with her.

2. You are just as afraid doing an exposure for the tenth time as you were the first time you did it.

Usually when you do repeated exposures you will experience a decrease, even if only a slight one, in your anxiety. When this doesn’t happen, naturally it can be discouraging. But before you give up and go back to avoiding that situation again, take a look at what could be hanging you up.

Are you doing a safety behavior? You wouldn’t necessarily be aware of it if you were, so take a hard look at how you have been approaching the exposures. Are you protecting yourself in some way from an embarrassing result? If you get through the situation without experiencing the actual risks, you will also miss the rewards. Remember, safety behaviors are like water wings. You are in the water, but you believe the only reason you are not drowning is that you’re wearing them. Your fear of water isn’t going to diminish until you actually have to paddle and kick to stay afloat.

When Bella went to the job interview wearing heavy makeup to hide her face, the makeup made it impossible for Bella to (a) test the probability that people would notice and/or comment on her blushing and (b) practice her ability to cope if they did notice and comment.

Doing exposures while maintaining your safety behaviors is like trying to learn how to ride a bike without ever taking off the training wheels.

Perhaps you are using disastrous distortions, those warped ways of thinking from chapter 4. Like a funhouse mirror, they are an inaccurate way of viewing yourself and the world.

Suspect number one is spotlighting. You may be so self-conscious, so aware of everything that you say or do that you have trouble getting into the swing of things. In a way, spotlighting is like another safety behavior. You are watching yourself super carefully so that you don’t screw up.

Try taking the spotlight off yourself. Uncensor yourself; say what comes to mind. Pay attention to the people and the environment around you.

And while you are paying attention, make sure you are not negatively biased. Socially anxious teens tend to discount the positive things around them and overreact to the negative. Do you hyperfocus on any facial expression that might reflect boredom, disgust, disappointment, or irritation? It is common for anxious teens to misinterpret people’s innocent facial expressions as being judgmental.

Is the situation you are practicing one you will always feel anxious in? In some cases, repeated exposure won’t get rid of anxiety no matter how much you practice. Some activities are scary, but we do them anyway. As an extreme example, you might ride the roller coaster over and over, year after year, and yet your heart still pounds, you still scream, and you still hang on to the grab bar for dear life. Public speakers and stage performers still get butterflies in their stomachs before they step out in front of audiences, even after years of experience. We keep right on doing things that make us scared or nervous because of the rewards—the exhilaration of the G forces on the roller coaster or an audience’s applause. Anxiety is an essential, normal part of the human experience. If you’ve done an exposure repeated times, anxious or not, you are now doing something you have avoided in the past.

3. You do your exposure and things go wrong—horribly, terribly wrong!