Social anxiety disorder is a strong aversion to being observed and evaluated by others. Work, school, and other daily activities may be hampered by this worry.

It is more than shyness. The anticipation can begin days ahead, the event itself is spent monitoring your own performance, and the aftermath is often a long replay of everything you believe you got wrong.

Avoidance is the maintaining factor. Every declined invitation brings short-term relief and long-term reinforcement of the belief that you could not have coped.

Treatment usually blends CBT — identifying and testing the predictions social anxiety makes — with graded exposure and mindfulness skills to tolerate the discomfort while it recalibrates.

Where social anxiety grew out of humiliation, bullying, or a critical environment, EMDR can reprocess those formative experiences so the present stops being interpreted through them.