I'm Maura Aronsmeli, and this is The Anxious Achiever.

We look at stories from business leaders who have dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges,

how they fell down, how they picked themselves up, and how they hope workplaces can change in the future.

If we humans are such social creatures, then why do we make each other so anxious?

In the last episode, we spoke with Dr. Jenny Tates about the specific kind of social anxiety we faced during the pandemic and afterwards, the perfect storm of isolation, fear of a terrifying

and hard-to-manage disease, and now the fear of having to see other people again and going

back into society.

It's a lot.

We'll talk a little bit about that with today's guest, but also zoom out to talk about the phenomenon of social anxiety as a whole

and why we humans, relational, social creatures who need each other to survive commonly experience social anxiety?

Joining me now is Stefan Hoffman, a clinical psychologist at Boston University and one of the foremost experts on cognitive behavior therapy and treating social anxiety.

So social anxiety is an eternally popular topic, at least among my listeners.

I don't know if you find that in your daily life when people learn

that one of your areas of expertise is social anxiety, if their eyes light up or if they

kind of get nervous about it? What's the reaction?

Well, certainly, social anxiety is something that everybody can relate to. And if people

ask me what I do, I typically do not get into the specifics,

because otherwise it would be a pretty lengthy discussion that I'm trying to avoid.

They'd want free therapy.

Yeah, exactly.

How do you define social anxiety?

Well, social anxiety is just generally defined as anxiety around other people,

...