Lesson #4: Identify Your “Anxiety Hierarchy”

These are great exercises to learn how to change your thinking and we will continue building off of this progress in upcoming lessons.

However, for this week we are going to shift away from “thinking” and focus more on “behaviors.” After all, eventually we want our progress to transform itself into real world situations.

When you decided to improve yourself, you probably had an idea in mind of the types of situations you wish you were more confident in, whether it’s a job interview, or public speech, or asking someone out on a date.

In this lesson, we are going to Identify Your “Anxiety Hierarchy”.

Your “Anxiety Hierarchy” is a list of situations that you wish to be more socially confident in, and then ranking them on a scale from “Low Anxiety” to “Very High Anxiety.”

• Low Anxiety
• Medium Anxiety
• High Anxiety
• Very High Anxiety

In this lesson, you will try your best to think of “real world situations” in your life that make you socially anxious, and then you will rank them on the scale above.

This is a great way to identify what situations we feel most anxious in – and what we need to work to improve in the future.

Please take the time to do this exercise correctly, because we will be revisiting it throughout the course.

Week #4: Homework and Exercises

1. Create a document titled, “Anxiety Hierarchy.”

You’ll be saving this in your “Social Transformation” folder along with all of your other documents.

2. Try to think of at least 1-3 situations that fit each “Anxiety” ranking, from “Low Anxiety” to “Very High Anxiety.”

“Low anxiety” situations are things you generally have no trouble doing on a daily basis, although they may make you feel a little bit anxious just because.

“High anxiety” situations are things you have a lot of trouble doing. Perhaps you actively avoid them because you fear deep embarrassment or rejection.

For example:

• Talking to a close family member. (Low Anxiety)
• Talking to a friend. (Low Anxiety)
• Talking to a teacher. (Medium Anxiety)
• Talking to a boss. (Medium Anxiety)
• Talking to a girl/boy you like. (High Anxiety)
• Talking with an employer during a job interview. (High Anxiety)
• Giving a public speech. (Very High Anxiety)
• Being interviewed on television. (Very High Anxiety)

Of course, everyone’s “Anxiety Hierarchy” is going to be different – so make sure you focus on your personal experiences and don’t just copy mine.

Also, try to get as specific as you can about what situations you feel most socially anxious in.

For me, “talking to a family member” (like my mom or brother) is a really “Low Anxiety” situation that I don’t experience much nervousness or fear about. But “being interviewed on television” is a much more “High Anxiety” situation for me because it’s a big audience of strangers watching me from all over the world.

Take the time to really think about your “Anxiety Hierarchy” and make sure to include the key situations you would really like to improve yourself in.

3. Choose one of your “Low Anxiety” situations – and do it!

The end-goal of creating your “Anxiety Hierarchy” is to eventually become more comfortable in these “Anxiety” situations, from “Low” to “High.”

For now, I just want you to do one of your “Low Anxiety” situations. Let’s get you in the spirit of being more social, even if it’s just talking to a friend or family member you haven’t spoken to in awhile. Make an effort to reach out and connect!

If it helps, revisit your Breathing Meditation before your “Low Anxiety” situation to help calm whatever nerves you may have.

We’ll be gradually working ourselves up this “Anxiety Hierarchy” in upcoming lessons, but it’s important that we first start with the “Low Anxiety” situations.

4. You’ve completed this week’s lessons! Awesome!

We’ll be exploring this “Anxiety Hierarchy” a lot more throughout the course.

Feel free to make any changes to it if you think of anything new. This will be an important resource to build off of, especially as you progress through the course.