brkmein2biggerpieces

Which did you attend? Was it the Dr. Richards one?

Dr. Richards had an in-person program, which I was never able to make it to, because it is/was in another state and I didn't have the time or ability to take off enough time from work to go for a couple weeks. But I heard that people had good results from attending it in person. They would do small group therapy, which I personally would find incredibly helpful if I could find one.

He also had a series of tapes (yes, it's that old) and then later CD's, called Overcoming Social Anxiety, Step By Step. I tried listening all the way through the series two different times, and working through all the worksheets and exercises that you are supposed to do. Ultimately, I didn't feel like it helped me overcome anxiety, but it did help by giving me some tools to work with. It's probably somewhat out of date now that more research has been done in the area of social anxiety and its treatments, but it was good when I couldn't find really much of anything that was specifically for social anxiety/speaking anxiety. He talked a lot about "ANTs", which he used as an acronym for "automatic negative thoughts", and wanted people to read out loud a bunch of statements that were kind of like affirmations, designed to help reshape the way that you view anxiety and to take away some of its power over you.

Hi, and thanks for doing this AMA. I think that my social anxiety and speaking anxiety are very much tied to and intertwined with arythrophobia (sp?). Have you come across this before, and do you have any advice or suggestions for effectively working on it?