Social Situation Record

When to Use

Use during the intervention phase to collect detailed data about social situations where anxiety occurs. The record helps identify the specific appraisals, safety behaviours, self-focused attention, and post-event processing that maintain the client's social anxiety.

How to Introduce

Explain that recording social situations in detail helps identify the specific patterns that keep social anxiety going. Complete one example collaboratively in session before assigning as between-session work.

Adaptations

For clients with high avoidance, start by recording situations they managed to enter, even briefly, before expanding to avoided situations. For clients who find real-time recording impractical in social situations, a brief post-situation record within an hour is acceptable.

Avoid if the client has not yet developed a formulation-based understanding of their social anxiety. Without this framework, the record may simply document distress without generating therapeutically useful data.

Clinical Tips

The most clinically useful entries are those where the client can identify the specific safety behaviour used and its unintended consequences (e.g., avoiding eye contact leading to appearing disinterested, which confirms the feared social outcome). Use these entries to design targeted behavioural experiments.