100 Don’t Let A nxiety Run Your Life
turn into signals of threat and danger. This is not uncom-
mon in social anxiety disorder. In fact, researchers use the
term post- event rumination to describe when people dwell on
perceived social failures in an attempt to avoid them in
future. This strategy often maintains anxiety and encour-
ages people to interpret their performance as unsatisfactory
and a source of embarrassment.
Now let’s take a step back. W hat do all of Robert’s
response styles have in common? Can you come up with
some adjectives to describe how he has been approaching
his emotions? One immediately noticeable characteristic of
his response style is its negativity. Before a social event, he
focuses on what might go badly rather than on what might
go well. After a social event, rarely does Robert ref lect on
successful encounters. Instead, he rehashes encounters in
which he felt uncomfortable.
Second, his response style is repetitive and cyclical. He
doesn’t devote a discrete amount of time to responding to
his negative emotions; he wallows in them for hours on end.
Spending large amounts of time on his emotions seems pro-
ductive, as if he’s getting to the bottom of what’s going on.
But when his thoughts take on this negative, judgmental
nature, Robert is doing more harm than good. No amount of
brooding will foster the courage and confidence necessary
to outsmart anxiety. Instead, mentally replaying uncomfort-
able encounters reinforces the idea that his emotions are
unruly and uncontrollable.
Can you think of any other distinguishing characteris-
tics of Robert’s response style? This third one is slightly
trickier. His response style is cognitive in nature. A response
style isn’t an emotion; it’s a thought or belief that inf luences
the form, development, and course of your emotional