Exposure therapy for social anxiety disorder (SAD) can help you overcome fears of specific social and performance situations. Although exposure training is normally conducted with the assistance of a therapist as part of a cognitive-behavioral treatment program, it can also be incorporated into your daily life.

If you have social anxiety, you most likely face these types of situations with fear and dread or avoid them completely. Both strategies can sustain your anxiety in the long term.

While avoiding situations you fear might alleviate your distress in the short term, you are teaching yourself that you can't handle those triggers.

Leaving situations in a state of panic also teaches you that they are to be feared. Ideally, you need to gradually introduce yourself to increasingly more difficult situations and stay in those situations until your fear subsides.﻿﻿ This type of exposure training can be done in real life (in vivo) or in your imagination.

Below is a list of articles with specific tips for carrying out exposure training for a variety of different fears.