When Self-Improvement Makes Social Anxiety Worse

Wanting to feel more confident socially is understandable.

If conversations often leave you wondering whether you said enough, seemed interesting enough or came across well, it makes sense that you would want things to change.

You might decide you need to speak more. Be less quiet. Ask better questions. Stop looking nervous. Be more spontaneous. Have more interesting things to say.

None of those aims necessarily sounds unreasonable.

But with social anxiety, self-improvement can sometimes become another way of judging yourself.

The problem is not wanting to grow or become more confident. It is when every social interaction starts becoming a test of whether you are confident, relaxed or interesting enough — and you are constantly checking whether you have passed.

Sometimes, trying so hard to become more confident can leave you feeling like the person you are now still isn’t good enough.

When being social starts to feel like a performance

You may have quite clear ideas about how you think you should behave around other people.

Perhaps you believe you should talk more in groups. You should be able to make conversation easily. You should have something interesting to contribute. You should not appear nervous.

Then you enter a social situation with those rules already running in the background.

Instead of simply having a conversation, part of your attention is watching yourself having it.

Am I talking enough?

Was that awkward?

Do I look nervous?

They seem so much more confident than me.

You are trying to take part in the conversation while also assessing your performance.

That is exhausting.

And it can make the ease you are trying to achieve even harder to find.

The conversation may continue long after you leave

The assessment often does not stop when the interaction ends.

You may go back over what happened later.

You remember something you said and decide it sounded stupid. You think about a pause in the conversation and assume the other person found you boring. You notice that someone else seemed relaxed and outgoing and compare yourself unfavourably with them.

The conclusions can become quite personal:

I looked bad.

They probably thought I was boring.

What is wrong with me?

Why can’t I be more confident?

At this point, an ordinary social interaction has become evidence in a much bigger case you are building against yourself.

A conversation does not simply go well or badly. It seems to tell you something about the kind of person you are.

Comparing yourself with people who seem confident

Comparison can strengthen this pattern.

You may notice someone who seems relaxed in a group, talks easily and appears comfortable with themselves.

You see their confidence and ease.

What you do not see is everything happening internally for them. You only have access to what they show on the outside.

But the comparison can still become:

Why can’t I be like that?

And gradually, confidence becomes another standard you think you need to reach before you can feel comfortable with yourself.

The difficulty is that the standard can keep moving.

Perhaps you manage to talk more at one event, but afterwards you decide you were trying too hard. Perhaps you have a good conversation but later focus on one thing you wish you had said differently.

There is always another improvement to make.

When self-improvement starts reinforcing self-doubt

There is nothing wrong with wanting to develop confidence or become more comfortable around people.

The question is what sits underneath that wish.

There is a difference between:

I would like to feel more comfortable socially.

and:

I need to become better socially because there is something wrong with the way I am now.

The second position can turn self-improvement into another form of self-criticism.

Every book, technique, social rule or attempt to behave differently can carry the same underlying message:

I am not quite acceptable yet.

That can make confidence surprisingly difficult to build, because you are waiting to become a different version of yourself before allowing yourself to feel good enough.

Less self-monitoring can create more freedom

One of the changes that can help with social anxiety is learning to pay less attention to your own performance.

That does not mean becoming careless about other people or forcing yourself to stop feeling nervous.

It means gradually shifting from:

How am I coming across?

towards:

What is actually happening in this conversation?

What is the other person saying?

What am I interested in?

What do I genuinely want to say?

When less attention is being used to monitor your voice, expression, posture or choice of words, there can be more room to actually connect with the person in front of you.

You might still occasionally say something awkward.

There may be pauses.

You might not always have something interesting to add.

That is part of ordinary conversation.

The aim is not to perform perfectly enough that you never feel self-conscious. It is to become less frightened of what it means when you do.

Self-acceptance does not mean giving up

For some people, the idea of accepting themselves can initially sound like settling.

If I accept that I am quiet, will I never become more confident?

If I stop pushing myself, will nothing change?

But self-acceptance and change do not have to be opposites.

You can want to become more comfortable socially without treating your current personality as a problem.

You can practise doing things that feel difficult while also questioning the assumption that you need to become more outgoing, entertaining or impressive.

Confidence can look less like finally becoming the person you think you should be, and more like being increasingly comfortable with the person you already are.

How therapy can help with this pattern

Therapy can give you somewhere to examine the standards you have developed for yourself.

You might explore why being quiet feels unacceptable, why an awkward interaction carries so much weight, or why another person's confidence seems to say something negative about you.

You can also begin noticing the amount of attention you give to monitoring yourself in conversations and what happens when that attention starts moving outwards again.

This does not mean learning a new set of rules for how to socialise correctly.

In fact, adding more rules may be exactly what you do not need.

The work can be about becoming more flexible: less concerned with performing confidence and more able to participate in conversations without constantly standing outside yourself and judging how you are doing.

Over time, that can create something closer to the ease you may have been trying so hard to manufacture.

You don't have to improve yourself into being acceptable

There may still be things you want to change.

You may want to avoid social situations less, speak more freely or feel more confident meeting new people.

Those are reasonable things to work towards.

But change does not have to begin with the assumption that who you are now is inadequate.

Sometimes an important part of working with social anxiety is recognising just how much effort has gone into trying to become the person you think you are supposed to be.

There can be relief in questioning that standard.

Perhaps the goal is not to become impressive enough that you stop worrying what other people think.

Perhaps it is to become less convinced that you need to impress them in the first place.

If you recognise yourself in this pattern, therapy can give you space to explore it rather than giving you another set of instructions for how you should be.

You can read more about how I work.

I offer in-person therapy in London and online therapy across the UK. If you would like to see whether working together might be helpful, you can book an initial call through my Contact page.

Common Questions

Can trying to become more confident make social anxiety worse?

It can sometimes keep the problem going if becoming confident turns into another standard you constantly measure yourself against. You may end up monitoring yourself more closely rather than feeling freer around other people.

Why do I analyse conversations afterwards?

When you are worried about how other people see you, it can be tempting to replay conversations looking for signs that something went wrong. The problem is that you may judge yourself much more harshly in hindsight than you would judge somebody else.

Should I stop trying to improve my social confidence?

No. Wanting things to change is not the problem. The useful distinction is whether you are working towards greater freedom and confidence, or trying to correct yourself because you believe the person you are now is not good enough.

Can therapy help me stop worrying what people think?

Therapy cannot make you completely indifferent to other people's opinions. It can help you understand why their judgement feels so important and become less controlled by the need to manage how you are perceived.

Does accepting myself mean I won't change?

No. Self-acceptance does not mean deciding that nothing can change. It means that change does not have to depend on rejecting who you are now.

If you’re curious to read a little more about this, the Centre for Clinical Interventions has a useful free guide on social anxiety.

It explains some of the ways we try to make social situations feel safer — like monitoring ourselves closely or relying on certain coping behaviours — and how these can sometimes keep the anxiety going.

You can read it here.