Changing Your Anxious Thoughts and Expectations
137A SUMMARY GUIDE TO CHALLENGING 
THOUGHTS
This chapter includes a large number of suggestions and strategies for identifying and 
changing your anxious thoughts. Now that you have had a chance to read through the 
chapter and complete some of the exercises, we encourage you to continue using the 
cognitive techniques to cope with your social and performance anxiety. Generally, using 
the cognitive strategies will involve the following steps:
1. Identify your anxious thoughts, predictions, and interpretations.
2. Examine the validity of your anxious predictions using some of the tech -
niques described in this chapter (such as examining the evidence, taking the 
perspective of others, examining the costs and beneﬁts of your thoughts, 
conducting behavioral experiments). Are your predictions realistic? For 
example, will others really think                 about 
you?
3. Examine the validity of your catastrophic thoughts by asking the question, 
“So what if my anxious thoughts are true?” For example, “What if a few 
people in the audience really think my presentation is awful? How might I 
cope with that?”
4. Use the Social Anxiety Thought Record to identify and challenge your 
anxious thoughts on paper.