Summary4 min read

Podcast Summary

Your Anxiety Toolkit – Episode 475

Title: Social Anxiety TRICK: Focus on THIS ONE THING to Instantly Feel More Confident in Groups
Host: Kimberley Quinlan, LMFT
Date: March 4, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, anxiety and OCD specialist Kimberley Quinlan shares a powerful, science-backed strategy to manage social anxiety. Drawing on her experience from over 15 years of clinical practice, she introduces a simple but transformative mindset shift—redirecting attention outward to break the cycle of self-focused anxiety in social settings. Listeners receive four actionable steps and practical examples to apply immediately for increased confidence and presence in groups.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Trap of Self-Focused Attention in Social Anxiety

Social anxiety convinces people to hyper-monitor themselves—worrying about how they appear, what they say, their body language, and others’ reactions.
The result: excessive inward focus increases anxiety instead of resolving it.
Quote:

“Social anxiety feeds on being self-focused and putting all of that attention on ourselves. Now what can you do? What are we here to learn?”
— Kimberley Quinlan (04:04)

The Opposite Approach: Shifting Attention Outward

Kimberley introduces a core social anxiety trick that’s “probably the opposite of what your anxious brain is telling you to do” (03:55):

Four Key Steps to Shift Attention Outward

Notice Your Surroundings
- Focus on details outside your body: room colors, people’s eyes, clothes, bags, décor, etc.
- Quote:
  
  “Bring your attention outside of what you’re doing and put your attention on them, on what’s going on around you.” (06:45)
Engage with What Others Are Saying
- Tune into someone’s tone, expressions, and content; try to genuinely listen and engage.
- Quote:
  
  “Get really engaged in what they’re saying, what they’re doing, not what you’re doing.” (07:14)
Cultivate Curiosity
- Ask: “What’s interesting about this person or story?” “What are they trying to share?”
- Ask more questions—most people enjoy talking about themselves!
- This builds connection and relieves inward pressure.
- Quote:
  
  “Curiosity is the antidote to self-consciousness.” (13:10)
Serve Others
- Shift from “How am I doing?” to “How can I make someone else more comfortable or be of service here?”
- Example: Kimberley describes attending a conference—when feeling anxious, she chose to help others feel welcome instead of focusing on her own discomfort (16:02).

Challenging Social Anxiety Thoughts with Curiosity

Kimberley provides reframes for common anxious thoughts:

“Do they like me?” → “What’s interesting about this person? Do I like them?”
“Am I talking too much?” → “What follow-up questions can I ask?”
“Do they think I’m stupid?” → “What do we have in common?”

She reminds listeners the “spotlight effect”—the sense everyone is scrutinizing you—is unique to social anxiety and not reality (11:18).

Implementation: Practical Steps & Exposure Practice

Allow Anxiety to Be Present

Suppressing anxiety backfires; let anxious sensations “come along for the ride.”
Kimberley shares her exposure exercises with clients: letting hands shake, voice tremble, but relaxing the body and “looking like spaghetti” (21:36).
Quote:

“Let yourself shake, but relax your hands, relax your jaws, soften your eyes, drop your shoulders down.” (21:45)
“Trying to appear fine often looks more awkward; being open about anxiety reduces tension.” (21:55)

Practice in Small, Safe Ways

Start low-stakes: grocery stores, short work meetings, quick social events.
Set micro-goals: notice external details, ask three curious questions, or set a timer for just five minutes.
Success Metric:

“We do not measure success here by how anxious you feel. We measure success by the question, did I redirect my attention when I noticed it turning inward?” (24:35)

Segment Timestamps

[04:04] – Social anxiety’s destructive self-focus explained
[06:45] – Step 1: Focusing outward—what to notice in the environment
[07:14] – Step 2: Truly engaging with others’ words and tone
[13:10] – Step 3: Harnessing curiosity to neutralize self-consciousness
[16:02] – Serving others to shift perspective
[18:09] – Real-world example at a therapist marketing event
[21:36] – Letting anxiety “come with you,” not resisting symptoms
[24:35] – Measuring success by attention shift, not anxiety reduction

Memorable Quotes & Moments

On shifting focus:

“The more we monitor ourselves, the more anxious we feel. So our job is to practice focusing outward.” (11:07)
On curiosity:

“Curiosity is the antidote to self-consciousness.” (13:10)
On acceptance of anxiety:

“Let yourself shake, but relax your hands, relax your jaws, soften your eyes, drop your shoulders down… I want you to sort of let your shoulders and everything go a little more soft and spaghetti-like…” (21:45)
On practicing in real life:

“Little mini micro practices… Start small. Maybe you say, I’m just going to go for four or five minutes, and next time I’ll go for five to ten minutes… Small baby steps is what’s going to win, you hear?” (25:07)
Affirmation:

“If you walk into a social setting and you feel awkward, you feel shaky, you feel hyper aware, you’re not broken… This is just about you teaching yourself a new way to respond to anxiety.” (26:36)

Final Message and Encouragement

Kimberley reassures listeners that feeling awkward or anxious is normal and surmountable. She urges everyone to practice outward attention as a skill, not a quick fix, and to extend compassion to themselves in the process. She reiterates her mission to spread evidence-based anxiety relief and encourages sharing resources or episodes with friends who might benefit.

Takeaway

Social anxiety loses its power when you stop monitoring yourself and start engaging curiously and compassionately with the world around you. Small steps, repeated often, can dramatically build confidence—no faking required.

Loading summary

Transcript1 lines

[00:02]
A
Hello my loves. It has been a while since I've sat down and recorded a more traditional chat audio with you. I've been doing my best here on the podcast to just dive into the information, dive in, give you as much high quality evidence based skills as I can. But I've really missed just checking in on you and saying, how are you doing? What's going on? Is there any tension you're holding in your body? Is. Are you being kind to yourself? I hope so. I just wanted to check in. There has been so much happening over here over at CBT School and in my private practice. We now, as many of you may know, we have a YouTube channel which I am really putting so much, so much time and effort into. As well as the podcast, I have recently launched a new course which you may also have known about called the Rumination Reset. This is a course that will help you to stop ruminating. It is all science based. It is me teaching you the exact skills that I teach my client. This is a smaller course. It's just a focused solution for a specific problem. If you struggle with rumination, if you struggle with overthinking and catastrophizing and mental compulsions, please do go over to cptschool.com or you can click the link in the show notes and sign up for the Rumination Reset. It is my new favorite little baby course. In addition to that, I just wanted to let you know that we are pushing ahead with the content here, in fact where I am really considering doubling down and doubling the content I put out and really pushing to make sure you get access to actual skills that actually help. The more I'm on social media, the more I see absolute craziness and horrible advice and very concerning like quick fixes and I am on a mission to help you suffer less, not suffer more with those types of skills and full tea strategies. So that being said, let's get over to the show. I hope you're doing well. I am sending you every single ounce of my love and I'll talk to you soon. When you walk into a room, do you have thoughts like where will I stand? Or what if I say something weird? Or do I look awkward? Maybe once you experience that, you start having an increase in heart rate. Maybe your brain starts darting, going back and forward, looking around, feeling hypervigilant. You feel like everyone's eyes are on you. What I want you to learn in this episode is one powerful social anxiety trick that I use all the time for myself and with my clients and one Thing that will instantly make you feel more confident when you're in groups. Now of course this isn't going to take all of your anxiety away, but it is a very important mindset shift that I want you to make. Now the thing to remember here is it's probably the opposite of of what your anxious brain is telling you to do. And let me explain why this one trick is the opposite. Now one thing to know is that the tool I'm going to give you is probably the opposite of what your anxious brain is telling you and has told you to do. Hello, my name is Kimberly Quinlan. I'm an anxiety specialist and I am on a mission to equip 10 million people with science backed anxiety skills. I have a podcast and a YouTube and Instagram and I have all of these resources and I've decided this is the year where I am going to double what I have done in the previous years and really get out there and help you manage your anxiety. So let's talk about it today. Social anxiety tells us that the problem is how we are coming across. And this is a major error in thinking. Now it tells us to monitor your voice, to monitor where your hands are and where you put your hands. It tells you to monitor your face and what expressions you have. It tells you to monitor what words you say. In fact, it tells you that there are very, very specific words you need to do to appear cool or collected or comfortable. And it tells you to also monitor how they are reacting to you. Now what happens when we do that is we turn inward. We spend a lot of time focusing in our brain. We end up being hyp focused on ourselves and we then start to manage every micro expression and every sentence. You know what this is like. It can be so painful. The thing to remember is the more we monitor ourselves, the more anxious we feel. Social anxiety feeds on being self focused and putting all of that attention on ourselves. Now what can you do? What are we here to learn? Today's trick is not about acting confident. It's not a fake it till you make it approach. However, I'm not completely opposed to that. It's not about having better conversation skills. However, again, that is helpful too. And it's not about pretending that you're calm. What we're going to do here is we are going to focus not on what we say, what our hands are doing, what people are thinking, what our face is doing. We are going to focus on four specific things. Number one, I want you to focus outside of your body. I want you to be Thinking about what color are the walls, what color are their eyes, what shoes are they wearing, what handbag are they wearing. Bring your attention outside of what you're doing and put your attention on them, on what's going on around you. Because we know the more you focus on you, the more freaked out you're going to. Number two, I want you to actually put your attention on what the person is actually saying, what is the tone of their voice, what are their expressions, what are they actually saying? Do you agree? Get really engaged in what they're saying, what they're doing, not what you're doing. The next thing is ask yourself what's interesting about this story. You don't have to agree, but start to get curious. What is happening with them? What are they trying to project, what are trying to share, what is their intention? Get curious about them instead of being completely hyper vigilant about you and ask questions to them, right? The best thing you can do is once they've shared their thoughts, people love talking about themselves. They love feeling like people are interested in them. The easiest way in social settings to keep the conversation going and be engaged is to ask questions. Now what often happens is if you say interesting, you're talking about gardening. When did you learn to garden? They might share a story about their grandpa or their mother or their father or the man that lived down the street. Then you now might have a story about your grandpa or your mother or your father or your person who lived down the street. And you might find that you have relatable things instead of you focusing on all of the nitty gritty, now you're actually attuning to them, you're actually connecting with them, you're actually engaging in getting to know them instead of trying to just be perfect on the outside and the inside. Now when we shift our attention outward, our anxiety goes down, our self consciousness drops, our presence increases and that is our goal. Now there are four specific things I'm going to have you practice here and these are four things I need you to know. Number one is going to be be that. Research shows that people with social anxiety engage in high levels of self focused attention and post event rumination. Whereas folks who don't have anxiety don't do that. Now what happens with social anxiety? It's called the spotlight effect. When they walk into a room, they feel like the whole world is watching them, that they are on the spotlight and everyone is meticulously judging every little thing about them. But the truth of the matter is folks who don't have Social anxiety don't experience that spotlight effect and we can't control that piece of it, but we can control what we put our attention on. Again, if we're going to focus inward, we're going to get more anxious. So our job is to practice focusing outward. Number two is get curious. Curiosity is the antidote to self consciousness and I'm going to give you some examples here. So if you have the thought, do they like me? A curious response would be what's interesting about this person? Right? Or do I like them? Do they? Are they interesting to me? What about them kind of makes me aware or cautious. Maybe they're a little judgy or they're a little loud and you can be just curious about that. Maybe you're having the thought, am I talking too much? A curious response would be what follow up questions can I ask? So if you do feel like you're anxious and you do start to like rattle off a lot of stuff, pause and ask them a question. If you have the thought, do they think I'm stupid? You might reply with what do we have in common? Instead of isolating yourself with am I the only one who's not good, focus on what are the common wonderful things we both have in common. The next thought maybe is, will they tell everyone about the mistake I made or how awkward I was or how anxious I was? Now, as you know, I have a private practice. I have six amazing therapists in Calabasas, California. However, we do not take insurance. Now if you are looking for insurance covered OCD or BFRB treatment, I want to let you know about nocd. NOCD provides face to face live video sessions with specialized licensed OCD therapists. Now their therapists use exposure and response prevention. We know this is the gold standard for ocd. So you can be absolutely confirmed that you're in the right place there. And they have a clinically proven app that helps you stay connected to your therapist and and others who have OCD between sessions so you'll always feel supported. Now the cool thing is NOCD is available in all 50 US states and even internationally and they accept most insurance plans making it affordable and accessible. We love that. Now if you think you might have OCD or you're struggling to manage your symptoms, you can book a free call. Just click the link in the show notes@nocd.com I am honored to partner with NOCD. I want to remind you that recovery is possible. Please do not forget that. Now big hugs and let's get back to the show and then I want you to ask this question, and I find this one to be the most valuable is how can I serve others in this moment? That is going to be so important. The reason it's so important is if you are there only focusing on yourself again, we get more free doubt. But can you be there to benefit the world in some way? And don't get too overly perfectionistic about this either. But could it be sometimes I know when I'm anxious. I actually recently just went to this marketing event and it was all therapists and everyone was sort of already, you know, talking to someone or in their little groups and I was starting to get really like feeling uncomfortable and I started to think, well, maybe I, maybe I should just head out. This is too much like everyone's found their people already. And I thought, no, somebody else here is probably anxious and wants to meet someone who's lovely and I'm lovely, I'm nice. So I'm going to go on the effort to make somebody else feel more comfortable. I also think there are probably people here who need an OCD therapist to have referrals for or to consult with. So I'm going to go do that in the service of being helpful to other therapists in my area. Instead of thinking about, you know, how ridiculous am I, think about how you might be able to serve others or make the world a better place. Now, the thing to remember here is you're going to need to do this over and over and over. Your anxious brain is going to say, no, no, no, no, you're so bad, you're so terrible. Everyone's thinking of you. And you will need to bring your attention out of your brain, back to the outside, to the person in front of you as many times as you can. Now, if you're someone who struggles with this, what I would strongly encourage you to do is to consider taking our online course called the Rumination Reset. This is a course that I created to solve one specific problem and that is rumination. When you get stuck ruminating and you don't want to be ruminating, you want to be enjoying your life, but you have this feeling of like you just can't seem to get control. You can't seem to get and manage this strong urge to ruminate. Before you know it, you've lost hours, minutes, days. This course, the Rumination Reset, is for you. It is a shorter course that will teach you the specific science based skills I teach my clients to overcome and manage rumination. Again, it's not a quick fix. You will have to do the homework, but I have worksheets, I have PDFs, there's a workbook, it is fully laid out so that it makes a ton of sense for you. And we have some bonus modules there about different conditions and how rumination shows up, whether it be depression, anxiety, panic, ocd, social and anxiety, health anxiety, relationship anxiety, and all of those. So number three is let anxiety come with you. We talk a lot about this on your anxiety toolkit. And so the thing I want you to remember here is that if you're trying to not have anxiety, it will come strong, it will come with a vengeance. And so another important skill when you're in a social setting is to allow yourself to be anxious. Let your heart rate, let yourself, your hands shake. If they're shaking, the more you try and control it and hide that, the more it will come across as awkward. Often. And I will tell you this, I do a lot of social anxiety exposures with my one on one clients. We might go to the supermarket, we might go across the street to the Starbucks, and I have them practice engaging with people using these exact skills. And I'm usually a little bit away observing how they're acting so I can give them feedback. And what I notice is if they're having anxiety and let's say they're shaking or their voice is trembling, the more they try and hide it, the more awkward they appear. It's sort of counterintuitive. And it's not that they're doing anything wrong. It's totally normal to have awkward interactions with people. That is a normal part of being a human being. That's not just people with social anxiety. But what I notice is the more you try to appear like you're fine, the more you sort of seem rigid and unfocused and unrelaxed. So I will often tell them, let yourself shake, but relax your hands, relax your jaws, soften your eyes, drop your shoulders down. I once had a client say to me, oh, you want me to go and look like a spaghetti? And I go pretty much, yeah, like I want you to sort of let your shoulders and everything go a little more soft and spaghetti. Like instead of holding your shoulders up around your ears, just drop them down. Let yourself feel anxious, stop holding tension there as much as you can. Okay, so now we're going to move over to number four, which is you are going to practice these skills in small, safe ways. Now, what we know is this is not something you're going to master overnight. Just listening to this alone is not going to change A huge thing for you. It's going to be little mini micro practices that you do. So I want you to start small. I want you to go to the the grocery store and notice the details around you. I want you to go to that work meeting and focus on one speaker's words. I want you to go to that gathering and set a goal to ask maybe three curious questions. If going at all is so hard for you, maybe you say, I'm just going to go for four or five minutes and next time I'll go for five to 10 minutes. That's a huge win. I want you to remember small baby steps is what's going to win, you hear? Okay. So they might notice that we do not measure success here by how anxious you feel. We measure success by the question, did I redirect my attention when I noticed it turning inward? If you are able to catch that and reDirect yourself outward 3, 5, 10 times, you are doing such important work. Again, this, this is a practice. This is a muscle you strengthen because you will naturally go inward and you're going to have to practice taking your attention outward. Now let's recap. The trick is to try to shift your attention outward from how am I doing and what are they thinking about me to what's going on outside of me and what are other people doing. Now, I want you to remember, use your curiosity, engage externally and let anxiety come along for the ride. And my message to you, my love, is please hear me on this. If you walk into a social setting and you feel awkward, you feel shaky, you feel hyper aware, you're not broken, I don't want you to feel like there's something wrong with you because there's nothing wrong with you. This is just about you teaching yourself a new way to respond to anxiety. Now, as I mentioned before, I am on a mission to double my impact this year. And so if you have the time and it feels aligned with your mission, please do share my episodes or any resources we have over at CBT school. It would mean the world to me to make a bigger impact in the world of anxiety. Think of it like a chocolate bar. It's more yummy when you share it. You know, we want to share the love, we want to spread the deliciousness. And so if you have someone in your life that you think that would benefit from these episodes or resources or anything that I do, please do share it with them. Now, as always, I know how valuable your time is. Thank you so much for spending time with me. And please do go to cbtschool.com for any of our resources. Thank you again for being here and I'll see you in the next episode. Please note that this podcast or any other other resources from CBTSchool.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day and thank you for supporting CBTSchool.com.