chap 4- social anxiety and panic disorder

Social anxiety:

people who have severe, persistentm and irrational anxiety about social or performance situations in which they may face scrutiny by others and possibly feel embarassed 

Causes of social anxiety:

because of unrealistic beliefs, people with social anxiety keep anticipating that social disasters will occur, overestimate how poorly things go in their social interactions, and dread most social situations. They learn to perfomr “avoidance” and “saftey”  behaviors to help prevent or reduce such disasters.  

Treatments for social anxiety disorder:  

• reducing social fears (through medication or through exposure therapy or through discussions with therapists in which the clients are guided to reexamine andc challenge their maladaptive beliefs and expectations, given the less-than-dire outcomes of their social exposures. 

• Social skill training: therapists modell appropriate social behaviors for the clients and encourage the individuals to try them out  

Panic Disorder:

anxiety disorder marked by recurrent and unpredicable panic attacks. They also have dysfunctional changes in their thinking or behavior as a result of the attacks  

what do cognitve-behavioral theorsts think of panic disorder?

they believe that biological factors are only one part of the cause of panic attacks and that full panic reactions are experienced by people who further misinterpret the phsyiological events that are taking place within their bodies.

Biological challenge tests:

researchers produce hyperventilation or other biological sensations by administering drugs or by instructing clincial research participants to breathe, exercise, or simply think in certian ways 

Anxiety sensitiviety:

panic-prone individuals have a generally high degree of this. They fpocus on their boduky sensations much of the time, are unable to assess them logically, and interpret them as potentially harmful