The Shyness & Social Anxiety Workbook
158job interview, practicing making small talk) and can provide you with feedback follow -
ing your practices. If you choose to include a helper during some exposure exercises, 
that person should be familiar with the basic principles of exposure. Either you should 
instruct the person about what their role as helper or coach entails, or you should have 
the person read the relevant sections of this book. In fact, some combination of both 
approaches may work best. In addition, the person you choose to work with should be 
supportive and unlikely to become frustrated if things don’t work out as planned.
Keep Your Expectations Realistic
Don’t expect your anxiety to change overnight. It will likely take weeks or months 
for it to improve. Also, you won’t be able to follow your improvement like a straight line 
on a graph. You may ﬁnd that in some situations your anxiety decreases fairly quickly, 
whereas in other situations success takes longer. Also, you may ﬁnd that some exposure 
practices don’t lead to any improvement in your fear. You may even have weeks during 
which your fear and anxiety worsen. A good rule of thumb is to expect one step back 
for every two or three steps forward.
Don’t Fight Your Feelings
For years, you have probably been trying to control your anxiety, to prevent it from 
occurring, and to get rid of it as soon as possible—no matter what the cost. By now, 
you have probably discovered that trying to control your emotions doesn’t work. In fact, 
attempts to control your anxiety are likely to make it worse rather than better. Fighting 
your fear is like lying in bed trying hard to fall asleep by a particular time, telling your -