352 TREATMENT OF SPECIFIC ANXIETY DISORDERS
hence increased anxiety. The direct relationship between social threat and the occur-
rence of inhibition is readily apparent in the fact that socially phobic individuals can be
casual and articulate in nonthreatening situations.
A fourth consequence of social schema threat activation is reliance on safety- seeking
or concealment behaviors in order to minimize or even prevent negative evaluation.
Although safety seeking may have a less negative impact on anxiety than involuntary
inhibition, their contribution to the persistence of anxiety should not be overlooked. D.
M. Clark (2001) noted that safety- seeking strategies include both overt behaviors (e.g.,
avoid eye contact, tense arm or leg muscles to control shaking,) and mental processes
(e.g., memorize what to say in a social setting, give brief or curt responses in conversa-
tion). However, these coping strategies can paradoxically increase the very symptoms
that the person fears or that draw the attention of others, thereby causing an actual
increase in the risk of negative evaluation by others (D. M. Clark, 2001).
Maladaptive schema activation and its associated consequences will also disrupt
conscious elaborative thought processes during the social encounter. The socially anx-
ious person will experience an increased frequency and salience of social threat thoughts
and images. A conscious and deliberate evaluation and reevaluation of internal and
external social cues will reinforce the threatening inference. The socially phobic per-
son’s perceived discrepancy between what she thinks is the expected standard of perfor-
mance held by others and her actual behavior will contribute to the conclusion that she
is being judged negatively by those around her. The stronger a socially anxious person
believes that others in a particular social situation have formed a negative impression of
her, the greater her anxiety level and the more pervasive its adverse effects on her social
performance.
Postevent Processing
Like other cognitive- behavioral theories of social phobia, the current model posits that
postevent processing, a cognitive process involving the detailed recall and reevaluation
of one’s performance following a social situation, plays a pivotal role in the maintenance
of social anxiety (Brozovich & Heimberg, 2008). Social phobics can not entirely escape
their anxiety when exposure to a social situation ceases because they often engage in a
“post- mortem” review and evaluation of their social performance and its outcome (D.
M. Clark & Wells, 1995). Of course their recall and reevaluation of the social event
and their performance is biased for schema- congruent information of social threat and
ineptitude. In the end they are likely to conclude that their performance and reception
by others was much more negative than was actually the case. Often a ruminative pro-
cess occurs at the postevent phase so that the more one thinks about the social interac-
tion, the worse the outcome because of the selective focus and elaboration of possible
disapproval and failure (Brozovich & Heimberg, 2008). Gerald had a tendency to look
back on activities with friends and conclude that he felt such intense anxiety and dis-
comfort that it was hardly worth the effort. It was much better to stay at home alone
and be depressed but feel comfortable. As with Gerald, postevent processing for most
individuals with social phobia yields schema- congruent evaluations of social threat
and vulnerability that leads to feelings of embarrassment and shame about past social
encounters and, in turn, heightens anticipatory anxiety and the urge to avoid future
social interaction.