The Shyness & Social Anxiety Workbook
200you ﬁrst try them a few times in nonsocial situations to make sure that you are familiar 
with the exercise.
If there are exercises that are anxiety-provoking for you in nonsocial situations, we 
recommend that you practice them repeatedly at home or in another comfortable loca -
tion place before practicing in social situations. Use your symptom exposure hierarchy 
for nonsocial situations to help you choose which exercises to practice. Begin with exer -
cises that are challenging but unlikely to be so overwhelming that you cannot complete 
them. After you have chosen an exercise, set aside about ﬁfteen minutes twice a day 
to practice the exercise repeatedly. After each repetition of the exercise, take a short 
break (from thirty seconds to a few minutes) until the symptoms decrease. Continue to 
practice the exercise another ﬁve or six times or until your fear has decreased. Later in 
this chapter, you will ﬁnd a diary you can use to record the results of each practice and 
to challenge any anxiety-provoking thoughts that arise during the practice.
Each time you complete an exercise, you will experience the physical symptoms 
associated with it. However, your fear of the symptoms should decrease across individual 
practices and across days. For example, if you are practicing hyperventilation, you will 
likely continue to become hot and lightheaded each time you do the exercise. However, 
over time, these feelings should become less frightening.
Step 4: Practicing Symptom Exposure in Social Situations
After you have practiced situational exposure (chapter 8) and symptom exposure 
in nonsocial situations, the next step is to combine these two approaches. Combining 
symptom and situational exposure is one of the most challenging types of exposure