Getting to Know Your Social Anxiety
53your hair is perfect and continually asking your friends to reassure you that you are 
interesting or smart.
Although it is helpful to seek reassurance from time to time, constant reassurance 
seeking can have a negative impact by helping to maintain your fear. By asking for reas -
surance over and over again, you may strengthen the belief that there is something 
wrong with you. (Why else would you need to check so often?). Also, you run the risk 
of never learning to provide yourself with the reassurance that you may need. Finally, 
constantly asking others for reassurance may cause some of your greatest fears to come 
true by negatively affecting how others view you. Other people may get tired of always 
having to provide you with reassurance. Also, if you constantly ask others to make judg -
ments about you (for instance, to tell you how smart, attractive, or interesting you are), 
you may actually be training them to be more observant and scrutinizing of you than 
they might otherwise be.
In the space below, list some examples of times when you have engaged in excessive 
checking or reassurance seeking.
Other subtle avoidance and safety behaviors.  Overcompensating for perceived deﬁcits 
and excessive checking are both examples of safety behaviors  because they are used to 
help you feel safer in social situations. Unlike complete avoidance of feared situations, 
these are more subtle avoidance behaviors, and they can be more difﬁcult to notice. Are 
there other subtle ways in which you avoid situations or safety behaviors that you use to 
protect yourself from feeling anxious in social situations?
For example, if you have to give a presentation, do you stand in a particular place?