What keeps social anxiety going?
Our thoughts, behaviours, and feelings often interact in ways that reinforce social anxiety. The large arrows in the middle of the image represent how these factors create a continuing loop. All four individual cycles amplify and influence each other to make social anxiety harder to break. However, working on disrupting these cycles may help make social anxiety more manageable.
Please also see our pages on Fight or Flight, Challenging negative thoughts and beliefs, Exposure therapy and hierarchies, Avoidance and safety behaviours, Making progress.
Further reading:
www.cci.health.wa.gov.au – Vicious Cycle of Anxiety PDF.
www.nationalsocialanxietycenter.com – Anxious about being anxious
