Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook for Teens (11 page)

You’re on a roll; let’s do a couple more.

By now you are probably thinking, “Okay, I get the point. My anxious automatic thoughts aren’t necessarily true, and they are making me do stuff that isn’t helping me move toward my values. But I can’t just block them out, can I? I can’t simply not think them!”

Ever try not to think of a banana? It doesn’t have to be a banana—it could be any word—but for argument’s sake, let’s try it with “banana.” For the next thirty seconds, don’t think about a banana.

. . . 27 . . . 28 . . . 29 . . . 30.

How did that work for you? Fact is, trying to push thoughts out of our minds won’t get rid of them; in fact, it can make them come up more often. Changes in our thinking are usually caused by changes in our experience. But as long as you believe your same old anxious thoughts, you are not likely to have new experiences.

If we want to try new things, to gain new experience, to move toward our values, we need to challenge our anxious thoughts—not block or wipe them out—but challenge them with reasonable questions.

What sort of questions might Alex have asked himself when he was faced with Ginelle?

Alex’s anxious thought:
“I won’t know what to say.”

Distortion:
Social perfectionism

His challenge question:
“Do I know for certain that I won’t have anything to say?”

Alex’s anxious thought:
“Ginelle will think I’m weird.”

Distortion:
Labeling

His challenge question:
“Does not saying something clever equal being weird?”

Alex’s anxious thought:
“If I embarrass myself in front of her, she will talk to all her friends about how weird I am, and then the whole school will think I am weird.”

Distortion:
Catastrophic thinking

His challenge question:
“What is more likely to happen? How could I cope with that?”

And after the experience . . .

Alex’s anxious thought:
“She barely recognized me. All she did was say hi.”

Distortion:
Discounting the positive

His challenge question:
“What did I do that was okay?”

The answers to challenge questions become your coping thoughts. Let’s see what coping thoughts Alex came up with:

Alex’s challenge question:
“Do I know for certain that I won’t have anything to say?”

His coping thoughts:
“I might be able to think of something to say. I’m pretty sure I can smile and say hi. That’s something.”

Alex’s challenge question:
“Does not saying something clever equal being weird?”

His coping thoughts:
“When other people don’t know what to say, I don’t think they are weird. She may not think I’m weird either.”

Alex’s challenge question:
“What is more likely to happen? How could I cope with that?”

His coping thoughts:
“Ginelle might not even look at me. She could act all rude and stuck up. If that happened, I could talk it over with a friend and at least I would know she’s not for me.”

And after the experience . . .

Alex’s challenge question:
“What did I do that was okay?”

His coping thoughts:
“I was assertive. I walked right up to her and said hi. I proved to myself that I’m braver than I thought. Now she knows I exist and I have a chance of getting to know her better.”

Fill in the following chart based on one of your own anxious thoughts. Feel free to use these challenge questions.

Catastrophic thinking:
What is more likely to happen? How could I cope with it?

Discounting the positive:
What did I do that was okay?

Labeling:
Does this word apply to me all the time in every situation?

Spotlighting:
What else might everyone be paying attention to besides me? Do people really care that much about what I am doing?

Mind reading:
What evidence do I have that this is what people are thinking?

Social perfectionism:
Am I asking more of myself than I would of others?

Remember the thought-feeling-action chain? Each new coping thought you come up with gives you an alternative to the automatic anxious thoughts you’ve been using for so long. The good news is, with practice and persistence, coping thoughts will help you face your fears, and facing your fears will give you new experiences that will create new ways of thinking.

Alex has done some good work. He’s defined his values, and he understands how avoiding scary situations takes him further from getting what he wants. He’s identified the automatic thoughts that drive his anxious feelings and avoidance behavior. He’s examined those thoughts for distortions and challenged them with coping questions. He should be okay now, right? Shouldn’t his avoidance behavior pretty well have disappeared for him, and for you too, if you’ve been doing the work in this book?

Not so fast. Coping thoughts won’t simply replace your distorted anxious thoughts. Reasoning won’t kill them. Like vampires, these thoughts will live forever unless they are exposed to sunlight. To really change the way we think, we need to purposely experience what we’ve been avoiding. We need exposure. Exposure is moving toward your fears instead of away from them. By facing your fears repeatedly you will learn to manage them and move on.

For Alex to gain confidence in himself, he’s going to have to actually talk to Ginelle.

Alex knows what situation is important to him—any situation with Ginelle. He’s avoiding the very person he is most attracted to, and he’s sick and tired of it. Alex needs to turn his avoidance situation into an exposure.

Take a moment to choose your own avoidance situation to transform into an exposure. Consider each situation in this chart. Rate it for scariness, and check the box that, given your values, best indicates how important each situation is for you. At the bottom of the list is a blank line where you can write a situation of your own.

Now that you’ve identified which of the situations you’ve been avoiding are important to you, let’s pick one to work on. It should be a situation that reflects your values. You are going to turn that avoidance situation into an exposure. “Expose myself to the very thing I’ve been avoiding?” you may say. “I could never do that.”

Don’t worry; you won’t be starting off on the high dive. You’ll begin at the shallow end of the pool.

Let’s look at the avoidance situation Alex chose: asking Ginelle out on a date. It was very important to him, and he rated it as a 10 in scariness (on a scale of 1 to 10). Exposing himself to that level of embarrassment seemed an impossible goal, certainly not something he could accomplish all at once. Alex put this new exposure situation at the top of his ladder, with rungs of smaller, less scary steps leading up to it. This is Alex’s exposure ladder.

Let’s put Alex on hold for a moment and get back to you. On the top rung of the ladder that follows, write the situation you’d like to face. On the bottom rung, write the least scary step you can think of that would lead in that direction. For example, if your top rung is to give a presentation in class, your bottom rung might be to tell a joke to a friend. One by one, fill in the rungs of your ladder so that each exposure builds on the one before. Take your time building your ladder; you’re going to need it for the rest of this book.

If you need ideas, here are several sample ladders built for common avoidance/exposure situations. The order of the rungs would probably be different for each person completing the ladder, so rate how scary each exposure is for you by putting a number from 1 to 10 in the circle.