Making a Plan for Change
83can still help to reinforce what you learn in therapy. An important part of CBT involves 
educating the client (often using self-help readings) and encouraging the client to prac -
tice the various CBT techniques between sessions. In other words, CBT conducted with 
a therapist often includes a self-help component. Combining a self-help book with your 
therapy may even reduce the number of therapy sessions needed (Rapee et al. 2007). 
For more information on ﬁnding a therapist, see the section on seeking professional help 
that appears later in this chapter.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Other Psychotherapy?
In almost all cases, we recommend cognitive therapy and exposure as the psycho -
logical treatment of choice for social phobia. Adding social-skills training to the program 
may be useful for some individuals as well. As for other psychological therapies, although 
they certainly have a place for treating certain types of problems, they are not sufﬁciently 
proven when it comes to treating social phobia and other anxiety-related conditions.
Some people with whom we have worked have reported beneﬁts from combining 
CBT with another form of psychotherapy. In these cases, typically they have seen one 
therapist for CBT and another for dealing with other issues (for example, marital prob -
lems, coping with childhood abuse). Although this approach sometimes works well, we 
recommend that your two therapists stay in close contact with each other so that they 
can ensure they are not giving you contradictory messages during therapy.
Medication or CBT?
A number of studies have investigated whether CBT, medications, or their combina -
tion work best (Antony and Rowa 2008). Although there are some differences across