The 6 Ways Social Anxiety Keeps You Stuck (And How to Break Free) | Ep. 441

Struggling with social anxiety? In this episode, Kimberley Quinlan shares the six sneaky ways it keeps you stuck — and the powerful mindset shifts that will help you break free.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why avoidance feels helpful in the moment but deepens your anxiety long term
• How to stop the overanalyzing spiral after every social interaction
• Why feeling awkward or embarrassed isn’t a failure — it’s human
• How to stop assuming everyone is judging you
• The hidden cost of people-pleasing (and how to start being you)
• A step-by-step plan to reduce social anxiety with compassion and courage

6 Sneaky Ways Social Anxiety Keeps You Stuck — And What to Do About It

If social anxiety is getting in the way of your life, your relationships, and your confidence — you’re not alone. In this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit, therapist Kimberley Quinlan unpacks the six core ways social anxiety keeps people stuck, and how you can gently start stepping out of fear and into freedom.

Whether it’s dodging dinner parties, overthinking every word you said, or feeling like you have to fake your way through every interaction — social anxiety can feel overwhelming. But Kimberley shares practical tools and mindset shifts to help you move forward, one small step at a time.

1. Avoidance Becomes a Habit

Social anxiety often convinces us that avoiding social situations is the safest option. And in the short term, it can feel relieving to cancel plans or stay quiet in a conversation. But in the long run, avoidance makes anxiety stronger and reinforces the belief that you’re not capable.

Try this: Write down one small action you’re willing to take to reduce avoidance — even if it’s as simple as making eye contact at the store or staying five minutes longer at a social event. Tiny steps count.

Remember: Pair your courage with self-compassion. Pushing yourself to show up won’t help if you’re being critical the whole time. Instead, celebrate your effort, not your performance.

2. Overanalyzing Everything

After a social interaction, do you replay every detail in your mind — the awkward pause, the joke that didn’t land, the thing you should have said?

This is a trap many people with social anxiety fall into. Instead of gaining confidence, overanalyzing keeps you stuck in fear.

What to practice instead: Mindfulness. Let the interaction be in the past. Stay grounded in the present moment without judging yourself.

Bonus tip: If you do reflect on the event, try focusing on what went well or what you learned — and do it with kindness, not criticism.

3. Avoiding Embarrassment at All Costs

Many people with social anxiety fear embarrassment more than anything. But here’s the truth: awkward moments are a normal part of human interaction — even for the most confident people.

Try reframing it: Embarrassment doesn’t mean you failed. It means you’re human. Give yourself permission to have a few awkward moments — and practice letting them pass without judgment.

Permission slip: “It’s okay if I stumble over my words. That’s part of being real.”

4. Assuming People Are Judging You

Social anxiety often makes you feel like everyone is watching, judging, or critiquing you. But most people are thinking about themselves, not you.

Shift your focus: Instead of scanning for signs of judgment, reconnect with your intention. Why are you here? To support a friend? To meet someone new? To enjoy yourself?

Values over fear: Let your values lead the way — not your anxiety.

5. People-Pleasing to Avoid Discomfort

Even if you show up to the event, you might find yourself “performing” — saying yes when you want to say no, smiling when you’re exhausted, or pretending to be someone you’re not.

The result? Exhaustion, resentment, and disconnection from your true self.

The practice: Start experimenting with being you. You don’t need to impress or entertain. Practice saying what you really think (gently), setting small boundaries, and letting your authentic self come through — even if it’s a little messy.

6. Believing the Lie That You’re Not Good Enough

One of the biggest traps of social anxiety is the belief that something is wrong with you — that you’re awkward, boring, or unlovable.

Let’s be clear: That’s not the truth. That’s the voice of anxiety talking.

Reframe it: Your anxiety doesn’t define your worth. You are already good enough — even with shaky hands and nervous small talk. The people who know you best love you for your quirks, not your perfection.

One empowering option: Some people even choose to openly share that they have social anxiety. This can break the shame cycle and invite genuine connection. As Brené Brown says, shame cannot survive being spoken.

How to Start Moving Forward

You don’t need to conquer social anxiety overnight. In fact, the best way to make real progress is through small, consistent steps.

Action Plan:

• Pick 1–3 small goals from today’s episode.
• Practice them weekly for one month.
• Reassess and build from there.

Most importantly: Be gentle with yourself. Social anxiety is common. It lies to you. But you can change your relationship with it — with patience, courage, and a big dose of self-compassion.

 

The podcast is made possible by NOCD. NOCD offers effective, convenient therapy available in the US and outside the US. To find out more about NOCD, their therapy plans, and if they currently take your insurance, head over to https://learn.nocd.com/youranxietytoolkit

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Transcription:The 6 Ways Social Anxiety Keeps You Stuck (And How to Break Free)

If you feel like social anxiety is holding you back from the life you want, you’re not alone. There are so many people who are struggling with the same thing. So today we’re going to cover the six ways that social anxiety keeps you stuck and what you can do to break free from that cycle. I’m so excited to be here with you.

 

My name is Kimberly Quinlan. I am the host of your anxiety toolkit, and I’m so excited to talk to you about this today. So let’s go.

 

Now if you have experienced social anxiety, you know the dread of anticipating the upcoming social events, the dinner parties, the events for your partner, the the church services, the interactions at the supermarket, you know how much anxiety those events can create and you’re not alone. There’s nothing wrong with you per se either.

 

I don’t want you to be beating yourself up because these things are hard. Social anxiety is rampant among people, particularly post COVID. It has made it so much more difficult to have these basic interactions to you. They don’t feel basic. They feel incredibly stressful, anxiety provoking, incredibly shame filled or embarrassing.

 

These are the normal experiences of people who have social anxiety. The good news is though, that there are ways that we can work on our social anxiety, make small baby changes so that social anxiety doesn’t strip you of the things you value. Overall, one of the things that people value the most when it comes to me interviewing my clients and my students is their relationships, the connections that they have.

 

And so if you feel like social anxiety has impacted the connection that you have with their loved ones, your family, your, your colleagues at school or at work, um, your best friends, your kids, my hope is that we can work today to, I. Identify the specific six ways that social anxiety is getting in the way so that you can make baby steps to get out of it.

 

You’re not alone. There’s nothing wrong with you. I want you to sort of be as gentle as you can as we go through these six and then. Get a notepad, get a piece of paper. Write down the ways in which you plan to make small baby changes. ’cause the good news is social anxiety is something you can get through and get over.

 

It doesn’t mean that you’ll be completely confident all the time. Nobody is including me and I love social interactions in many cases. What it will do is help you to feel like you have a plan, have you to feel a little sense of mastery over those social situations, and hopefully get you to where you can feel like you belong and that you’re not constantly being critiqued by the other people that you’re hanging out with.

 

So let’s go through the six ways that anxiety keeps you stuck. Let’s get started. Okay, so the first way that social anxiety keeps you stuck is that avoidance. Becomes your default habit. If you have any type of anxiety, it is your natural instinct to avoid it. No one wants to feel anxious. Anxiety is incredibly painful, and as human beings, one of the reasons we have survived as many thousand years as we have is because we learn the art of avoidance, removing ourselves.

 

From the perceived danger. But the problem here is if you have social anxiety, you have perceived there to be a high level of danger when in fact there is not. And when you avoid. These social interactions or you avoid connecting with other people, you miss the opportunity to grow a relationship with them.

 

The truth of the matter is you might feel like avoiding that social situation feels like the safer option, but it actually only increases your anxiety. It actually increases your feelings of being. Other than being an outsider, it also makes you feel a sense of that something is wrong with you. You feel like that you’re estranged from these people.

 

You feel that now you’re not included in that, their interactions. And the truth is when you do avoid social interaction, you are more likely to be excluded from them, including you in future events. So definitely we wanna. First look at avoidance. What specifically are you avoiding? Are you avoiding going to certain social events?

 

Are you avoiding sharing and talking at these events? Are you avoiding eye contact at these events? Are you avoiding, um, starting conversations with new people? Are you only staying with your quote unquote safe people? Are you avoiding. Um, being your true, authentic self, are you kind of masking or being a people pleaser?

 

Because if that is the case, you are going to leave these events or maybe even not even go to these events. And as I mentioned before, feeling more alone, less confident, less like you have mastery over them, and it reinforces your fears that. You’re not good enough or that you are socially awkward, or that people don’t like you or that they’re judging you.

 

The more you avoid them, the more you will reinforce those faulty beliefs that you have about yourself. Most of the people I know with social anxiety are wonderful human beings. When they let their God down, I get to enjoy their humor and their quirkiness and their lovely, kind, gentle soul. Um. But I only get to see that part because they let their guard down.

 

And often that takes time. And often they don’t do it because they avoid. So what we wanna do first with this avoidance is identify, this is where you get your pen and your pad out, is you write out what is one. Thing you are willing to do that will help you to reduce that avoidance. Is it going to the supermarket and giving eye contact if that’s something you’ve avoided?

 

Is it agreeing to go to that dinner party with friends? If that’s something you’ve avoided, is it you avoiding, um, that you’ve sh you’re avoiding sharing your personal stuff? Could it be that you share a story or ask a question? If you’re someone who’s avoiding asking questions, just look at that list of avoidances that you’re doing and ask yourself, what is one thing I could practice, um, facing in this next event?

 

And what you can find here is. Even though it’s incredibly uncomfortable, even though you may trip up and make a mistake, you’re on your way to reducing that avoidant behavior. What we can also see here is as you do this, your success will often depend on one key component, and that is going to be.

 

Self-compassion. Hear me out if you agree to go to a party, but the whole time you’re at the party, so you’re reducing your avoidance, but the whole time you’re there. You’re criticizing yourself, you’re chastising yourself, you’re punishing yourself. You’re berating yourself. The chance that you learn a skill or you learn that this is doable is very low.

 

But if you go to this event and you engage in, not that, you don’t engage in that avoidance and you practice kindness and compassion and celebration, excuse me.

 

Theo,

 

Theo, quiet.

 

So if you practice celebration, what you’re probably gonna find is you leave that event with this sense of, wow, I can do this. That wasn’t so bad. Maybe it was uncomfortable, but it wasn’t so bad. So as you practice reducing those avoidance behaviors, make sure you’re also practicing compassion along the way.

 

Now, the second way that social anxiety keeps you stuck is that you overanalyze every social situation. I get it.

 

One second. You wanna go outside?

 

Now I get it. You want to finish the event and you wanna get some certainty that you didn’t completely screw up. So what do you do? You start analyzing. You start mentally ruminating. How was that? What happened? How did it go? Did I say the right thing? Did I say the wrong thing? And because of that, you still lose all of your confidence.

 

Sorry about that, everybody.

 

The interesting thing about overanalyzing is when you replay the event in your head, it’s rare that you’re going to remember it as this amazing. Eloquent, beautifully expressed moment. You’re probably, your brain is going to focus on the fumbles that you made, the eye contact, you didn’t give that joke, that didn’t seem to land.

 

And what’s going to happen is it’s going to make you doubt even more of your abilities is gonna make you. And convince you that you shouldn’t have done this, that you should have stayed home, and that you should revert back to those avoidant behaviors. But what I want you to do instead is instead after the event has happened, after the social interaction, I want you to practice your mindfulness skills.

 

Now, mindfulness is the practice of being present in the here and the now. Without judging and without wishing that it was any other way without resistance. And what this will allow you to do is. After the event is over, your only agenda is to focus on the here and the now. Not what happened, not what was said, not the good and the bad, but on the here and the now and leave that in the past.

 

Now, this is going to be a practice that you are going to have to practice. Over and over again. Chances are, because you probably have social anxiety if you’re listening to this, you have become accustomed to. Overthinking over analyzing every little thing that you did in a very critical voice, which again, creates so much suffering for you, and because of that, it’s going to be your default.

 

It’s gonna be your natural way of handling these events. So what we’re gonna do here is you’re going to practice strengthening the muscle of mindfulness and not tending to the good and the bad and the ugly. Oh my God.

 

Okay. Come on. Come on. No, no. Come up. Here. Come.

 

Are you all right? Okay.

 

Now, if you’re someone who likes to debrief and think through things, even if it’s for a short period of time. That’s fine. What I would encourage you to do in that situation is instead of going over all the things that went wrong, go over all of the things that went right. Where did you show up? How were you able to do these amazing, scary things?

 

What. Could you have done better? Yes, we can address that. That’s okay to look at, but not through the lens of criticism. Maybe more do it through the lens of a neutral response, like instead of looking at the floor, I could have given him an extra smile or I could have asked him about his grandmother, or I could have said, what brought you to this event?

 

It’s okay to prepare, but we don’t want to practice over analyzing.

 

Okay.

 

Okay.

 

Number three is the fear that I.

 

Number three is the unwillingness to feel the feeling of embarrassment. A lot of people with social anxiety have a strong sensitivity to the emotion of embarrassment. They will do anything to avoid this, and when they do feel embarrassed, it feels. Absolutely painful to them. Absolutely painful in their body, painful in their head, and it’s something that they have struggled with to tolerate.

 

And so in this situation, if you are someone who has a strong sensitivity to the emotion of embarrassment, I’m going to encourage you to remind yourself that embarrassment and awkwardness in social interactions is actually very normal. Even the most. Confident, uh, socially, you know, skilled people have moments where there is a pause of awkwardness where embarrassment does show up, but when it does show up, they have a, an, a sense of acceptance of that being the norm.

 

I have found that folks with social anxiety, when embarrassment does show up, that awkwardness does show up for them. Not only do they have to tolerate the. Embarrassment, but then they also judge themselves and beat themselves up because there was a moment of awkwardness. Now, how might this sound in their head for them?

 

Let’s say they’re talking with somebody at this event and there’s then the sort of the, the conversation fizzles out and there’s this awkward silence and you know, there’s that moment where either nobody says anything or a new conversation starts. Often for people who don’t have this anxiety and this embarrassment sensitivity, they think, okay, this is a normal part of conversations.

 

What can we do? Do we leave the conversation or do I keep it going? Whereas the person with social anxiety will have the awkwardness and then go, you idiot. This is so awkward. They think you’re awkward, they think you’re embarrassing. They think that you’re not good at conversations, and they take that awkward pause.

 

As a personal, um, problem, as a default of theirs, of a fault and something that does wrong with them, something they did wrong. So we wanna reframe this. We wanna remind ourselves that it’s completely normal to have embarrassing moments. It’s completely in normal to have awkwardness. It’s also complete completely.

 

Again, here’s an example of it. It’s completely normal to make mistakes as you talk. That was very perfectly timed, that mistake that I just made, because we are human beings. We are not perfect. We are not robots. We don’t really wanna be in relationship with robots and perfect people. We want faulted. You know, imperfect people who we can relate to and be imperfect humans together.

 

And so for you, it might mean that you have to go in giving yourself permission to have, I don’t know, 10, 20 awkward moments and allow that to be okay, and to have a willingness to have those emotions without beating yourself and criticizing yourself for them.

 

Okay, let’s move on to number four. The fourth reason that social anxiety keeps us stuck is because we make the assumption that they are judging us negatively. And what happens with this, similar to what we just talked about is. We personalize everything and we become very critical about every interaction, and we convince ourselves that they are judging us like it’s some kind of Olympic.

 

Gymnastics sport, that they’re grading us, that they’re judging us on our intonation and our words and our vocabulary and the cadence and how we show up in our body and our bodies, and our car. And our clothes. Again, most of the time we know that people. Do not judge us nearly as much as we think they do.

 

People are not thinking about us like we think they are. They don’t care. They’re thinking more about themselves, what they’re going to eat for lunch, about what people think of them. You know, what they’re, what big project they have at work, how their grandmother is going. They’re not judging us like we think that they are.

 

I always try to say, remind myself they don’t. Think I’m that special, and that’s really helpful for me to think about is I’m not special. They’re not thinking about me as if I’m this special person and if they were happened to be judging me in that way, that is more of a reflection of them being highly critical and judgmental, and less about me being an imperfect.

 

Bad, you know, mistake of a human being. If there were to be a lot of judgments, that’s often a reflection of them, not me. And so my job here is to get very clear on what my intentions are. I’m here for a reason. What’s the reason I’m at this event? Is it connection? Is it networking? Is it, uh, a responsibility?

 

’cause you value that person and it’s maybe it’s their birthday. You wanna identify specifically what is the goal? What is your why, what’s the intention on being there? And then put your whole body and attention on fulfilling that value if it is, let’s say, to support your friend. Then show up and support them.

 

Don’t put your attention on what people are thinking about you. Put your attention on supporting your friend. If your intention is to network, put your attention on networking, not on getting their approval, but doing the thing that you came there to deal. That is the work of values-based actions instead of fear-based actions.

 

Again, when I talk about these things, I’m not saying this is gonna be easy a lot of the time. This involves willingness to be uncomfortable, willingness to be disciplined. In fulfilling the thing that you promised yourself you would do. And this is not easy, and so again, it does require that you’re gentle, you’re catching any criticisms, and you’re doing your best to celebrate yourself for any steps you make in this direction.

 

Now the fifth reason people get stuck in social anxiety. This one’s a little different and we haven’t talked a lot about this, but they struggle to set boundaries.

 

One second,

 

lay down.

 

They struggle to set boundaries. And what I mean by this is because they’re so afraid of being judged because they’re so afraid of being embarrassed. They go to the events, but they spend the entire event people pleasing and being a yes man, saying yes to things that they usually would not. Say yes to.

 

And so we wanna really catch this because while yes, you might be going to the event, you’re completely self abandoning who you are and your needs along the way. People with social anxiety who are often highly functioning in social settings often feel a huge sense of re, re, uh.

 

Often people who are high functioning are able to go to these events, but they, people please, they usually feel an immense degree of resent, and they feel exhausted and burnt out because. All they’ve done is fake it and pretend and not be authentic. And so you want to practice if you can, and maybe you practice this later on in your process, is practice trying to be yourself.

 

Not being a people pleaser, not being a yes man to everything and try to just. Be you Sometimes with clients when I go and do exposures with them, we might go across the street to the outside mall and I might have them say, good morning, ask questions, interact with people, socialize with random strangers as a part of their treatment.

 

And then once we’ve done that for a little while, I’ll check in with them and I’ll say. How are you feeling about how you show up and they’re like, oh my gosh, I’m exhausted. I feel like I have to be this happy person, and I feel like I have to like make them laugh. And I’ll say, that sounds like a ton of pressure.

 

Why don’t you just slow down? Just a little bit and settle into yourself and just be you. Yes, you’re doing this great work. Yes, you may wanna rehearse some questions to ask and some things to say, and you can have a joke as in your back pocket if that’s helpful. But maybe your delivery of them doesn’t need to be as intense.

 

Maybe you can just slow down and relax and drop your shoulders and give yourself permission to just. Be you. You don’t have to wow them. You don’t have to, you know, make them. Again, we are not here just to get their approval. We’re here to actually just have you show up according to your values.

 

Now, the last way that social anxiety keeps us stuck is it tells us that we are not good enough. It tells us that there is something wrong with us inherently, and this. Is a lie. Every disorder has its own set of lies and social anxiety lies to you by telling you that you are less than and you are not.

 

As I said before, some of my patients with social anxiety are some of the most beautiful human beings. I have met on the planet. They are interesting and they are deep fearless. They are deep connectors. Often our anxiety attacks us in the thing we value the most, and. For the folks with anxiety, they tend to be the ones who do want connection.

 

They wanna feel connected to people, they wanna talk to people, but the anxiety keeps them stuck and the anxiety tells them something is wrong with them. And I want you to remember that nothing is wrong with you. Yes, you have anxiety, but you are as. Equally as worthy as anybody else at that party, in that room, at that social event, and that this social anxiety doesn’t even have to be something that stops you from making those connections.

 

Now, I’ve had clients handle this a couple of different ways. I’ve had clients who’ve practiced a lot of self-compassion, a lot of self affirmations, reminding themselves that I am a good person. I. I am worthy of love. I am worthy of connection, and that’s been very beneficial to them. I’ve had other clients who have decided that in social settings, they’ll go straight up to the person and say, listen, I have social anxiety.

 

This is hard for me. Can you be, please be patient with me. ’cause I get a little awkward and they kind of throw it all out on the table. The cool thing about this is that shame cannot. Survive in the light. Brene Brown has talked about this in her research and often what you find is when you really are honest and you share with people how you’re actually doing.

 

They share back and all of a sudden you’ve created the most magical connection between two people. I shared this recently on a recent podcast about I was flying and it was turbulence the entire flight. It was. Eight hours into the flight of turbulence and I was getting really anxious and I said to the lady next to me, I really, really am struggling with this.

 

This is really hard on me. And she, well, she didn’t get what I was saying. She wasn’t anxious, but she then said, oh, my husband has a really hard time. He really struggles with turbulence too. He holds the handles of the seat really tight. He’s anxious and he has to take medication when he flies. So I was connecting with her, not even through her experience, but through her partner’s experience.

 

Even though the person you’re talking to might not understand, chances are someone they love know exactly what you’re going through, and I find humans tend to be really wonderful in this way of. Really diffusing and connecting by acknowledging and and validating them. If not, and there’s someone who may be.

 

Says something not so kind, whatever. Okay, so you can’t win them all, but at least you tried. I’m totally in support of you. If you wanna just be outright and say, I get so anxious at these events. Oh my gosh, this is so hard. I’m, thank you for chatting with me. The other thing I would encourage you to do is ask more questions.

 

I love to ask questions. I find it’s the most. Easiest way to connect with people. Tell me about yourself. Where are you from? When did you come here? What do you do for a living? Do you have kids? What’s your favorite color? Like people love to answer questions about themselves. They love to talk about themselves, and if they don’t, they’ll ask you the questions back and you can share, and then.

 

Chances are you’re going to find something you have in common. Please do not put pressure on yourself to have a comedy skit ready to go. Please do not have the pressure on yourself that you have to be eloquent and articulate and intelligent. That’s too much. And the truth is when we are anxious, it’s very hard to be get across how intelligent we are because our brain is not connected to that part of the brain that can be witty and so forth.

 

So give yourself some slack. You are allowed to get, prepare some questions and some jokes if you need to, but I find. It’s just as good to be human and natural and normal and just be honest with people. So that is what we’re going to talk about.

 

So now that we’ve gone through the six ways that social anxiety keep you stuck, let’s talk about a couple of other skills you may want to practice. So number one, remember. We are doing all of this in a step by step way from today’s episode, I want you to really take away one to three things you’re gonna do to start with.

 

Once you’ve done those enough time and you’ve done them repetitively and you’ve practiced them, then you can move on to the next, and I encourage you to reassess. In about a month, practice those one to three things for a month and then reassess. Try again. We make the most progress when we make small, slow baby steps.

 

Remember, sometimes you have to slow down. Two, speed up.

 

As always, I’m going to remind you, be gentle, be kind. Social anxiety can be incredibly cruel and lie to you and tell you that you’re not good enough, that something is wrong with you, and that is literally not. True. So I want you to stand up to anxiety in that respect and tell it, no, we’re not believing that anymore.

 

I’m not engaging in that anymore. Do your best to catch that self-criticism, that self punishment as best as you can. The last piece here is. Please do know that social anxiety is way more common than you would think. You are definitely not alone, and that you can actually break the cycle of social anxiety by reducing those avoidant behaviors.

 

By improving the small talk you have with yourself in your head to one, one that’s more kind and compassionate, um, and also not putting such high expectations on yourself to get it right and perfect and all those things. Be gentle. Be realistic, be a human being. For goodness sakes. Give yourself.

 

Permission to be an imperfect human. Okay. I am so grateful to have you here. Thank you for being on this journey with me. I know your time is very valuable and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the fact that you spend some time with me. I am honored. Have a wonderful day, and I will see you in the next episode.