Social Belief Updating Worksheet

When to Use

Use during the consolidation phase of social anxiety treatment to systematically update the negative social beliefs that drive the client's anxiety. Introduce after behavioural experiments have generated disconfirmatory evidence.

How to Introduce

Explain that beliefs about social situations built up over years do not update automatically from single experiences. This worksheet provides a structured way to accumulate evidence from multiple experiments and social interactions to build a new, more accurate belief.

Adaptations

For clients who struggle with belief updating despite positive experiences, explore whether the belief has a conditional structure (e.g., 'They were only nice because they didn't know the real me') that discounts positive evidence. Address these belief-maintenance strategies explicitly.

Not effective if used before the client has accumulated meaningful behavioural experiment data. Premature belief updating exercises risk becoming purely intellectual exercises without emotional conviction.

Clinical Tips

Track both the old belief conviction and new belief conviction as percentages across sessions. Progress is often non-linear, with setbacks after difficult social experiences. Normalise this and use setbacks as opportunities to identify residual safety behaviours or self-focused attention that limited the disconfirmatory power of the experience.