Journaling Prompts for Living with Social Anxiety
Social anxiety isn't shyness. It's not about being introverted or preferring quiet. It's the specific dread of being watched, evaluated, and found lacking—and the way that dread can make ordinary moments like speaking in a meeting or texting first feel genuinely threatening. The exhaustion of it is real. You're running a background process that other people don't seem to run, constantly scanning for danger that isn't always there. Writing gives you a way to look at that scanning process from the outside—to see its patterns, challenge its assumptions, and slowly loosen its grip.
Journaling Prompts
Think of the last social situation that caused you significant anxiety. What specific outcome were you afraid of? Write it out in full—what exactly would happen, and then what?
In that same situation, what were you assuming people were thinking about you? If you had to bet real money on whether that assumption was accurate, would you? What's the actual evidence either way?
When did you first start feeling like other people's perception of you was something to be afraid of? Is there an early experience that taught you social situations were dangerous?
Write about one social situation you got through that you were convinced beforehand would go badly. What actually happened, and what does that tell you about the reliability of your pre-event predictions?
What would you do differently in your life—what conversations would you have, what rooms would you enter—if the fear of being judged were 50% smaller than it is today?