“Just expose yourself to more social situations!” — Ah yes, you felt anxious the first 100 times, but the 101st will be the breakthrough!
“But exposure works!” people yell from across the street. “Like for fear of snakes—you know, those things you see once a year!”
Uh, it’s pretty rational to fear things you have little experience with. But social anxiety… you interact with people everyday! Why would anything change after the first 100 attempts?
I don’t doubt that a couple of exposures can often reduce anxieties. However, if you still feel anxious even after hundreds of social situations and years of trying… then maybe your fear is actually doing something presently useful and you should reconnect with your intuitions.
I guess you could do both kinds of mistakes: more exposure when what you need is an insight, and more insights when what you need is exposure. Among the nerds, the latter is probably much more frequent. But yes, if you tried more exposure and it didn’t work, what you may need is the right insight.
Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch.
In some ways, that’s my fully general response to being given Standard Advice(TM). The giver may not know the Deeper Magic.You may not either, and you may not have been there when it was written, but if it doesn’t sound right to you, you can look before deciding whether to buy into it.
In this case, that may be the layperson’s standard advice, but it’s definitely not the professional’s standard advice, which can’t be condensed to a single short phrase. Five Words Are Not Enough, because “exposure” and “works” are both so underspecified.
What’s the long version of the professional’s standard advice?
I’m also not a professional, so my version is also very incomplete, but at a bare minimum, exposure therapy needs to be done kinda the way building up tolerance for poisons or allergens is done—carefully, in risk-minimizing contexts, with support systems on standby if things go wrong.
To quote SSC, I think accurately despite being in a very different context:
Although, in another SSC post:
There’s a form of exposure that does lead people to suppress certain emotions and become more functional in certain contexts. I think that frequently happens when people try to do a bunch of exposure therapy.
What that can prevent exposure for social anxiety from working are safety behaviors, e.g. having certain types of clothes or make up on, favorite item, mobile phone close/in your hand, etc., because you are then taught the wrong lesson from the exposure, i.e., “I only managed situation X because of [insert safety behavior]”.
I wrote (in Hebrew, alas) two years ago, about locally-useful methods that doesn’t have stopping condition. I’m sure there are people out there that will benefit from exposure. the attitude you described come from them, and from people whose bubble includes mostly them.
the problem is the luck of stopping condition. who many tries before you decide this method doesn’t work? before stopping and re-evaluating? before trying something else instead?
also, what Scott Alexander wrote about exposure, and Trapped Priors.
I think you make the same mistake the exposure people do? you. are in a bubble when insight is what needed, so you advocate insight without stopping condition.
the interesting question, to me, is when, in for who long, try either.