Therapy for Social Anxiety
in Portland, Oregon

Develop confidence in connection.

In hiding.

You’ve lived your life around this obstacle: most places you go, there are people there. People seem threatening, and you sense that they will judge or mock you when they see you or try to interact with you. It’s excruciating how shitty you feel about yourself in social situations and how much you don’t know how to act. Every time you’re exposed to people seeing you, it does a number on your emotions – it’s a lot to deal with. Even your physical health may be taking a toll, with all the stress. So you carefully manage your world to try to stay out of the way of the humans out there.

At some level, you know that your reactions to social situations are bigger than the actual threat – but just knowing that doesn’t stop the anxiety from happening! In fact, maybe you just get more embarrassed that it’s happening.

So of course you work to minimize the potential for threat: you keep your body and voice contained and tucked away, with a lot of strategies for when you should speak and what you should say. Because you don’t feel able to participate in social life in the world, you might be very isolated or have a tiny circle of trusted people – which feels safer than the world, but also lonely.

Professionally, you might be limited to work that’s unsatisfying because you can’t speak up for yourself and interviewing is a nightmare. Or, on the other hand, you might be quite successful in some ways, as long as you stay within your script, but socializing freely with colleagues is still terrifying and you’re hoping no one will notice. School has been a grueling experience.

Out of hiding?

If you’re here, you’ve probably at least considered that hiding from people forever isn’t going to work out.

Welcome. That’s what we do around here. I come visit you in hiding. I’m there with you and together we feel things that have been hard to feel, even at the most basic physical level. I invite you out of hiding at a nice, slow, not-overwhelming pace. Along the way, we meet and compassionately relate to all the parts of you that got really scared of people somewhere along the way, probably for good reasons. We feel their feelings – in safe company. We get to know that “inner critic” of yours, and you eventually become bigger than it, so that it no longer dominates your life. We gradually bring in your connection to your authentic self, your emotions, your wants, your body, your voice, your power – which allows you to feel confident around others.

There are natural consequences to all this.

Situations that have felt very risky and high stakes in the past will start seeming less intense. First it’s the small everyday things, like needing to say something to the checker at the grocery store. Later, it’s the bigger things, like inserting your voice in a group of several people, or talking to your boss about something that bothers you. Your self-esteem and confidence are fed from the inside, which makes it start to feel safe to be yourself, even when there are disagreements and differences among people. You don’t lose or erase yourself like you used to. Even if societal systems are stacked against people like you, you come to know your own value and find ways to be more supported and empowered.

I want to help you be the author of your life. What kind of person would you like to become? If you knew you had choice? You might want to just be in public without worrying what people are thinking about you. What else would make it more enjoyable to be you? Maybe you’d like to be someone who feels comfortable taking a class you’re interested in. Job interviews are challenging for most people, but maybe you could go through them with just a little nervousness. Or maybe you develop and sustain a meaningful intimate relationship.

It’s possible.

What we can work on together:

  • making sense of your anxiety

  • exploring past negative experiences with people

  • what can you do when you feel anxious

  • staying confident, calm and relaxed

  • treating yourself with kindness

  • exploring your whole world of emotions

  • working with the inner critic

  • developing your authentic self and voice

  • cultivating curiosity

  • feeling and setting boundaries

  • taking risks in social settings

… or anything else
that you feel lies in the direction
of you living a full life!

line art two hands holding heart

Learn to be kind to yourself
and develop ease with people.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Good! Feeling nervous means you’re stepping out of your comfort zone, and that’s where new life begins. Now, my job is to help you go just to your learning edge but not so far into discomfort that you become overwhelmed, because too much too fast would not be useful. We can talk about what’s making you nervous and ensure that therapy is comfortable, but not too comfortable, for you. In the end, it’s up to you to decide what risks you want to take in life!

  • It’s up to you how you want to label the struggles that you experience. All I care about is understanding what it’s like for you, and supporting you towards a fuller, freer expression of yourself. That said, if we are working through health insurance, then I will need to look at this from the medical point of view and assess if you meet specific criteria for “Social Anxiety Disorder”. These criteria mostly have to do with how debilitated you are by feeling scared of people, as well as what you tell yourself about yourself and about others. Honestly, almost everyone has social anxiety to some degree. But not everyone feels a major impact to their quality of life from it.

  • Yes, it often can be. Trauma is when we get overwhelmed in a situation that feels threatening to our life or our fundamental sense of self – without ever coming back to safety and connection at the level of the nervous system. Life just goes on unresolved, and now there’s an aspect of being human that we really don’t know how to cope with. “Threatening to life or sense of self” can happen easily for a young one, because a child needs steady care and protection from someone bigger, wiser, and stronger to successfully deal with the challenges of being human. If trauma happened at certain points of your growing up, we work towards giving younger parts of you a better experience now. Some of this is not accessible through talking about it, so we work with the body's responses directly. We may revisit that younger time and re-parent the parts that got overwhelmed, so that they can feel safe, welcome, relevant, and competent. From there, you can begin to find your empowerment in the world in the present.

  • You never “have to” anything. You may want to at some point. But you also may not want to, and it's not even always necessary. If your past is really fraught and even thinking about it sends you spinning and wanting to go away, or it brings up the kinds of emotions that you can't easily bear, then we will focus on working on your capacity to feel safe in the present and become able to be with feelings. We never want you to go too far beyond your comfort zone. At some stage in the process, it may come naturally to you to want to weave in and integrate memories from the past – but even without ever exactly knowing what happened or having all the pieces of the story, effective therapeutic work is still possible.

  • Obviously there are many people who have done some version of therapy and they are still experiencing some version of social anxiety. So I think the situation is more nuanced than saying “yes, it can” or “no, it can’t”. There are no 100% guarantees. Outcomes highly depend on how well the particular version of therapy matches what the client is struggling with, how skilled the therapist is, and other factors. But I’ll tell you how I think about it. I don’t think of social anxiety as a disease – like a tumor or something to be gotten rid of. I think of it as, there’s a part of you that is working its butt off to try to feel safe, and that part of you is scared, suffering, and alone. Rather than banishing it more and calling it a ‘problem’, we want to get to know it and build a relationship of kindness with it, so that it can eventually relax and rest sometimes. We don’t “get rid” of it – we relate to it differently, and that in itself creates positive change.

  • Yes I do! About twice a year I have a small, closed, weekly in-person group for about 12 weeks, specifically for people who identify as socially anxious or socially awkward. It’s been great! And I often do online groups. Click to see my Groups page.