# Manchester (U.K) Social Anxiety Practise Group



## kenyon (Jan 24, 2010)

Social Anxiety Practise Group
The group meets on the second Wednesday of the month at Withington library from 6pm until 7:30pm and on the first Sunday of every month at Cheadle village hall from 11am until 1pm. The group is user led and aims to provide people with social anxiety (SA) a supporting environment in which to practise anxiety provoking situations. 
To begin with it should be pointed out that all activities in the group are entirely optional and people are encouraged to join in as much or as little as they feel they can manage. The meetings usually begin with each person introducing themselves by saying as little or as much as they want, which can be a challenge in itself. The next step is a warm up exercise; this involves the entire group participating in some activity which is intended to be a little silly and possibly embarrassing but aims to warms people up for the main activities of the group. New warm up exercises are welcomed at the group but some of the more frequent ones include: each person demonstrating a silly dance move which the rest of the group then has to copy usually with everyone singing a little song together, another example is each person acts out an animal of their choosing complete with animal noises, you could for example use your arm as a trunk and make elephant noises! You hopefully get the idea. The next step is for people to form an audience, usually a semicircle of people on chairs facing the front of the room. The various types of activities are then explained to any new people, with an idea of how difficult people usually find them given but with the understanding that difficulty is very subjective, experience shows that what one person finds difficult others may find easy. We then go around to each person and ask what activity they want to do and to see who if anyone want to participate in a group activity. The main activities include:
Table Topics: In an envelope on a table in front of the audience are a large number of folded pieces of paper on which are written phrases such as “what to do on a rainy day” or things such as “flower arranging” the person does not know what the topic will be so can’t prepare what to say and having to stand in front of the audience and talk spontaneously, usually for two minutes, about a topic they may know nothing about can be very challenging. 
Reading: A selection of reading material from poetry books to books on public speaking to more challenging books written in a Lancashire dialect can be chosen by the person who then reads aloud to the audience, usually for two minutes.
Questions: The person stands in front of the audience and answers questions given by the audience members, they can be questions such as “what’s your favourite film?” Or maybe “What’s your worse fear?” is all depends on what they ask, however the person can simple say pass if they don’t want to answer a question; this is one of the ‘easier’ activities.


Multi-person Activities
Group reading: Two or more people stand in front of the group and are given a location and a theme for a story, for example “the London Olympic stadium and terrorism” or maybe “a space ship on a mission to Mars and romance” one person is chosen (or volunteers) to start the story for 30 seconds then the next person then has to try and continue the story for their 30 second slot before it is passed onto the next person, each person has two slots during the story and the sequence is random (chosen by another person not telling the story calling out the name of the next person to continue) this gives less time to try and prepare what to say so can be more anxiety provoking. This is one of the more challenging activities which people usually build up to.
Group acting: Similar to group reading but more of a performance, a scene and different roles are given, for example, the scene may be a supermarket and the roles an angry customer and the other an arrogant store manager, or maybe the scene is a long haul flight and the roles a flirtatious flight attendant and a person with incurable hiccups. Again a challenging activity, I myself have had to build up to this over many meetings and still find it challenging but very rewarding (sometimes even fun!)
Conversation: Two people stand in front of the audience and try to have a conversation; many people with SA can find it difficult to have conversation even people they know well when other people could listen, on a bus for example.
There are many more examples of activities and they change depending on what the person with SA finds anxiety provoking, for example one person I know sits down on a chair and reads in front of the group rather than standing up because he feels more anxious when he can’t move around. The whole point is always to allow people the opportunity to experience their anxiety in a supportive environment, the idea that the more exposure to anxiety provoking events a person experiences the easier the events become. 
After a person has done one of the activities they sit down and are given the chance to discuss how they felt it went, from experience the person is usually very critical of their performance saying for example “I felt I talked too fast” or “I felt I was shaking like a leaf” or “I think what I said was boring” this is very common for new people, however other members are always positive with their feedback and try and point out that the whole point is to challenge yourself and to stand up there in the first place regardless of performance, in fact some of the most useful times are when your performance is ‘bad’ for example standing in front of the audience for a table topic and not being able to think of a single thing to say for the whole two minutes! (which can feel like an eternity when you’re up there) once you experience the worst that can happen and realise you’re still alive at the end the situation becomes less fearful.


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