Behavioral experiments for Social Anxiety

I struggle from social anxiety. I am trying to get over it by doing behavioral experiments. There is a problem now with social distancing certain types of experiments with approaching stranger are being advised against. Anybody dealing with social anxiety this way.

The lockdowns and social distancing are stressful for many of us, but it won't be like this forever. I'm sure the world will be different for awhile after COVID-19.
You can practice in whatever ways you can that are 'safe'.
Best of luck to you.

Wally58 wrote:The lockdowns and social distancing are stressful for many of us, but it won't be like this forever. I'm sure the world will be different for awhile after COVID-19.
You can practice in whatever ways you can that are 'safe'.
Best of luck to you.

To be honest, it has not been stressful for me. It is just unfortunate that currently we are not allowed to meet new people. The restrictions are being lifted in my country, however social contact is still advised against. There is some unclear messaging what is allowed now. However, there is degree of immorality as well in too much social contact right now. This has always being some mental model of mine, thinking other people are too busy and already engaged with something and it would therefore be immoral for me to engage in conversation. I suppose this add to the overestimation of social costs I already have.

Interesting enough, I was a bit more active at making contact with older friends on social network. I feel like this crisis has given me an excuse to reach out to them. I find this similar to an experiment by Thompson & Rapee (2002), where they found people with social anxiety perform well socially when you assign a role to them. Now I can see myself as just somebody reaching out to old friends when everybody is cut off from social, as opposed to some loser, who has no friends reaching out to people that have moved on from me.


Thompson, S., & Rapee, R. M. (2002). The effect of situational structure on the social performance of socially anxious and non-anxious participants. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 33(2), 91–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7916(02)00021-6

Furthermore, I would say that due to being less exposed to social cues my safety behaviors in social situations have been softened. Therefore I would say that if you suffer from social anxiety, you might be better of taking a break from social interactions in which you have a lot of safety behaviors.