Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 357: Strategies for Social Anxiety | Ellen Hendriksen

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

Taming Anxiety Series - Episode 3: As we move into summer and more and more vaccines go into arms, your town or city (or state or country) may soon be opening back up, if it hasn’t already. Some of us are ecstatic. A lot of us are anxious. (And by the way, those are not mutually exclusive. It’s totally possible to be both.) If the thought of large crowds or even small dinner parties makes your palms sweat, don’t worry. You’re not alone. (And if this was true for you even before the pandemic, you’re not alone there, either.) Our guest today is here to help.  Ellen Hendriksen is a clinical psychologist who specializes in anxiety and social anxiety and serves on the faculty at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. She is the author of How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety. In today’s episode she explains how to increase your tolerance for uncertainty; how and why social anxiety has gotten worse since the start of the pandemic; and, what you can do to face your own anxiety around social interactions, especially if you’re in a place that is reopening. She’ll also answer some questions from you, our listeners. In addition to this series on the podcast, we are launching a free Taming Anxiety Meditation Challenge in the Ten Percent Happier app, to help you practice what you’re learning. In this brand-new ten-day meditation challenge, we’ll be pairing a leading anxiety expert and a top-notch meditation teacher together to help you practice what we’re talking about on the show.  The free Taming Anxiety Challenge begins on Monday, June 21, and will run for ten days. Each day, you'll receive a video and you'll complete a short meditation. You'll also receive daily reminders to help keep you on track, and you can even invite your friends to join you. Join the Taming Anxiety Challenge by downloading the Ten Percent Happier app: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install. You should be prompted to join the Challenge after registering your account. If you've already downloaded the app, just open it up or visit this link to join: https://10percenthappier.app.link/TamingAnxietyChallenge. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/ellen-hendriksen-357 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does it even mean to live a good life? Is it about happiness, purpose, love, health, or wealth? What really matters in the pursuit of a life well lived? These are the questions award-winning author, founder, and interviewer Jonathan Fields asks his guests on the Top Ranked Good Life Project podcast. Every week, Jonathan sits down with world renowned thinkers and doers, people like Glenn and Doyle, Adam Grant,

Young Pueblo, Jonathan Height, and hundreds more. Start listening right now. Look for the Good Life Project on your favorite podcast app. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad.

Where did memes come from? And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, happy Friday. As many of you know, we usually reserve Fridays for special bonus meditations, I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, happy Friday.

As many of you know, we usually reserve Fridays for special bonus meditations, but today we're doing something a little bit different. We've got a brand new full episode ready for you. This is the third in our four-part series on taming anxiety. As we move into summer and more and more vaccines are going into people's arms, your town,

or city, or state, or country, may soon be opening back up if it hasn't already. Some of us are ecstatic about that. A lot of us are anxious about that, and by the way, those are not mutually exclusive, it's totally possible to be both ecstatic and anxious. Anyway, if the thought of large crowds or even small dinner parties makes your palms sweat, don't worry, you're not alone. And if this was true for

you, even before the pandemic, you're also not alone. Our guest today is here to help. Ellen Hendrickson is a clinical psychologist who specializes in anxiety and social anxiety and serves on the faculty at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. She is the author of How to Be Yourself, Quiet Your Intercritic, and Rise Above Social Anxiety. She also is a sufferer, so she knows this condition from the inside. In today's episode, she explains how and why social anxiety has gotten worse since the start of the pandemic, how to increase your tolerance for uncertainty, and what you can do to face your own anxiety around social interactions, especially if you're in a place that is reopening.

She will also answer many, many questions from you, our listeners. Some of these questions have to do with social anxiety. We also pivot to just sort of general anxiety questions because she's also an expert in that. One of the things that comes up in this interview is that the lockdowns that we've been experiencing, while clearly necessary, happen to mimic what psychologists call avoidance, which is our human tendency to stay away from that which makes us anxious. In normal times, we practice avoidance because we think it's easier, even though it actually

makes our anxiety worse. And now, in these maybe slowly headed back toward normal depending on where you live times, it can be super tempting to keep avoiding what makes you anxious, even if those things can also bring you great joy, like safely spending time with other actual human beings. This is a gnarly problem. That's why, in addition to this series on the podcast, we're launching a free, taming anxiety meditation challenge over the 10% happier app to help you practice what you're learning. In this brand new 10-day meditation challenge, we're going to be pairing a leading anxiety

expert from Harvard with a top-notch meditation teacher, all designed to help you practice all the things you're going to be learning about here on this show. The free, 10-day anxiety challenge begins on Monday, June 21st, and we'll run for 10 days. Every day you'll receive a video featuring yours truly, speaking with one or both of the aforementioned experts, explaining what you're going to learn, and then you'll complete a short meditation. You'll also receive daily reminders to help you keep on track, and you can even invite your friends to join you, and you can track their progress.

By the way, one of those experts will be the excellent Dr. Luana Marquez, who you just heard from in our last episode. The other is the incomparable Leslie Booker, a meditation teacher who you will hear from in our next episode on Monday, right here on the podcast. To join that challenge for free, just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% dot com. All one word spelled out. And if you already have the app,

just open it up and follow the instructions to join. Okay, here we go now with our guest today, Ellen Hendrickson. Ellen Hendrickson, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for having me back. I'm happy to be here. So let's get right to it. I'm curious as somebody who's really specialized in social anxiety, what has the overall impact of COVID been?

Has it been great because people who have any degree of social anxiety, I would put myself on the spectrum there as a sort of mild social anxiety? Well, then you don't have to deal with what makes you anxious or is it been terrible because avoidance is what puts all of our anxieties on steroids. Yes. Oh my gosh, that was the magic word avoidance. So the answer is both. So short term, I think the pandemic has given people with social anxiety or introverts or folks who are shy and all of that can overlap. There can be a big Venn diagram of everybody I just mentioned

has given everyone permission to opt out or to not have to force ourselves to go to the gender reveal party or the holiday party at work. So it's been a nice break. I have talked to several clients and friends and colleagues who have kind of leaned in and said, I love this, this is the best.

I hope we never go back. Like as if this is illegal. And so short term, it's been a nice reprieve. Long term, though, it's not so great. Because, as you said, avoidance is a primary driver of social anxiety. And so, rightfully so, we have all been avoiding normal social life for more than a year. And just like behavior can follow mood,

like we can do things we feel like doing, mood also follows behavior. So over the pandemic, as we see ourselves behaving in ways that suggest social avoidance, isolation, withdrawal, our thoughts and feelings follow and catch up. So by mid-winter or maybe even sooner, like a lot of us who had, again, rightfully so, been withdrawn from social life, start to feel and to think in this withdrawn isolated way. So that concept of your thoughts and feelings, catching up to your behavior, really played out here. So now we're all rusty. Now we're all feeling anxious and it makes sense that the prospect of

diving back in is anxiety provoking for a lot of people. How do you recommend we tight trade our exposure going forward? And I just want to make a nod to the fact that there are a lot of people listening to this, who live in parts of the world where yes, things are opening back up. And then there are a lot of people listening who are still on lockdown. So let's try to service both audiences. Yeah, no, thanks for orienting me that way. I want to put this all in the context of when it is,

I don't know if we can say objectively safe, because we never get to 100% no risk, right? But when your area is fortunate enough to be in transition when masks perhaps can come off outside, vaccinations are up, eventually masks can come off inside. I think what that word exposure is exactly right. And there's a concept of go slow to go fast. Go ahead and go slowly at the beginning. Like you can dip your toe into the pool. And really get yourself feeling better or more ready or more confident with some of the early stages of reentry rather than expecting yourself to immediately

do a cannonball and the deep end and show up at a wedding reception or, you know immediately get on a plane or immediately go to graduation. Start with, you know, hang out with a friend outside in an outdoor cafe. Go for a walk. Meet up with someone in your backyard. Do those slow, smaller things in order to build up. Go slow to go fast. And that can take as long as you need. I do want to say that, again, if things are relatively safe, then a little bit of anxiety doesn't necessarily mean you're doing something wrong. It actually means that you're probably getting back out there. It means that you are kind of chipping away at this year plus of avoidance and isolation. And it makes sense that we feel anxious. It makes sense that we feel rusty. It

makes sense that we don't know how to do this. Like nobody alive today has emerged from a global pandemic into a digital world. So we're all making this up as we go along. And it's okay to So we're all making this up as we go along and it's okay to acknowledge to yourself and out loud to other people. How do we do this? Do we shake hands again? Do we all bump up? What are we doing? Are we hugging? What are you comfortable with? That's totally okay to kind of float in that uncertainty and you don't have to feel 100% ready before you can move forward. So that's it just to put a fine point on the last thing you said there, you don't have to wait until you feel utterly confident

to dip your toe in the water here. Exactly. Yeah. So, just like we entered the pandemic with our behavior leading and our, you know, feelings and thoughts catching up, we can do the same to reenter. Again, when it is relatively safe, we can lead with our actions and that's how our confidence and our readiness will catch up. Another way I believe, and I think you've nodded at this, or nodded to this, that another way we can build some confidence is to communicate with other people around, okay, this is weird.

What are your boundaries? What are my boundaries so that we can do it? We can get out there and have contact. Absolutely. Yeah, again, we're all making this up as we go along. So articulating that can do several things. So one is that anxiety is driven by uncertainty.

We don't know what's going to happen, something bad might happen, et cetera. So when we communicate, when we ask and get information or set our own boundaries, we raise that level of certainty, which therefore then can lower anxiety. So that's one. But also, when we show a little bit of small V vulnerability around how do we do this?

Or oh my gosh, I'm so rusty. Or I've gone feral. I don't remember how to eat in a restaurant. I'm probably going to take my shoes off and put my feet on the table. Then when we disclose that we're feeling a little weird about this too, it communicates, hey, I trust you. I trust you enough to be small, be vulnerable. And we're probably alike. That probably you have some questions or foibles or are rusty as well. And so I'm going to show you a little bit of my uncertainty. And that will prompt you perhaps to show me a little bit yours. We're the same. And so that builds trust and liking as well. You said before that one of the perhaps the principle ingredient and anxieties on certainty, I believe you've also said that a principle ingredient in working with your anxiety, social

anxiety or otherwise is building your tolerance for some uncertainty because the fact that matter is, yeah, we should get out there, but it's also true that the risk hasn't gone down to zero. It's also true that the risk of social embarrassment or awkwardness has definitely not gone down to zero. Never, never will. Yeah. That's a great question. I'm really glad you asked that.

There are in social anxiety as applied to COVID, but also if we consume out to more of a 30,000 foot view with any anxiety, there are two levers we can pull. There is increasing certainty. We can pull that lever and try to get more information or no more about what's going to happen or you know, suss out any possible things that could go wrong so we don't get blindsided. That's the lever we often try to pull. That's the lever that seems most obvious to us. But there's this other

magical lever we can pull, which is increasing our willingness to be uncertain. And that can feel illegal. That can feel a lot more dangerous. But when we stop trying to pull the lever of certainty trying to pull the lever of certainty and allow for, you know, that 10%, that 5%, that 1%, uncertainty, then oddly, things get a lot, maybe not easier, maybe that's the wrong word, but they get a lot more flexible. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. There's some room for error, there's some room to screw up, there's some room to do a doover, and that inherently is freeing and can help us move forward. I probably should invest this at the start, but can you define social anxiety? I said that

I might put myself on the spectrum, but actually as soon as I said that, I was like, I don't really know if I qualify because I don't know that I can define it. We are all on the spectrum with the exception of the 1% of us who are psychopaths. So 99% of us understand what it's like to have a socially anxious moment. But we can also narrow it down. So social anxiety is ultimately, it's a fear of being judged or rejected. And often there is a perception. I want to emphasize that word perception. That we have some kind of fatal flaw that will

become obvious to everyone around us, that will be revealed to everyone around us and will be judged or rejected for it. So in what I call capital S social anxiety disorder that perceived fatal flaw drives quite a bit of suffering and quite a bit of avoidance. That said, again, 99% of us know what a socially anxious moment feels like. 40% of us identify as shy, which is just the colloquial way of saying socially anxious. And 13% of us at some point in life will meet criteria for a diagnosis,

will be able to be diagnosed with, again, that capital S social anxiety disorder. And what are the criteria? So generally, for any anxiety disorder, you have to reach a threshold of what's called distress or impairment. So, with social anxiety, distress essentially means that you suffer. So, we all get anxious before a big moment. Like, we all get anxious before a job interview or a first date, Like, we all get anxious before a job interview or a first date or being on a internationally broadcast podcast, for example, I don't know anything about that. But if there's a disproportionate anxiety, if we get the same level of anxious before heading out to a new exercise class, and this would be in like non-COVID times, or doing a meet and greet with a new employee at work, if we are losing sleep, or have GI problems for two

days before that, or have recurrent fantasies of a meteor hitting our workplace, and then maybe we want to do this, then that's distress. Imperiment is when social anxiety gets in the way of living the life you want to live. So a classic example is a college student might deliberately forego 20% of their grade that is class participation because they feel unable to raise their hand. Or someone might pass up a promotion at work because if they took it, they would have to give more presentations or they would have to orient new interns to the workplace and they just feel unable to do that. That's impairment.

So those are the two thresholds we have to reach for a disorder. You also asked, what are the criteria? What does this look like? So in general, there are four buckets that this kind of perceived fatal flaw might fall into. So the first is our appearance. So that might be if people's lives are impaired or they experience great distress because they think that they're ugly

or their hair is weird or their skin is blemished or they're fat. Second bucket, signs of anxiety itself. People are going to see that I'm blushing and think something's wrong with me. People are going to see my hands shake and think that I'm a nervous wreck. People are going to see me sweat through my shirt and conclude that I'm a freak. Third bucket is our social skills. People will see that I go blank and they'll think I'm boring. People will see that I have nothing to say.

They'll see that I sound like a babbling idiot. So other social skills go in that bucket. The fourth is this our general character. People will think that I'm a loser or I'm awkward or I'm weird. Any global characterological perceived fatal flaw goes into that bucket. Now people can change buckets over the course of their life, or they might have perceived fatal flaws in several of those buckets. It doesn't have to be choose only one. You can collect all four. But those are the general areas that social anxiety sorts itself into. I'm probably going to mangle these percentages,

but if I recall correctly, the 99% of us have experienced some social anxiety, 40% of us describe ourselves as shy and 13% qualify for capital S social anxiety disorder. Okay. I'm getting the thumbs up. Got it. What are best practices for dealing with social anxiety and whatever wherever you are on the spectrum here, we talked about exposure.

What are the other things you would recommend to folks who are struggling with this at whatever level? Oh my gosh, how much time do we have? So lots of things. You said the magical word exposure. So the biggest thing we can do is go forth and do at our own pace, slowly and gradually, do the things that we're scared of. And that sounds too simple and it kind of is because there's lots of other stuff that's

wrapped up with that. So I'm going to give you the three greatest hits of social anxiety treatment. So first of all, social anxiety is highly driven by perfectionism. There is this inner rulebook of perhaps I have to be cool. I have to be interesting. I have to carry this conversation. I have to be, well, here, let me tell a story. Maybe that'd be better. Okay, so I'll change demographic and identifying details. So I'm working

with this med student who's lovely, a love working with her, whoever has her as a doctor in the future will be lucky. But she has this inner rulebook, I have to be curious and engaged. I have to be helpful. I have to be kind. I've been knowledgeable. I have to only ask good questions. Or I'm a bad med student. It's very all-or-nothing.

And so if she makes a mistake, if she has an off day, if she has an off minute, she has taken herself from doing all right to suddenly now she's flipped on 180 and she's stuck in this land of being a bad med student, very old or nothing. So we work together to come up with, rather than rigid rules, to come up with more flexible guidelines. We're not doing a 180. This is what a lot of people worry about when I talk about rolling back perfectionism. They think, yeah, but if I am not aiming to be kind all the time, does that mean I'm going to be a jerk and not care about it? If I'm trying to be helpful all the

time, does that mean that I have to, you know, just not care what anybody thinks of me. No, we're not doing a 180. But instead of, I have to be curious all the time, we rolled it back to, I aim to be curious. Instead of like, I have to only ask good questions, or I'm a bad-med student, you rolled it back to, you know, I prefer to ask good questions, 70% of the time. And that gave her a lot of wiggle room. So I was listening to your interview with Katie Milkman, and I loved the concept of the good-ish person.

Just to jump in for a second, I give credit where it's due. Katie Milkman is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and the host of a podcast called Choiceology. She also wrote a book called How to Change and she talks a lot about how we can change our habits. Good-ish came up in the context of that conversation, but that is a concept from another academic happens to be friends with Katie. Her name is Dolly Chug and she's at NYU and she uses this concept of good-ish

around bias and prejudice and that, you know, if we tell ourselves a story that we're good-ish instead of good, then when somebody points out that we may have said something racist, our whole identity will be so threatened because good-ish allows room for growth. Awesome. And I think that, or at least I took it to extend to social anxiety in terms of the perfectionistic standards that we have, these rigid rules we have internalized that rather than, if I'm not reaching

my high and rigid standards all the time, that doesn't throw me into this other opposite category. I'll tell you one more short story. So I was working with a mom who during the pandemic noticed that she had some new neighbors move in down the street and noticed that that family had kids the same age as her kids. So she invited them over to do a, you know, mask distance play back yard and was chatting with the dad.

And the dad said, like, oh, yeah, we have to learn how to take care of a pool. We've never had a pool before. And she said, oh, my goodness, I didn't realize we had a pool in the neighborhood. And he said, oh, yeah, well, when the wilders warmer, we all have to have you over. And so she thought, oh, my goodness, he thinks he thinks that I just invited myself

to his house. This is so awkward. And so she tried to fix it. And she's like, oh, no, no, no, I didn't, I didn't mean to invite us over. No, no, that's okay. And then her inner voice said, well, now you sound like you're rejecting his invitation. And she just kept trying to correct it and made things worse. And so we unpacked that and realized that she had a rule of, I can never make anyone feel bad even by accident. And so of course, that was going to throw her into, you know, feeling anxious and, you know, trying to fix what she had

perceived as a problem. And so we, we tried to give her, you know, some, again, flexible guidelines rather than these rigid rules. And she applied the kind of good-ish concept to herself. But also, she also gave some wiggle room to other people and came up with some flexible guidelines of people can handle some awkwardness. My relationships can handle some ups and downs. People don't usually change their opinions drastically after one interaction. And so, I just love that concept of the wiggle room and the ish. I think tacking ish onto many desirable traits can free us up quite a bit.

You're giving us sort of a taxonomy of psychologies that drive social anxiety. You just finished talk, I believe, about perfectionism. What are the other two? So the second thing, our attention is like a spotlight. And meditators are good at focusing attention, or aspire to be good at focusing attention, certainly. So in a socially anxious moment, our attention often turns inward, and we start to monitor ourselves, and we'll say, what should I do with my hands?

Is what I just said offensive? Am I boring her? Maybe if I stand this way, rather than this way, I'll look more casual. So our attention spotlight turns inward. But then what happens is we miss out on the moment. We cease to pay attention to what is actually happening around us. So what we can do is deliberately try to turn that attention spotlight outward and to focus on the person we're talking to, to listen closely to what they're saying, to focus on them, like look at their face. Basically focus on anything except ourselves. And that counter-intuitively freeze up a lot of bandwidth

and lets us respond more naturally in the moment. Because when our attention is focused inward, that's when we spell our drinker step on someone's foot. So if we can focus outward, then we can be more in the moment and yeah, respond accordingly. And third psychological feature of social anxiety? Sure. So a third thing to do, there's a concept called safety behaviors. And essentially what that is is it's any action that we take to try to save ourselves. It's like a life preserver that actually holds us underwater. We think it's going to save us, but really it syncs us.

So these are all the actions we take to compensate when we feel anxious. So we might over-explain. If we think we offended someone, we might write a nine paragraph explanatory email and see what we really meant. We might over-prepare if we're feeling anxious about a presentation. We might rehearse it 25 times. We might be overly friendly and put triple exclamation points

at the end of sentences in our emails. I have a client who realized that in order to compensate for her perceived fatal flaw of being single, when she goes out with her friends who are mostly coupled, she will have to be overly entertaining. She has to tell the zaniest story and the craziest time in order to compensate in her mind. We might point out flaws. I have a lovely client who put together some thank you bouquets for teacher appreciation week at her kids' school. And when she was delivering them, had to point out to each teacher, sorry, these two

adults are starting to open. And then she would get, no, no, no, no, sorry, these tools are starting to open. And then she would get, no, no, no, no, no, no, these are lovely. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. And it would reassure her. It would reduce her anxiety. But what happens with safety behaviors, so the compensating, the overdoing, et cetera,

pointed out flaws, then those things, the over-explaining all the safety behaviors, they get the credit for keeping us safe. They get the credit for the worst case scenario not happening. They get the credit for people saying, like, what, these flowers are not good enough. Like, what's wrong with you?

Or, why are you still single? What's wrong with you? So we have to drop the safety behaviors. And then we get the credit for our feared outcomes, not happening. Now, this is hard. This is easier said than done because dropping safety behaviors feels illegal. Like if we're used to overpreparian or being overly entertaining or overly friendly, we feel naked without these behaviors. But if we can

slowly try to do that over time. And thankfully, 90% of us know our safety behaviors, we can kind of figure out like, yeah, I overprepare or yeah, I, you know, overreverse, whatever, it might be. It's pretty easy to access. So we can experiment with dropping them. The more often we do that, then the more we get the credit and the easier it becomes. So instead of trying to be our best self all the time, we realize we can just be ourselves and that can be very free. Let me just go back to this cleanup after a social engagement and you feel like maybe you said, put your foot in your mouth.

I'd be curious to hear what your rule of thumb might be. We had a one of our first dinner parties recently with a bunch of fully vaccinated folks, CDC approved number of fully vaccinated approach, a folks. And there was a point in the dinner where I gave somebody a compliment and folks, CDC approved number of fully vaccinated approach, folks. And there was a point in the dinner where I gave somebody a compliment and she kind of, she didn't take offense, but she kind of winking, you know, sort of made a joke about how she thought I must be joking about this nice thing that I had actually said.

Oh, um, she rejected your compliment. Well, she just misunderstood it. Okay, okay. She just assumes it's most of the things I say are jokes, that I must have been joking about that. And in the moment, I said, actually, I'm serious, but the conversation continued. And I just followed up with an email the next day, just to say, I just want to go back to that comment

because I really did mean it. And I got a very appreciative email in response. So what do you generally think? Because I've put my foot on my mouth so many times on this podcast at parties, whatever at work. What do you think about the process of reflection afterwards and perhaps the project of repair? Does any of that make sense? Oh, totally, totally, totally. That's a great question. So I think this is where we have to be honest with ourselves and ask ourselves if we think there really is a repair to be made. And then yes, definitely reach out. Then the email is 100% appropriate.

But if we are pretty sure that Word was doing this to reduce our anxiety, to get some reassurance, get some certainty that from that return email, like, no, no, I didn't take that as a offensive at all. Thank you for the compliment. If we're just doing it to reduce our anxiety, or if we find that this is something we do routinely, like a one-off, certainly, that makes sense. But if it's a go-to, then we can question that and say, like, okay, is this getting the credit for people liking me or people remaining my friend or, you know, people continuing to invite me to dinner parties? So I think if it's solely to reduce the anxiety,

we can think about dropping it. But if it is indeed for what we think should be a genuine repair, then absolutely go ahead. should be a genuine repair, then absolutely go ahead. I had in my mind the desire to ask that question and in so doing, I think I missed an obvious follow-up to the answer you gave before that, which is you use the phrase be yourself. Mm-hmm.

I think a lot of people hear that are like, well, easier said than done. What does that even mean? 100%. Okay. So in the context of what we're talking about, social anxiety, your self is the self you are without fear. It's the self that you are when you are either hanging out

with people you love and trust. People you feel like you can relax and be not to repeat this, but you're yourself with. Or maybe it's even when you're in lustful solitude. We are true self when we stop working so hard to control a situation or manage our image or use these safety behaviors to make sure bad things don't happen. And we don't have to think about those things. How do we access that? Oh my goodness, that's the $64,000 question.

Well, so we can drop the things that we're doing that are getting the credit. We can be a little bit silly. A lot of folks with social anxiety cope on either end of the spectrum, either there's avoidance, which can be overt. We don't show up. we don't answer the phone, we bail at the last minute, or it can be covert, we show up, but we scroll through our phone in the corner, or we, you know, we walk down the street, we've got ear buds in and sunglasses on to make sure nobody talks to us. nobody talks to us. So over-covered avoidance, or we cope way on the other side of the spectrum with super-approach coping. We go do the thing, but we hit it out of

the park and make sure that we do it all the way. And so to access the true self, I think we can roll back both ends of those and to show up more often, to not avoid, but it's okay to hit a double. We don't have to hit it out of the park. People are not our friends because we are competent and confident or capable. They're our friends because of our silliness and foibles and quirks just as much as our strengths that we like to show the world. Does that make sense? It does, and I guess maybe I would build on it by saying, I think it's probably okay,

not only to hit a double occasionally, but it's okay to strike out, better to be on the field. It's absolutely okay to strike out, and I think it behooves us to do that because let's use this analogy. So if you walk into a home that's like a little too perfect, like it looks like it's right out of a magazine, like the, you know, the throw pillows are like perfectly karate chopped. Like there's, you know, immaculate fresh flowers.

I don't know, just like looks, almost looks like a hotel lobby. At least for me, I'm afraid to sit down. It's a little too much. When I go over to somebody's house and maybe I have to brush some crumbs off the table to sit down, there are over new library books on the floor. There's a tank of tadpoles that their kids fished out of the local pond. Now I feel at home. Now I feel like I can relate, I can sit down, I can put my feet up and I can connect.

So I think that when we strike out or hit a single or a double, it actually shows that we are human rather than superhuman. We are relatable rather than unrelatable. We are safe rather than unrelatable. We are safe rather than intimidating. And that ultimately helps us connect, which is fundamentally what we're all after. Even the most introverted of introverts

needs love, community, and belonging. And so if we present to the world as a little too perfect, it actually creates a distance. It creates a wall between us and other people. And so if we do show our foibles or ask for advice or ask for help, that shows that we trust others and draws us closer to them. How does meditation help if at all with social anxiety? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, a lot.

Let me tell you about one of my favorite studies we're regarding that. So you can tell I'm a big nerd because I have favorite studies. So there are two Canadian researchers, Stephanie Cassidy, Neil Rector. They did this lovely study where they trained about 60 people with capital S, the social anxiety disorder. Well, they divided them into three groups.

The first group got trained for just 10 minutes in mindfulness meditation. They taught them how to focus on their breath, bring their attention back when it wandered, accept their experience in the present moment, 10 minutes. That's it. And then the other two groups respectively respectively, got taught to either distract themselves, so to pay attention to something that was not the task at hand, or to do nothing at all.

So no training required there. Okay. So after this little 10 minute experience, they were asked to to bring to mind a really humiliating or awkward or anxiety-provoking social memory. Like a date that went horribly wrong, the time that it's something super awkward at a party, a presentation they might have had a panic attack during. And so they were asked to bring this memory to mind, like as vividly as possible, I'd really get in there and wallow around for five minutes. If you picture something very vividly with lots of sensory detail on your head, to your brain is almost as if that thing is happening, so they really had to revisit this moment. And then for the next five minutes, they were asked to apply what they had just learned.

Either mindfulness, distraction, or just to wait it out. And the group whose distress went down the most was, ta-da, the mindfulness group. Their distress went down steadily and significantly. And the distraction group, it didn't go down at all. And in the waited out group, it actually went up, probably because they kept thinking about it and ruminating about it.

And that was after 10 minutes of training, which is amazing. So, I think that is phenomenal. But I also think that we can take some of the lessons of mindfulness and even separated out from the meditation. There's a whole orientation of therapy called act. It stands for acceptance and commitment therapy. That does a lot of work with exercises and metaphors that tap into mindfulness without necessarily tapping into meditation per se, so folks who maybe are not ready to meditate or whatnot can still take advantage of some of the concepts. And there's a

exercise that I like to use with my clients called Hands As Thoughts. I wish we were in video for your listeners. But so you hold your hands out in front of you, like your fingers kind of relax, spread apart, palms up, almost as if you were supporting a book. And so your hands represent your thoughts. And now we raise our hands to our face. Kind of like we're

watching a horror movie, like we're kind of peeking through our parted fingers. And so this represents a socially anxious moment when our thoughts are, you know, yankinna saw around, and we're thinking, did I just offend her? How do I fix this did she think I'm stupid? et cetera and When our thoughts are right here right in our face we can't see the moment as clearly as we'd like and so Then in the exercise be lower our hands. My hands are still there the thoughts are still there but we don't have to hold them right up to our face. We can hold them over here, hold them down in a way, and create some distance

and some awareness that, you know, we don't have to push them away, we don't have to make them go away, but they don't have to be right there obscuring our vision either. So, the practice of meditation can help us not get so stuck in rumination about past perceived misdeeds or awkwardness and the mental quality of mindfulness which can be trained through meditation or lots of other techniques like the one you just described can help us get some distance either in the moment or expose facto on whatever is ailing us in the social realm. Yeah, I think this is probably where I should defer to you. I think that in either case what it's tapping into what's called cognitive D fusion, getting us to not fuse to our thoughts,

in the case of social anxiety, our inner critics thoughts or self-judgmental thoughts, those urges to overcompensate for trying to decouple those, to diffuse our experience from those thoughts and memories and urges. Defusing is nice. In Buddhism, we use the rather not-molifluous term of non-attachment, which is different from detachment, because detachment is got a dissociation or avoidance to use the term du jour. It implies that whereas non-attachment means a kind of intimacy without fusing.

Mm-hmm, okay. Okay, yeah, I think we're speaking the same language in just different semantics. Much more of my conversation with Ellen Hendrickson right after this. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest

and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown all our, we will be your resident not so expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego

in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. We've got a bunch of voicemails because this is social anxiety is top of mind for many people right now. The first one has to do with kind of how can we, in particular, people who are employers or administrators on college campuses or in any way in positions of power or organizational

power create environments where we can make people maximally comfortable in this interesting moment in the pandemic. So here we go with VoiceMail number one. Hi, thank you for taking my questions. So I am a mathematics professor at a university and I had my first experience walking into a restaurant recently with lots of unnapped faces and it was intense. And my university is requiring all students to be vaccinated before returning and we will have a lot of students working together in close spaces, working together in group works scenarios. And we need to kind of be able to one hit the ground running, but to be mindful that this

may be for many of the students their first experience with a large unmasked crowd. And so I'm wondering how can universities support students in their return to class and campus life. So thank you so very much. And again, I think we should talk about this not just from the standpoint of university administrators, but anybody who's organizing spaces where people are coming together, this can be a dinner party, it can be work, whatever, how do you make it so people are comfortable? When the caller was talking about going into a restaurant with lots of unmassed faces, and how it was intense, yeah, I hear that,

that makes total sense. Yeah, it's very jarring to jump into an intense scenario right away. So one thing the caller mentioned, we need to hit the ground running. I alluded before to that saying of go slow to go fast. So I'm a psychologist, so I specialize in the one to one, the individual.

So I think creating institutional policy might be beyond my pay grade. But I think we can intentionally devote time to reestablishing, in this case, the university culture to set clear expectations, allow time to reactivate, like to pull that certainty lever and say, okay, this is what we're going to do.

This is how we're going to do it. These are the expectations with an eye to making people as comfortable as possible, but also try to allow some time to reactivate. Maybe try to have if this is possible, which may not be, but also to try to allow some time to react, you know, maybe try to have, if this is possible, which may not be, but let's have some smaller groups meet first. Let's not dive right back into all staff meeting in an auditorium to try to ease our way in if possible.

Pay grade caveat noted, but it sounds like to my ears, pretty good advice, be clear and if you can be incremental. There's another voice mail here has to do with something we've talked about a bit, which is this is from somebody who experiences anxiety after a social interaction. Let's take a listen. Hi, Dan and company. My question relates to social anxiety. I commonly have interactions with people in public, and the pattern goes like this. In the moment of the interaction, I commonly have interactions with people in public and the pattern goes like this. In the moment of the interaction, I feel energetic and outgoing, I'm talkative and expressive, and directly after the interaction, I feel almost tied.

Like, wow, I just connected with someone to set my soul. And then usually, at some point later that night, I recall the interaction and I feel an intense physical cringe of embarrassment in my chest. I wish I could just fold myself up into an envelope and hide. And I have thoughts like, oh, I was late too much. I must have thought I was so annoying or ignorant. And so my question is, what's happening here?

What's the brain chemistry going on during the interaction? It's so positive. And what's the brain chemistry that happens later when I recall the experience and it's such a negative, painful memory? I find that learning the science and the mechanics of, oh, this is what's happening here in your brain and your body really helps me with my mindfulness practice. But just throughout the day, I'm really looking forward to this series. Thanks so much. What say you?

Cringe attacks. Yes. So colloquially, these are called cringe attacks and they can happen, you know, years later. Like, I'm sure we've all had the experience where we're in the shower. And then suddenly we get like hit with the memory of like, we're in the shower, and then suddenly we get hit with a memory of, I don't know, farting during the fifth grade spelling bee, or the ridiculous thing we said at a party in college. I don't know. Okay, so unfortunately, I think the brain mechanisms are beyond the bleeding edge of science.

I wish we knew that, but I can say that, cringetacks, there's a little bit of research around that, and 90% of these happen when we're alone. 80% of cringetacks, there's a little bit of research around that, and 90% of these happen when we're alone. 80% of cringetacks happen while we're doing some kind of mindless activity, like folding laundry, taking a shower, trying to fall asleep, like that's a big one. But I think the take home here is that this does not mean that anything is wrong with you. That cringetacks are universal. So comment has a name. And interestingly, so you can actually think of it then as part of bonding with the larger humanity. And it's just

what happens. For me, you know, I, for whatever reason, get a lot of cringe attacks. And at this point, I think of it now as kind of like getting a cramp or like getting a trolley horse. Like I know, like this is uncomfortable. I know it's not dangerous. It doesn't mean anything about me and it's kind of let it pass. In social anxiety particular, so cringe attacks, I don't know if this is actually the case, but when we refer to those, it's usually things from the distant past, whereas if we're turning over the low light reel from today's

conversation in social anxiety, that's called post-event processing. And there, we can either surf the wave. We can say, okay, this is just what my brain does. It likes to focus on flaws. It likes to, you know, focus on the low light reel. That's the acceptance bucket. Or we can, you know, we can get in there and try to do some change, or we can challenge the thoughts and say, okay, for how many minutes do I really think she was thinking about what I said? What percentage for a day was spent thinking about me after that,

or otherwise trying to challenge the thoughts. But in general, I prefer the diffusion, the non-attachment of sometimes putting the phrase, I'm having the thought that in front of whatever the heck. I'm turning over in my mind because I was being annoying, feels like truth, but I'm having the thought that I was being annoying allows for some distance. Are there not some cases where some thoughtful, self-reflection of, well, yeah, I might have offended that person.

I wonder what that's about. Why did I say that? Is there repair to be done? Is there learning to be done about the kinds of things I say? Is any of that ever appropriate? Oh, yeah, totally. No, if we were thinking like, you know,

I was kind of being a jerk back there. Then that absolutely, I think repair is appropriate. I find that at least this is not research. This is just my experience. That if I find myself feeling kind of defensive, like, well, but I really meant this. Then I probably actually offended them. And it's quite a problem with the chat.

Where is the one just feeling anxious, like, oh my God, what did I say? Then I'm probably just having, doing my post event processing or a heavy little cringe attack, and then I can serve the wave. So I was watching your face during that last callers message and you were really nodding along, and then I'm adding that.

I'm fusing that to some of you, the comments you've just made, and recalling that when you were first on this show, I believe you talked about the fact that you not only treat people with social anxiety, you have suffered with it yourself. Was that a correct memory, am I on? Yeah, no, that's absolutely correct memory. A lot of folks in my field get into it, like, research is research or a lot of mental health practitioners will get them to feel because of their own mental health problems. And I actually kind of backed into it from the back door, like I started out in health

psychology research aimed specifically HIV and depression and then pivoted into cancer and anxiety and then pivoted into just anxiety. And when I was learning how to treat anxiety and working with patients, I was like, oh, that's what that was. Oh, okay, these are my people. And recognize sort of in the rear-view mirror that that was certainly a story that I was familiar with and could resonate with. And I like to think that I've come a long way

in my own social anxiety journey, but I absolutely still have my moments. And yes, you did see me nodding along to the story of cringe attacks and other sequelae of social anxiety. So yeah, I'm on the same journey as anyone listening who is familiar with social anxiety. I'm right there paddling that canoe with you.

So this next caller has a question about how to deal with anxiety in the moment. I think she's having a bit of a tangle, so let's listen to Catherine. Hi, my name is Catherine, and I live outside of Washington, DC. I've been living with generalized anxiety disorder for most of my life, formally diagnosed to my teens and I'm in my mid-30s.

I study a lot of brain function and psychology surrounding my anxiety and how it impacts me. And so I know my triggers. I know why I do things that it's because of my anxiety. I know that XYZ will trigger it, but that doesn't stop it. So my question is, how can I make that connection between intellectually knowing something and getting the rest of my brain go, hey, dummy, this is your anxiety talking, these things are not real.

You're not going to get fired because you made one mistake in a million. You're not going to lose everything because of this. How can I calm myself down? I try self-talk. It doesn't always work. Other, any other tips from making that connection between knowing this is my anxiety and stopping it before it takes over everything.

So, I love the podcast. Thanks so much. It's a great question. I'm Egrida Hary. Your answer just a flag. It sounds like it's broader than just social anxiety. It's a great question. I'm Egrida Hary. Your answer just to flag. It sounds like it's broader than just social anxiety. It's anxiety generally, but good thing you've got experience with both. Totally. Yes. So I love this question. She mentioned generalized anxiety disorder, so also called GAD. The hallmarks of that are two things. One is worry that feels uncontrollable and physical tension. I like in the

worry to like a car stuck in the mud spinning its wheels. Like there's a lot of energy being expended, but it's not actually going anywhere with the worry. And then physical tension, warriors will often carry their worry in their back or their neck or they grind their teeth or get tension headaches. So those two things worry in tension or the hallmarks of that. Okay. It is actually spot on that Catherine talks about intellectually understanding how that doesn't always work. So she's totally onto something here because worry, one of those hallmarks of GAD, is

very intellectual. And worry keeps us in this verbal, intellectual, very cognitive realm. If your viewers could see me, I'm like, you know, kind of waving my hands up at this high level around my head right now. So, if we can't make our intellect work for us to calm the anxiety,

we gotta go through some back doors and there's two of those. One is our body. Our bodies and brains are a package deal. It's hard to worry when we're relaxed. So we can try to notice that tension and try to do some relaxation exercises or otherwise trying to bring that tension down

and our minds will often come with it. The second back door is trying to access this through our emotions. And this is really interesting because worry is theorized to be actually a form of avoidance. It's really uncomfortable to worry, to spin those wheels, to turn those thoughts over and over in our head. But it's theorized that it is less uncomfortable than dropping into emotion and feeling what we feel. So Catherine says, she knows that the worry is just a worry. Like she's not gonna get fired

because she made one mistake in a million. She's not gonna lose everything. In the toolbox of anxiety tools, like this is the power saw. So if we can drop into the feelings associated with what if I get fired, what if I lose everything, and let ourselves feel those, this is probably best done with the guidance of a therapist.

This is called an imaginal exposure. Then we realize, wait a minute, I'm not getting fired, I'm not losing everything, like I'm allowing myself to access these emotions, but the fear of outcome isn't happening. And then the power of that connection of the feeling and the thing we fear

loosens as we allow ourselves to actually feel what we feel. And that can be a very powerful backdoor to letting go of those worries. Again, probably best done with a trained therapist, but very effective. Just to check, you said there were two options. Did you hit both of them? So your body, your emotions.

If the brain doesn't work, which it sometimes can sometimes doesn't, yeah, then those are two other good options. So this next question comes on in the form of a voicemail, but it actually a rather affecting email from somebody named Susan. I'm just going to read it to you, it's brief. Hello, I've had anxiety as far back as I can remember, and I've suffered from panic attacks while driving since I was 21.

I'm now 65. I'm just so tired of it. I've been on Paxill Prozac and Librium before that. I'm currently not taking any medication, but my world is so small. My daughter lives two hours away, and I'm afraid to drive to see her. I've pretty much been a control freak

and perfectionist my whole life. This is just no way to live. Thanks, Susan. Again, I think this is a broader anxiety question, but it really does play into perfectionism, which we've already discussed. Yeah, no, absolutely. Oh, my gosh, my heart goes out to Susan. That's, yeah, to have suffered for over 40 years and to not be able to drive to see her daughter. My heart goes out to her. So Susan deserves more than an email response from me. 30,000 foot of view of anxiety.

We all want safety. We all want to feel safe. Whether that's feeling socially safe, whether that's feeling safe in the world, secure. safe, whether that's feeling safe in the world, secure. And a bunch of things bundle to predispose us to feel anxious. Often we have a predisposed temperament. Anxiety definitely has a genetic component. If we have a first degree relative with an anxiety disorder, then we are six to eight times as likely to also have that same disorder. So parent, child, sibling, definitely a genetic component. So that's nature.

Then there is nurture. We learn along the way. Maybe our parents are very cautious. Maybe they're very perfectionistic. Maybe they model that for us. Regardless, there's definitely a nurtured component. And there's also a coping component. There's how we interact with the world. And a lot of us who experience anxiety tend to over-control. We might tamp down our emotions or put on a brave face or say, I'm fine, I'm good, I'm fine.

We might persevere through intense distress. And that could be like learning to persevere through training for a marathon or really striving in school. We might put a lot of energy into achievement. Basically, with the coping, we learn that good things happen when we over-control. But sometimes that can turn into too much of a good thing. And then we learn to emphasize performance over connection and we miss out. I want to validate for Susan

that symptoms are often just survival techniques. That there must have been something about her life or her genetics or her upbringing that may be a control freak or may be a perfectionist necessary. She probably did a lot of this over control or whatever her story is to survive, to make things work, to keep herself safe, which is what we all fundamentally need. But at the end of the day, it sounds like there was too much of a good thing, or when she got herself into a safer scenario, maybe she moved out

of an over-controlling home, maybe as she moved along in life, those habits stuck. So what we can do if we find ourselves in a scenario like Susan's is to slowly try to roll back some of those things that did keep us safe, that were really important for surviving whatever our situation was, but to try to update those to match our new situation.

So again, I want to validate Susan's experience and validate that, you know, again, symptoms are often just signs of trying to survive. But clearly now, they're getting in her way with, you know, not being able to drive to see her daughter, which she so, so much wants to do. So in terms of the driving really quick, she didn't mention this specifically, but she so much wants to do. So in terms of the driving really quick, does she even mention this specifically? But whenever I encounter folks who are worried about driving, it's often because they're worried they're going to panic while they're driving and that they're going to lose control. You know, she calls herself a control freak. And I've seen

several clients who worry that they're going to lose control when they're driving and crash. But interestingly, when they get anxious when they're driving, they exert more control. They signal, they pull over, they break, they put the car in park on the side of the road. That's actually a sign that they have quite a bit of control over the situation. Again, Susan deserves way more than a few minutes of pontificating for me. So I encourage her to seek out a mental health professional she likes and trusts, because she doesn't have to live in this world that she says is so small. And anxiety can be chronic, but is also treatable. And so I have a lot of hope for her.

And again, really want to validate that she did what she had to do to survive. And I hope she can now update her coping to match her new situation. I mean, I wonder whether you're undervaluing what you've just provided as pontification. I I think there was not only a lot of practical and universal wisdom in their battle. Perhaps the most useful thing was the hopeful thing was the last thing you said, which is, you know, I read that email and I, maybe this is a projection on my part, but I thought,

okay, maybe she thinks, maybe a lot of people think, I've tried everything and I can't fix this. I'm stuck with this and I'm unhappy. What I heard from you is actually, no, no, you can fix this. It's kind of in the middle. I want't fix this. I'm stuck with this and I'm unhappy. What I heard from you is actually, no, no, you can fix this. It's kind of in the middle. I want to validate that, yes, anxiety can be chronic, even for people who feel like they've tried everything.

And there's always hope. You're never stuck. You can always make your world bigger. Even if we're bound by our genetics or many decades of history and experience. I like to think of us as having a range that we are able to, let's picture that we have a boat that is anchored to the ocean floor,

but even that anchor allows that boat to drift within a certain range. And so if we're feeling really stuck, where we have a lot of symptoms, we might feel like we're at the lower end of what's possible for our range. And we may never get to the other side of that ocean, but we can get to the top end of our range, what is available to us genetically via our history, we may not be able to,

magically turn our experience inside out like a tube's up, but to mix my metaphors, we can get to the top of our range in our little boat. There is always room for change. Right, so I appreciate you saying that. I use the word fix, it is probably not the right word, but we can boost our capacities to cope with whatever genetics and life have handed us

in terms of our anxiety. It doesn't have to be utterly, permanently crippling. Right, right, exactly. Now that's a great way to put it. One last question to you now, I've had a lot of people ask me about this, and I don't know if this qualifies as social anxiety, but it is a social issue, and it is making a lot of people anxious, which is how to talk to people about vaccines when you may disagree,

and then how to navigate getting together or not getting together if you've got different points of view on the vaccine. So do you have a view on best practices here? So I think there's a couple of levels to this question. I think there's just the negotiation of like, what are we going to do? Are we inside? Are we outside? Are we wearing masks? Are we not?

And there we can set our boundaries and talk about what we're willing to do and what we're not willing to do. So I think good old boundary setting can happen there. Sometimes we're torn because someone close to us has a very different view than we do on the vaccine. Somebody who, you know, we value their friendship or our relationship with them and don't want to let that go, but you know can certainly in our crystal ball foresee a fight coming or you know foresee some you know real disagreements down the road. So there, if we try to talk to that person, I want to emphasize perhaps don't send them articles, don't give

them facts, probably that will lead to an argument or digging in. Coming through the lens of social anxiety, but also just humanity, people want safety, understanding, and trust. So, meditators, I think are fantastic at listening without judgment. I mean, this is part of practice trying to not not judge, right? I think listening with compassion, listening without judgment is something that folks who meditate are probably uniquely suited to do. So that's one. But then also to be willing to share your own doubts, your own vulnerabilities. Like, oh, yeah, I was worried about how fast

the vaccines were tested as well. Or like, oh, yeah, I was worried about XYZ. Rather than saying, like, look, here's the science, or I got the vaccine and I'm fine to express your own doubts and vulnerabilities. Because it shows that you trust them enough to disclose that. And again, it shows I'm like you.

It shows we're the same, rather than sending yourself up as an expert, or like a teacher and a student dynamic, it puts you on equal ground to share your own doubts and vulnerabilities. I use this technique a lot when working with clients. If there's some ambivalence, like if we have, I don't know,

just restructured an old thought that wasn't working for them and they have this new belief, but they seem ambivalent about it. Like, what percent do you believe that? I'm like, oh, I don't know, 70% I believe that. I'm a good person who's allowed to make mistakes. All right, so talk to me with one side of that and then talk to me with the other side of that.

I think applied to folks who are a vaccine hesitant. Most people have some ambivalence. And so I think asking and then genuinely listening without judgment to both sides of the ambivalence can be really helpful because again it connects you through a willingness to meet them on an equal level. You're not saying yourself up as an expert and it shows that you're not judging them, which makes you a safe person to talk to. And might nudge them along more effectively than trying to preach to them, would.

Recipe I'm hearing here for, you know, engineering, get together with people who may have different views than you do on the vaccine is listen without judgment. He's your said then done. You may have the judgment, but you don't have to express it. So listen and without lecturing or preaching, speak about your own feelings, your own mixed feelings, your own fears, and then once you've figured out what the common ground is, make a plan from there. That sounds great. That was a wonderful Cliff Notes version of the Ministry of Art and Art. I provided there. Yes. This is the only skill I have. This has been phenomenal, and I really appreciate you taking a lot of time to talk to me and

by extension the listeners. For folks who might want to learn more about you, books, podcasts, social media, website, can you plug whatever you got? All my shenanigans are consolidated on the web at my website, EllenHedrickson.com. And there they can find some free resources to help with social anxiety. And also my book, How to Be Yourself,

Quiet Your Intercredit and Rise Above Social Anxiety, which is the original reason I was on the show. Thank you, Dan. Also, a new video course, people learn in different ways. The video course has a lot of the greatest hits from How to Be Yourself, plus some new techniques that I've been fine-tuning over the years.

We'll put a link to the website in the show notes. If you don't have a pen handy, it's all good. Ellen, a pleasure to reconnect. Thanks again. Great to see you. Thank you so much for having me on again. Thank you to Ellen and a reminder to put everything we just talked about into practice.

Go check out the Taming Exitity Challenge in the 10% happier app. The challenge starts Monday, June 21st. Download the app wherever you get your apps to join the challenge. This show, which is a massive undertaking, is made by some incredible people, including Samuel Johns, DJ Cashmere, Kim Baikama, Maria Wertel,

and Jen Plant with Audio Engineering by Ultraviolet Audio, as always a huge shout out to my ABC News comrades, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan. We'll see you all on Monday for the final episode in this series with the great meditation teacher Leslie Booker. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.

Or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. you