Your beliefs and expectations are directly related to faulty thoughts. A recap of faulty thoughts could include:

• If I make a mistake, no one will like me
• If I am criticized for one specific thing, I must be worthless

Beliefs:

Unrealistic beliefs are what you view as true, when in actuality they are false. These beliefs tend to come from the perfectionist. One who believes they have to be perfect in order to be liked.

Mistaken beliefs are at the root of much of the anxiety you experience. You talk yourself into much of your anxiety by expecting the worst, as in all the “What-Ifs” that go through your mind.

Many people with social anxiety believe they have to be liked and accepted by everyone. They feel unable to handle rejection. That their whole self-worth as a person depends on approval of others.

It is okay if some people dislike, disapprove, or reject you in some ways sometimes. It is going to happen. You cannot please all the people all the time.

You need to create new beliefs, accurate beliefs, to conquer the negative thoughts.

Expectations:

Along with the unrealistic beliefs you have, are inaccurate expectations. These are expectations you believe will happen while in a social situation.

For example:

Your Belief: I will stutter during my speach
Your Expectation: If I stutter during my speach, the whole thing will be a disaster.

Your thought process is assuming you will stutter, and you expect the entire speach to be a disaster should that happen. Very exaggerated and very severe.

To better understand your inaccurate expectations, take a social situation from your thought diary you created when you assessed your fears, here. Write down a description of that situation.

Think about how likely you were in that situation to experince disapproval. Rate your beliefs on a scale of 0 to 10. Let your fear do the rating. This is how you actually felt.

Now rate this situation on a scale of 0 to 10 on how severe you felt the consequences would be if somone disapproved of you.  Remember, it is a very scary thought to choose to get better.  But it is so freeing and it truly feels good!

Faulty coping strategies are harmful methods often used to handle social anxiety and its symptoms. These methods are harmful because:

• They will prevent overcoming social anxiety
• They can creat additional problems such as depression, panic attacks, and agoraphobia.

Faulty coping strategies can be very obvious, and some can be very subtle. It is very important to learn any faulty coping strategies you may use. They must be changed in order to be successful in overcoming social anxiety.

Avoidance

This is the most common, yet most damaging way to cope with social anxiety. It is very easy to avoid social situations which produce fear and anxiety.

Other than the obvious ways of avoiding social situations, like declining invitations, there are subtle ways to avoid as well, so you may not even be aware of them.

You may think avoidance doesn’t pertain to you, because you usually accept invitations to social events. That is great, unless you do any of the following:

• Sit in a corner by yourself so you are less apt to have to talk to people.
• You have a drink or two before going, to calm yourself.
• Staying only a short time before you feel the need to leave.
• Not making eye contact, or excusing yourself abruptly from a conversation.
• Daydreaming
• Never going anywhere alone.

These methods of partially avoiding are just as disabling as completely avoiding social situations. They are only prolonging the thoughts, beliefs, and fears that you have in social situations.

I found a worksheet I received through counseling that explains the different sub-personalities that most people with social anxiety have.   The paper credits anonymous.

The Worrier

This is the strongest sub-personality in people who are prone to anxiety. The Worrier creates anxiety by imagining the worst-case scenario. The Worrier anticipates the worst, over-estimates the odds of something bad or embarrassing will happen, and creates actual images of failure. The Worrier is always watching for any small symptom or sign of trouble.

The Critic:

The Critic is constantly judging and evaluating their behavior. It jumps on any mistake you make to remind you that you are a failure. The Critic generates anxiety by putting you down for not being able to handle your panic symptoms, for not being able to go places, for being unable to perform at your best, or for having to be dependent on someone else.

The Victim

The Victim is that part of you which feels helpless or hopeless. It generates anxiety by telling you that you are not making any progress, that your condition is incurable, or that the road is too long and you have no real chance at recovering. It believes that nothing will ever change.

The Perfectionist

The Perfectionist promotes chronic stress and burnout. It generates anxiety by constantly telling you that your efforts are not good enough, that you should be working harder, that you should always have everything under control. The Perfectionist is the hard driving part of you that wants to be best and is intolerant of mistakes.

I fell into most of these categories. Take a look at them. Can you see yourself in one or all of them? This is what helps generate our faulty thoughts.  This is a big part where our anxiety and/or social anxiety stems.