Understanding Social Anxiety: Why Everyday Situations Feel Overwhelming
If you’ve ever found yourself overthinking a simple text message, worrying about how you come across in conversation, or feeling drained after social events, you’re not alone. Social anxiety can make everyday moments feel like emotional minefields, where even saying hello or making a phone call feels like too much.
At Roles We Play Counselling, I often hear things like, “I dread speaking up at work,” or “I avoid seeing friends because I’m scared I’ll say something wrong.” These aren’t unusual fears, instead, they’re signs of someone trying to protect themselves from being judged, criticised, or misunderstood.
What Is Social Anxiety?
Social anxiety is a fear of social interactions where you feel exposed, observed, or evaluated. It’s not always visible from the outside, but inside, there’s often a surge of self-doubt, physical tension, and the deep urge to escape.
You might be quiet or introverted, but social anxiety is something different. It can feel like you’re on stage every time you’re around others, worried about saying the wrong thing, looking awkward, or being remembered for something embarrassing.
Common Triggers
Social anxiety can show up in all sorts of situations, but here are a few of the most common:
Speaking in meetings or public settings
Attending social events, even with people you know
Making or receiving phone calls
Eating in front of others
Starting, sustaining, or ending conversations
Being observed doing everyday tasks
All of these involve some version of “being seen” and when your brain interprets that as unsafe, anxiety steps in to try and protect you.
Why Does It Feel So Intense?
For many people, social anxiety has roots in earlier life experiences, like being criticised, laughed at, or praised only when behaving a certain way. Over time, it can feel safer to stay quiet or keep your guard up than to risk being yourself.
In Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), we often look at the link between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. For example:
Thought: “They’ll think I’m awkward if I speak.”
Feeling: Tense, nervous, on edge
Behaviour: Avoid the conversation
These patterns are often automatic, but they can be changed once we start noticing them.
In Transactional Analysis (TA), we also look at the voices inside us. That critical inner script, the one saying “you’re not good enough” or “don’t mess this up”, might reflect a past message you absorbed rather than a truth about who you are. Part of the work in therapy is learning how to respond to that voice with something calmer and more grounded.
Healing Begins with Awareness
Avoidance often develops because it works, at least at first as it protects you from the feared discomfort of judgment or failure. But over time, avoidance can shrink your world as the more we avoid, the harder things become, and the more our self-trust erodes.
Most people with social anxiety already work hard to stay “socially safe” by planning ahead, monitoring conversations, second-guessing themselves, and it can be exhausting. Real change comes from feeling safer and more grounded in yourself, not from forcing confidence or pushing through.
What Helps?
Therapy creates a space where you can untangle what’s really going on, with the goal to understand what’s going on underneath, rather than trying to ‘fix’ you.
Together, we can:
Explore where the anxiety comes from
Understand what fuels it and what keeps it going
Challenge the internal critic gently, without shame
Experiment with new ways of being in social situations
Build self-trust and emotional safety, one small step at a time
Overcoming social anxiety doesn’t have to mean becoming loud or extroverted. It might look like replying to a message without overthinking it. Making a phone call. Being able to sit in a conversation without replaying it for hours afterwards. These shifts matter.
Therapy for Social Anxiety in Beckenham or Online
If social anxiety is something you're struggling with, I offer one-to-one sessions online and in-person from my practice in Beckenham. I use a blend of CBT and Transactional Analysis to help you understand your patterns and feel more in control of them.
You can book a first session to see if it feels like a good fit.
Or if you’re not quite ready, you might want to learn more about what to expect in your first session., or browse the CBT and TA articles to learn more about the approaches I use.
