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Can Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy help with social anxiety?
Published 25th February 2025
Social anxiety isn’t just about feeling nervous in certain situations. It’s a constant worry that can affect your daily life — your personal relationships, your work, and even your sense of self-worth. It often leads to avoiding social events or feeling self-conscious during simple interactions, and it can be exhausting.
If you’ve ever felt:
an overwhelming fear of being judged or making a mistake
avoiding events or conversations just to stay comfortable
constantly overthinking how you came across
getting stuck in a loop of negative thoughts
worrying about what others might be thinking of you
You’re not alone. Social anxiety can feel isolating, but it doesn’t have to control your life. With the right help, it’s possible to break free from these cycles.
How Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy (CBH) helps with social anxiety
The first step in overcoming social anxiety is recognising the patterns that fuel it. Social anxiety doesn’t just show up in extreme situations — it can sneak into everyday moments, like:
speaking up in meetings or at work
attending a party or casual get-together
making small talk with someone you don’t know well
expressing your opinions or setting boundaries
It’s not just about avoiding these situations, either — it’s the thoughts you have about them that make the anxiety feel worse.
Social anxiety often follows a predictable cycle:
Anticipatory anxiety: The worry starts long before the event even happens. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I look stupid?
Physical reactions: Your body reacts with a racing heart, sweating, or tightness in your chest.
Avoidance or safety actions: You might avoid the situation entirely or rely on coping mechanisms like rehearsing conversations in your head or trying to act “perfect.”
Reinforcement of anxiety: After avoiding the situation, you feel a brief relief, but in the long term, it only reinforces the idea that social situations are dangerous.
Why avoidance makes anxiety worse
Humans tend to repeat what feels familiar, even if it’s not helpful. If you’ve been avoiding social situations for a long time, your mind starts to believe that staying comfortable is the right choice. The problem is, when you avoid, you’re reinforcing the idea that social situations really are something to fear.
Here’s the thing: most people don’t notice the small mistakes we make in conversation the way our anxiety makes us think they do. People are usually more focused on themselves than on what you might be doing.
CBH helps break this habit of avoidance by challenging the thoughts and patterns that keep anxiety alive. Instead of running from situations, we slowly change the way you approach and experience them.
CBH combines cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) with hypnotherapy to target anxiety at both the conscious and subconscious levels. This combination improves outcomes and is highly effective because it works on multiple levels at once:
CBT helps you develop the tools to challenge and reframe the thoughts and actions that fuel anxiety.
Hypnotherapy reinforces new thought patterns and behaviours, making it easier to prepare for social situations by mentally rehearsing and approaching them in a calmer, more confident state.
Mindfulness helps bring you back to the present moment, reducing the urge to overthink or judge yourself.
Together, these approaches add depth to therapy by linking thoughts, feelings, and actions in a more integrated way. When beliefs about yourself or social situations are deeply ingrained, hypnotherapy can help access them in a safe, supportive way, making the process smoother and more effective.