CHAPTER 7
Confronting Your Fears 
Through Exposure
Chapter 6 provided a detailed overview of cognitive strategies that have been shown to 
be useful for changing anxious patterns of thinking. Almost all of the cognitive tech -
niques involve learning to think differently about social and performance situations by 
(1) broadening the possible range of interpretations and beliefs that you can hold for a 
particular social situation, and (2) considering all the evidence before assuming that a 
speciﬁc thought is true.
This chapter provides an introduction to a number of techniques that are useful for 
changing the behaviors that maintain your anxious beliefs and feelings. Essentially, these 
strategies involve confronting your fears directly by exposing yourself to the situations 
and the feelings that you currently fear and avoid. This chapter starts with a review of 
the behaviors that contribute to social anxiety and a summary of the strategies that can 
be used to change these behaviors. The remainder of the chapter provides more detailed 
descriptions of the underlying principles of exposure and the best ways of conducting 
exposure-based therapy.
Chapters 8 and 9 build directly on the content of this introductory chapter by provid -
ing more in-depth instructions for exposure to social situations (chapter 8) and exposure 
to feared sensations (chapter 9). The exercises described in chapters 7 through 9 should 
be used after you have had a chance to practice some of the cognitive methods described 
in chapter 6. We recommend that you begin to learn about exposure by reading chapters 
7 and 8 and that you practice the situational exposure exercises for at least three to ﬁve 
weeks before moving on to chapter 9. Then, we suggest that you read chapter 9 and make 
some attempts to expose yourself to feared sensations, if these exercises are relevant