# First Success with Overcoming Social Anxiety by Dr. Richards



## TrySupps (Aug 20, 2011)

Hello everybody,
Anyway I am on the 6th day of the second tape of the famous CBT audiobook series Overcoming Social Anxiety by Dr. Thomas A. Richards. For those who aren't familiar with the series, tape two talks about slow talk (Google it), which I have yet to pick up well, and saying something like "I am having negative thoughts again. They are not good for me and are not healthy. They always lead me in the wrong direction", when experiencing negative thoughts.

Anyway I have been very successfully stopping my negative thoughts for the last 6 days and I already feel like there has been less and less of them as the days went by. As I started my fall quarter of college I felt way less anxious thinking about talking to people and developed more of just a weird feeling about doing it.

At the end of the world's most boring accounting class I'm taking, I finally got over that feeling. When the person next to me asked the other person next to him if we had to turn the paper we were working with in, I answered him "No, I think we just keep it". He said jokingly "so we can tell how to do it when we screw up" and then said something about how he though it was pretty easy and how he was fine with simple math but not algebra and things like that. I responded by saying "me too, things like algebra, geometry, I hate geometry". He then said something like he did fine in business math and I responded yes and left as it was time to go.
Now I'm sure it seemed like nothing to him but for me whos by far main problem with SA is talking to people/strangers for personal reasons (non-school, i.e. not given something to discuss, just to become friends/acquaintances) it was the biggest thing I have every done to try to overcome SA. And here is the best part...

I liked it. I was incredibly happy about it, I was happier overall then I have been in a very long while. And the only thing I wished I had done afterwards... I wish I would have mentioned I was in business math last quarter also so I could have kept talking longer.

So I guess the point of this post is that people should try to do something about there anxiety. Go to CBT for SA or buy Overcoming Social Anxiety (cheaper for the 19ish weeks of CBT you get but still $260). It can actually work and it will make you feel like your on top of the world. I know it may seem imposable now, but if you don't try it your never feel like it's not impossible, like I do now.


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