Social anxiety can make any gathering feel daunting. Long before someone steps foot in a crowded party, the restaurant where they're having a first date, or the conference room where they're giving a speech, they’ll start replaying worst-case scenarios.

“There's a lot of anticipation and anxiety leading up to the event," says Charissa Chamorro, a clinical psychologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she co-directs the anxiety, OCD, and tics fellowship. “The person may ruminate and think over and over again about the situation, and that's where some of these self-critical thoughts come in: ‘I'm not going to know what to say, I’m not going to know how to act, I'm not going to know what to do with my hands.’”

Once the social situation arrives—whether that means they’re

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