1. Maintain a Self Help Diary Maintaining a self help book or dairy is the very first step to effectively deal with social anxiety. In that dairy, regularly monitor your thoughts, feelings and behavior in every social situation where you encounter anxiety in day-to-day life. For example: you go to a friend’s birthday party, and end up feeling anxious there. Just sit back and reflect upon what were my thoughts at that moment in the party when I felt anxious, how did I feel, intensity of that emotion on a scale of 10, and how did I ultimately behave. This serves as a great help in testing the validity of your irrational thought patterns and resorting to more functional, rational thinking patterns.

2. Practice Deep Breathing Daily Deep breathing can help you regulate your emotions and face an anxiety provoking situation more efficiently. Practicing deep breaking exercises daily or before going into an anxiety provoking situation can be a great self help practice.

3. Work with a Psychotherapist Psychotherapy can be a great help if you are the one dealing with social anxiety. Psychotherapy is very goal oriented and structured and will help you gain insight about your irrational thought patterns and avoidant behaviors which are a big reinforcer to your social anxiety. A certified psychotherapist will help you break the cycle while maintaining full confidentiality and will help you develop more rational, functional and helpful thought patterns without using any medication.

4. Maintain a Rational Outlook Using workbooks containing rational poems, stories or statements can be another great aid. Reading rational poems, rational stories, reading and writing rational statements will help you maintain a rational outlook towards life. Shirking a passive outlook and harboring optimism is the key to knock down anxiety provoking situations successfully.