13/12/2025
Anxiety causes you to do this…..
Overthinking after a social interaction causes high anxiety and this can contribute to a person avoiding social interactions! This happens a lot for people with social anxiety.
The “Postmortem” analysis of social situations is when a person has persistent negative and unpleasant thoughts and images about their social interactions.
This causes a person to spend a great deal of time recalling how terrible they looked and sounded and imagine how other people are judging and rejecting them.
Overthinking after a social interaction is known in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as a safety behaviour where you are trying to reassure yourself by thinking back on the conversation on how you came across to the other person! This usually increases anxiety because your anxiety is high at this point anyway and therefore you are probably thinking more negatively about how you came across! It’s highly possible what your thinking is an inaccurate account of what actually happened because a lot of the time it can be your opinions (not facts of what happened) of the situation that drive on the emotional distress!
Become aware of when you’re doing this and bring yourself back to the here and now!
Deep breathing may also help you regulate if you notice your feeling overwhelmed after a conversation.
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