A Virtual Approach to Treating Social Anxiety by Kyle MacDonald in Therapy Because the basis of the continuation of social anxiety is avoidance, most treatments include confronting the triggers for those anxieties or phobias (some of you reading this will know just what I am talking about here). The issue for therapists (me included) then…

Imagination, Fear and Anxiety by Kyle MacDonald in Fear I just watched this amazing presentation on the TED site about how vital our fears are to us as human beings, but also how our innate human ability to tell stories is a vital part of how we talk to ourselves about fear and anxiety. “Read…

How To Manage Christmas With Social Anxiety Disorder Avoidance, Fear, Social Anxiety / Kyle MacDonald Seasons Greetings, and a very Merry Christmas to you all, wherever you are in the world! However I know from my conversations with clients that, unfortunately, it’s not always a Merry Christmas, especially when you suffer from social anxiety and…

Fear of Failure by Kyle MacDonald on March 23, 2016 This week on the Confident Mind, I talk about failure, what it means and how fearing failure leads us to avoid engaging in activities.  I talk about how mindfulness can help us to be more open to the emotions that happen around failure, and how…

Social Anxiety in College: How to Cope With Small Groups 14 September 2015 College / Kyle MacDonald Sometimes one of the easiest places to hide is in a crowd: all those people worried about leading their own lives are highly unlikely to be thinking too much about anyone else jostling amongst them. While some people…

Comfortable silence.  Awkward silence. Thoughtful silence. Angry silence. It might be a myth, but I’ve heard it said that the Native Aleutian people (Eskimos) have 400 words to describe snow.  As a therapist we probably have 200 words to describe silence. Generally though, for those who are struggling to cope with social anxiety every day, there…