Cognitive Behavioural Therapy made a night-and-day difference to my ex for social anxiety. She had extreme trouble talking in the presence of strangers, and wasn't able to do any public speaking in class. Her studies were made more difficult because she had nobody to talk to about the work, as she couldn't meet anyone. She had minor panic attacks before meeting my friends, and couldn't engage in group conversation once she did.
Our university ran a free group clinic, as there were researchers working on it, and the psychology department ran very cheap counselling to train their PhD students.
The group therapy program was just about what you'd expect. They just led her through increasing exposure. I found the activities kind of funny. In one of them, the group brought a cupcake, and sang "happy birthday" in a cafe to the subject, who was of course embarrassed. But then nothing bad happens, and their autonomous nervous system learns not to freak out. In the end stages of the program, she was given homework to start conversations with X strangers per week, for steadily increasing X until the task became contrived and she was switched into maintenance mode.
It's been one year since all treatment ceased, and she has no social anxiety problems. She's involved in the executive committee for a society devoted to one of her main hobbies (knitting), and is comfortable, say, going to an internet meet-up alone. She's still "introverted", but does not experience social anxiety.
There were other members of the group it didn't seem to help for. My ex said that when it co-occurs with depression it's much worse, because the depression keeps them from having that "I want to become stronger" mentality, which seemed to be crucial.
Thanks, this is the kind of thing I was looking for. I can totally see how that would help with social anxiety.
Like many people here, I think a lot about how to become more awesome. I'm fairly optimistic about my chances, because I can clearly remember times in the past when I was less awesome than I am now-- not necessarily less rational, but less productive and with fewer relevant skills.1
So I've been thinking about what changes I believe have most improved my effectiveness, changes which have caused me to learn many useful things and/or greatly increased my productive capacity. I found the list interesting:
Things which are notably not on the list:
So how have you actually improved your own effectiveness?
1 Some of these less-awesome past versions of me suffered from clinical depression, but the last time I had a major episode of depression I was able to deal with it much more purposefully than in the past and still accomplish a large percentage of the shit I was supposed to be doing, so I think there has been improvement independent of my state of mental health.
2 Major consequences for failure seem to be very effective motivators, but since I want to undertake projects that are difficult enough to have a significant chance of failure, I would like these consequences to be highly motivating without being horribly costly, if possible. Ideas?
3 I have learned a lot from pleasure reading, but I'm not sure how much was actually useful, and since I've been reading for pleasure since I can remember there's no easy before-and-after comparison to make.