Self-Assessment Answers (2024)

Debra A. Hope

Oxford Academic

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Richard G. Heimberg

Oxford Academic

Google Scholar

Cynthia L. Turk

Oxford Academic

Google Scholar

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1.

True. Feared situations vary widely, but the most common ones are public speaking, conversations with unfamiliar people, dating, and being assertive. Also, some people are afraid of eating or drinking in front of other people, being the center of attention, talking with supervisors or other authority figures, urinating in a public bathroom, or intimate sexual situations.

2.

False. Social anxiety is a normal part of life, and most people experience it at some point during their lifetime. If it interferes with your life in important ways, treatment might be a consideration.

3.

True. Persons with social anxiety disorder share a common fear that other people will think poorly of them. They fear negative evaluation regardless of the situations in which they are particularly afraid.

4.

True. It is easy to continue to see the things that you would like to improve. However, it is also important to recognize the things you have accomplished; recognizing your progress will reinforce your efforts to continue to make more progress.

5.

True. Making personal changes can be difficult, and commitment and practice will help you make those changes.

6.

False. Nearly everyone experiences social anxiety sometimes. What separates social anxiety and social anxiety disorder is the degree of interference and distress experienced due to the social anxiety.

1.

False. Anxiety includes behavioral, physical, and cognitive components. Avoidance is part of the behavioral component.

2.

False. Fever is not usually associated with anxiety.

3.

True. Anxious thoughts involve a prediction about something bad occurring.

4.

False. Although avoiding scary situations will make you feel immediately better because it quickly relieves your anxiety, it encourages you to continue to avoid situations in the future. However, avoidance does not reduce your social anxiety in the long run.

5.

False. Behaviors include things you do and things you don’t do (i.e., avoidance).

6.

True. Exposure can be very helpful to test out thoughts about what a situation might be like, especially if you have been avoiding it for awhile.

1.

False. Although there appears to be a genetic component to social anxiety, scientists have not isolated one gene that definitely means you will have high social anxiety.

2.

True. There appears to be an environmental component to social anxiety, and we may learn behaviors from those in our environment. Thus, if your family members behave in socially anxious ways, you may learn and imitate this behavior.

3.

False. Even if anxiety tends to run in your family, it is very likely that you can learn to cope more effectively with it and make important changes in your life.

4.

True. Your therapist will ask you to complete a Social Anxiety Session Change Index (SASCI) each week and review the results with you. This is a good way to keep track of how you are doing in treatment so you and your therapist will know whether this treatment is working for you.

5.

False. The pattern on the SASCI differs from person to person. However, it is common for there not to be much change during the first few sessions because you are just learning the treatment and have not had a chance to benefit. It is also possible that the SASCI scores will look worse from time to time, especially if you reduce avoidance and start facing more situations. If you have concerns about your scores, discuss them with your therapist.

1.

False. The situations that evoke social anxiety vary a lot from person to person.

2.

True. Understanding the larger dimensions of situations that you find anxiety provoking will help you determine if you might experience anxiety in new situations that have the same larger dimensions.

3.

False. Subjective Units of Discomfort Scale (SUDS) ratings are used to rate subjective distress, whereas avoidance ratings are used to gauge avoidance.

4.

False. Even though an avoidance rating might be low (e.g., you participate in a situation even though you would prefer not to), your anxiety might still be very high in this situation.

5.

False. Virtually any situation can be avoided, either completely or somewhat. Although the cost of avoidance might be very high in some situations, some people still choose to avoid them.

6.

False. Your Fear and Avoidance Hierarchy should include a variety of situations that produce varying degrees of anxiety, but it does not need to include every possible situation.

1.

False. It is the interpretation of an event that makes a person anxious.

2.

True. The amber-colored glasses are a metaphor for how socially anxious people view social situations.

3.

False. The thoughts you have about a social situation before you enter it are quite likely to influence how you act and the outcome of the situation.

4.

False. Thoughts must be examined in more detail. In fact, simply trying to suppress negative thoughts in order to think positively may actually make the automatic thoughts (ATs) stronger.

5.

True. After you identify negative thoughts, you then analyze the ATs for logical errors, challenge whether the ATs are really true, and develop more helpful statements.

6.

False. This is an example of the thinking error called disqualifying the positive.

7.

True. Some thoughts, although they are not logically flawed, can cause anxiety if you dwell on them.

1.

True. Thinking in a different way can lead to different actions (e.g., approaching an important situation, saying something when you usually would not) and, therefore, possibly different outcomes.

2.

True. It is not only important but also essential to answer the disputing questions.

3.

False. Disputing your ATs will not remove all anxiety from situations. However, this process will help you to feel calmer and think more clearly.

4.

True. A short, realistic rational response will remind you of alternatives to your ATs and help you cope.

5.

False. You do not need to believe your rational responses, especially at first. It takes time and evidence gained from exposures for healthier, more helpful thoughts about yourself, other people, and social situations to emerge.

1.

True. By doing exposures, you have a chance to learn new things contrary to your ATs and practice important social behaviors that you might not engage in often due to avoidance.

2.

True. Cognitive preparation before the exposure will help you have a plan to address one or more of the ATs that are likely to contribute to your anxiety in the exposure situation.

3.

False. It is important to set a small number of “achievable behavioral goals” so that you will know if the exposure is a success.

4.

False. It is most likely that you will be anxious during an exposure. Trying not to be anxious is probably too big a goal for a single exposure, and some social anxiety is a normal part of life.

5.

True. Interrupting the exposure to ask questions or make comments may mean you are not fully facing your fears, which is the crux of exposure.

6.

False. All exposures, including the first one, should be focused on a situation that is relevant to your treatment goals.

1.

False. It is better to start with situations that are easier, rather than very difficult.

2.

False. Homework is an important part of this program. Completing homework makes it more likely that you will be successful in meeting your goals.

3.

False. You do not need to do an exposure for every situation in which you get socially anxious. Your new skills are likely to eventually generalize to some new situations.

4.

True. Generalization involves the application of what you learn in one situation to another similar, but different, situation.

5.

True. Anxiety should be a signal that it is time to examine your ATs. Identifying and challenging your ATs will become second nature and occur almost automatically when you notice yourself becoming anxious.

1.

True. The pie chart technique will help you to appreciate that a variety of outcomes are possible in a given social situation, and that many of these outcomes are much more likely than the outcome you fear.

2.

True. Placing a feared outcome on a continuum from mildly unpleasant to truly catastrophic (e.g., whole family dying in a car accident) can put that feared outcome into proper perspective.

3.

False. If you fear spilling water at a dinner party and then it actually happens, you have a chance to learn that you can cope with that situation much better than your ATs would have predicted, which should make you less anxious in the future.

4.

False. Ceasing efforts to hide anxiety or looking anxious on purpose will not make anxiety worse; instead, you are exposing yourself to what you have been avoiding (showing your anxiety), which would be expected to reduce anxiety across repeated exposures.

5.

True. The Silent SUDS procedure allows you and other people in the exposure to track your apparent anxiety in real time. Most commonly, socially anxious individuals overestimate their appearance of anxiety and underestimate the quality of their performance relative to objective observers.

6.

True. We need to be able to differentiate when we automatically view a benign social situation as dangerous from when we encounter situations characterized by prejudice and discrimination (e.g., correctly viewing a situation as threatening and then experiencing context-appropriate anxiety).

1.

False. Many friendships and relationships start with small talk, or everyday conversations about general topics that can be an entry point to getting to know someone better.

2.

True. A large body of research shows that we tend to develop relationships with people we see more frequently.

3.

True. Very often people who have difficulty with social anxiety say they do not know how to make small talk. This is often because they discount or dismiss many potential topics.

4.

False. Most people with social anxiety have good social skills, and often others have no idea how anxious they are. Sometimes social anxiety interferes with using those social skills, but that is less of a problem as the anxiety decreases.

1.

False. Public speaking is a common fear for those with and without significant social anxiety.

2.

True. One way to tackle ATs is to look at the likelihood of the predicted outcome, which is usually an extreme one. Usually, such extreme reactions are not that likely to occur.

3.

True. Because preparing for the talk brings up this anxiety, avoidance is a common response.

4.

False. Experiencing anxiety about an upcoming event is a distinct signal that it might be helpful to work on your ATs using the Be Your Own Cognitive Therapist (BYOCT) Worksheet.

5.

True. It is important to look for any aspects of situations that can be addressed repeatedly.

1.

True. By searching through the layers of ATs and emotions, you can get at more core beliefs.

2.

True. These are helpful strategies to get at core beliefs.

3.

False. You may not have any notion of the source of your core beliefs or you must not understand what happened in your past that resulted in your core belief. Dysfunctional beliefs can change even if you do not know where they came from.

4.

True. Very often, individuals with social anxiety disorder have a core belief about the need to be perfect or that they are seriously flawed in some way.

5.

False. Core beliefs can change as you begin to process the information that they are not correct, and using the cognitive restructuring and exposure experiences to challenge core beliefs.

1.

False. It is extremely important to continue to use the skills you’ve learned from this program. You may be able to take some shortcuts with time, but systematic efforts to identify and challenge your ATs are essential for you to continue to get as much as possible from each exposure. As we saw in the last chapter, identifying the dysfunctional core beliefs that underlie the anxiety requires repeated and systematic cognitive restructuring.

2.

True. Every time you do not engage in avoidance and enter a situation that makes you anxious, you have an opportunity to conquer your fears.

3.

False. The opposite is true. As you have been able to decrease your social anxiety, you are probably entering into situations that you would not have entered before you had these new skills. It may feel as though your social anxiety is worse because you may experience anxiety in a social situation, but things have actually improved.

4.

True. As you become more skilled, you will need less support from your therapist.

5.

False. Backsliding a little is a common experience and does not indicate a return to your former behaviors. If you keep using the skills you have learned and challenging yourself to enter more and more situations, your anxiety will continue to decrease and stay that way.

Since 10/1/2022