half the participants got the following instructions, with their personal fears and safety behaviors filled in the blanks, like so: In order to help overcome your anxiety, it is important to discover whether what you fear can actually happen. To accomplish this, you should try not to do the things you normally do to prevent the person from thinking you’re stupid. For example, during the conversation, do nothing to save yourself, do not avoid eye contact. Just think that you want to discover what will happen when you don’t avoid eye contact. By doing this, you will be better able to see if your
...more
