Momentum - Business to Business Online Magazine MOMENTUM December 2019 | Page 24

HEALTH OLAN J. LATIN. MA, LPC Insight Life Counseling 832-846-6206 [email protected] www.insightlc.com Using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to fight Social Anxiety Disorder S ocial Anxiety Disorder is one of the most common psychiatric disorders. It can be particularly frustrating to treat because it is often misconstrued as simple shyness, but can cause crippling fear that interferes with school attendance, work performance , and relationships. This can cause many that are afflicted with this disorder to drop out of high school or college, miss work, have intimacy issues, and reduce their likelihood to marry. Cognitive Behavioral therapy has been one of the most effective treatments for a myriad of conditions so using it to combat social anxiety disorder is a clinically sound plan. Cognitive behavioral therapy is an ideal treatment modality to help in changing thoughts, worldview, and cognitive constructs. There are many negative cognitive constructs that can be directly attributed to social anxiety disorder. Individuals with social anxiety disorder look at more negative stimuli during ambiguous events, overestimate the probability of negative evaluations by others, and catastrophize the consequences of negative evaluations. In having social anxiety disorder it is common to develop avoidant behaviors, but these behaviors often permeate every 22 MOMENTUM area of one’s life to the point that an individual cannot function in a healthy way. Using a cognitive behavioral approach, clients can be introduced to interventions that will use cognitive restructuring, exposure therapy, and challenging negative self-evaluations. The idea is that if clients can change the way they think, they will be able to change the way they feel, thereby altering their behavioral response. The goal of cognitive behavioral therapy is to change dysfunctional cognitive structures. Identifying and changing underlying beliefs as they are expressed through automatic negative thoughts are important because of the role they play in maintaining the disorder. Clients can be taught to act as their own scientist and question the validity of their thoughts to see if they make sense. By doing this in each occurrence, clients can ultimately figure out that their fears come from an irrational place. Exposure therapy is another useful form of a cognitive behavioral therapy that can be utilized in combating social anxiety disorder. The best way to defeat a fear is to face it in a managed way. Clients are in charge of controlling the intensity of the experience so that they will never feel that it is getting out of control. Safety behaviors and other avoidance strategies have proven only to cause greater anxiety. Research shows that safety behaviors and avoidance strategies open a negative feedback loop, leading to higher anxiety in social situations despite repeated and often- successful social encounters. Behaviors can be targeted and altered through repeated and continuous exposure to fearful situations while eliminating any safety behaviors. In this way, social anxiety can be reduced and possibly eliminated by clients placing themselves in repeated different social interaction scenarios. One of the major strengths of cognitive behavioral therapy in social anxiety disorder is that it fosters a more independent effort on the part of the client. This approach involves less reliance on the therapist, than for instance a psychodynamic approach.