What Keeps Social Anxiety Going?
A maintenance-cycle explainer on how self-focused attention, safety behaviours, and going over events beforehand and afterwards keep social anxiety going, and how to break the cycle.
Written by Tarun Vermani, Trainee Clinical Psychologist Last reviewed
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What Keeps Social Anxiety Going?
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Why it sticks around
If social anxiety has stayed with you, it is not because you are not trying. Social anxiety keeps itself going through a handful of habits that feel protective in the moment but quietly keep the fear alive. The good news is that once you can see these habits clearly, you can start to change them. This handout maps out the cycle and how it breaks.
Self-focused attention
In a social situation, anxiety pulls your attention inward, onto how you feel and how you think you are coming across. You become your own audience, watching yourself closely. The trouble is that you then judge how it is going from the inside, using your anxious feelings as evidence. So if you feel awkward, you assume you must look awkward. This inside view is misleading, but it feels completely convincing in the moment.
Safety behaviours
To get through, you also use safety behaviours: small actions meant to hide the anxiety or prevent disaster. Tick any that you notice yourself doing.
Worrying before and raking over afterwards
The anxiety does not only happen during the event. Beforehand, you may spend hours dreading it and imagining it going wrong, which is called anticipatory worry. Afterwards, you may rake over every detail, replaying the moments that felt awkward and remembering the whole thing as far worse than it actually was. This is called post-event processing. Both of these keep social situations feeling dangerous, long before and long after they are over.
The cycle
Put it all together and you have a cycle. Self-focused attention, safety behaviours, and all that worrying before and after stop you from ever finding out the truth: that the feared judgement usually does not happen, and that you come across far better than you think. Because the fear is never disproved, it stays fully charged for next time. The very things meant to protect you are what keep you stuck.
Breaking it
The way out is to do the opposite of what the anxiety wants. You learn to shift your attention outward, onto the conversation and the people in front of you, rather than onto yourself. You gradually drop the safety behaviours, so you can find out you do not need them. And through behavioural experiments, you test your fearful predictions and discover what really happens. Done step by step, this gives your brain the new information that finally loosens the fear.
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When to use ‘What Keeps Social Anxiety Going?’
‘What Keeps Social Anxiety Going?’ is an interactive cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) worksheet, most often used in CBT for social anxiety.
It is designed to be used within therapy rather than as a standalone self-help tool: a therapist introduces it, works through it collaboratively, and helps make sense of what it surfaces. You can preview the full worksheet above, then assign it digitally for clients to complete between sessions on any device — or download it as a print-ready PDF.
How it works
Most people work through it in around 8 minutes. It moves through six short steps:
- Why it sticks around — If social anxiety has stayed with you, it is not because you are not trying. Social anxiety keeps itself going through a handful of habits…
- Self-focused attention — In a social situation, anxiety pulls your attention inward, onto how you feel and how you think you are coming across. You become your own…
- Safety behaviours — To get through, you also use safety behaviours: small actions meant to hide the anxiety or prevent disaster. Tick any that you notice…
- Worrying before and raking over afterwards — The anxiety does not only happen during the event. Beforehand, you may spend hours dreading it and imagining it going wrong, which is…
- The cycle — Put it all together and you have a cycle. Self-focused attention, safety behaviours, and all that worrying before and after stop you from…
- Breaking it — The way out is to do the opposite of what the anxiety wants. You learn to shift your attention outward, onto the conversation and the…
Completed on the Formulate platform, your client's answers are saved automatically and shared straight back to you, so you can review them before the next session rather than waiting for a paper copy to come back.
The CBT approach behind it
In common with other CBT methods, ‘What Keeps Social Anxiety Going?’ works by mapping how the parts of a problem connect and keep it going (formulation). The aim is not positive thinking but a clearer, shared understanding of what keeps a difficulty going — and practical, testable ways to change it.
Because it is a CBT tool it stays focused on the here-and-now links between thoughts, feelings, the body and behaviour, and it works best as one part of a wider course of therapy rather than as advice or a diagnosis.
Evidence & sources
This worksheet is grounded in established cognitive behavioural therapy theory and practice. Key sources include:
- Clark, D.M. & Wells, A. (1995). A cognitive model of social phobia. In R.G. Heimberg et al. (Eds.), Social Phobia: Diagnosis, Assessment, and Treatment. New York: Guilford Press.
- Wells, A. (1997). Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders. Chichester: Wiley.
For use alongside professional support
Formulate provides educational CBT resources for use with a qualified therapist. They are not a substitute for professional assessment, diagnosis, or crisis care.
If you need urgent help now:
- Emergency services: 999 — if you or someone else is in immediate danger
- Samaritans: 116 123 — free, day or night, 365 days a year
- SANEline: 0800 689 5555 — 4:30pm–10:30pm, every day
More Social Anxiety worksheets
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Monitor and challenge the post-mortem rumination that follows social situations — a key maintenance factor in social anxiety.
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Compare the effects of self-focused attention vs external focus during social situations to test whether self-focus makes anxiety worse.
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