Areas › Worry and anxiety › Being seen and judged
Friends who know what this feels like are worth a great deal. Leaning on them as your therapy is a different thing, and it tends to go badly for everyone.
One young woman put the line in exactly the right place. She wanted people who understood her, and she did not want to use them as counselling. Being among people who get it takes some of the weight off just by existing. Long shared sessions of going over what everyone is afraid of tend to add weight instead. Keep the friendship, and take the picking apart somewhere else.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Content yourself with those who pray to their Lord morning and evening, seeking His approval (Quran 18:28). Good company is named as something to settle into, which is not the same as making it carry everything.
وَٱصۡبِرۡ نَفۡسَكَ مَعَ ٱلَّذِينَ يَدۡعُونَ رَبَّهُم بِٱلۡغَدَوٰةِ وَٱلۡعَشِيِّ يُرِيدُونَ وَجۡهَهُۥۖ وَلَا تَعۡدُ عَيۡنَاكَ عَنۡهُمۡ تُرِيدُ زِينَةَ ٱلۡحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنۡيَاۖ وَلَا تُطِعۡ مَنۡ أَغۡفَلۡنَا قَلۡبَهُۥ عَن ذِكۡرِنَا وَٱتَّبَعَ هَوَىٰهُ وَكَانَ أَمۡرُهُۥ فُرُطࣰ ا
Content yourself with those who pray to their Lord morning and evening, seeking His approval, and do not let your eyes turn away from them out of desire for the attractions of this worldly life: do not yield to those whose hearts We have made heedless of Our Quran, those who follow their own low desires, those whose ways are unbridled
Qur’an 18:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Two experiments found that belonging to several social groups went with less self focused attention among socially anxious people, which suggests shared identity pulls attention outward. That is the good part of a friendship like this, and it is associational rather than causal. Separately, scale development work suggests that worry about the future, rumination about the past and going over a social encounter afterwards are largely one process in different clothes, which is a reason to be careful about doing that process out loud together.
Donaldson JL, Cruwys T, Dawel A, Stevens M, Chen J. (2026). Social identities reduce self-focused attention in social anxiety.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
McEvoy PM, Mahoney AE, Moulds ML. (2010). Are worry, rumination, and post-event processing one and the same? Development of the repetitive thinking questionnaire.. Journal of anxiety disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Company steadies you, while going over the fear together mostly gives it another rehearsal.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
A group can help a great deal, and it is rarely the place to begin. Being in a room of people is a strong dose, and doses climb rather than start at the top.
When people frighten you, it helps to ask which part is the trouble: not knowing what to do, or being sure you are being marked while you do it. From the inside they feel identical.
There is a moment worth waiting for: when you can say what your anxiety does in your own words, without borrowing anyone's phrasing. That is usually when it starts to loosen.