Creating a fear hierarchy is a fundamental first step toward getting past social anxiety. If you haven’t done one, or if you’ve tried but haven’t gotten the results you wanted, you’ll find everything you need in our complete guide! There’s much more to achieving success with a fear hierarchy than making a list. We have you covered with these step-by-step instructions.
Why do I need to create a fear hierarchy for social anxiety?
Think of a fear hierarchy as a target, a roadmap, a progress log, and a cheerleader all in one.
If you want to achieve any goal, you need to first have a clear destination. A fuzzy goal like “I want to be less anxious” just doesn’t work. A specific goal like “I want to go on a job interview” on the other hand is exactly the kind of goal we mean.
Second, you need a plan to get there. Laying out your plan in the form of a hierarchy is the ideal strategy because it forces you to think logically in realistic steps. That helps to avoid being overwhelmed with the thought of something that doesn’t feel in your wheelhouse right now.
Among the many curses of social anxiety is the tendency to minimize your accomplishments and selectively feel defeated by your perceived failures. Having a written log of where you’ve come from helps you realize that you’ve already accomplished a ton! It often doesn’t feel like it until you look back and see where you started.
Then, when you can clearly see your progress, celebrate it! Use it as motivation to keep going. That’s where you have your built-in cheerleader! Maybe you’ve progressed from talking to one person at work per day to talking to 5. Give yourself a pat on the back! Or maybe you’ve gone from a short conversation of exchanging pleasantries to being able to talk for 5 minutes about your favorite hobby. Bravo – celebrate it!
What kind of fear hierarchy should I create for social anxiety?
The best thing about fear hierarchies is that they are yours to personalize and customize, so they can be anything you want them to be. But generally, they are used in 2 ways – situation based, and single goal based. We’ll break down both of these types, but what they both have in common is:
- Creating a list of situations that trigger your social anxiety, carefully ranking them in order of severity from 1 to 10
- Gradual, graded exposure
- Repeated exposure so that you can de-sensitize
- A “toolbox” full of strategies you can use to meet each step along the way, so you are not going it alone. Your toolbox might include deep breathing, thought reframing, grounding techniques, or self-compassion exercises. (Check out our post on 3rd-person self-talk and meditation for more ideas.)
Situation Based Fear Hierarchies
This type of strategy helps if you’ve got a wide range of situations you want to work on. You can rank them in order of severity and choose to address the ones on the lower end of the scale first.
Of course, the very first step is thinking carefully and prioritizing your goals. It doesn’t help to throw up your hands and say “I’m anxious about everything”. Think of the things that are important to you and what you want to achieve.
For example, let’s say you can identify 4 different situations, and you rate them as follows:
- 2/10: talking to people in your classroom or office
- 4/10: going to a restaurant by yourself
- 7/10: asking someone for a date
- 10/10: volunteering to present at a club or group
Now you can use the tools in your toolbox to first work on talking to people you see every day, because even though it does provoke some anxiety, it’s lowest on the scale. You also have more opportunity to practice it, and that in itself will help you build confidence in your successes. So if you’re starting with talking to people at work (rated 2/10), maybe you use breathing techniques beforehand and a reward afterward.
Volunteering to present can wait until you’ve developed more skills and confidence – and yes you will develop them! A goal that is high on the severity scale will likely also need to be broken down into smaller steps. That’s where the next hierarchy type comes in.
Single Goal Hierarchies
We’ll stick with our example of presenting to a group. That’s a 10/10 and might be triggering to even think about, but let’s break it down into smaller steps to make it manageable.
For example:
- 3/10: practicing it alone in front of your mirror
- 4/10: visualizing yourself making the presentation
- 6/10: presenting to a few trusted friends or relatives
- 8/10: presenting in the actual room to a few people
- 10/10: the actual presentation
The idea here is that by focusing on the lower triggering activities, you can work your way up to the higher ones.
How exactly do I focus on triggering activities?
For one thing, it does mean practicing it again and again. Practice helps you feel prepared – something everyone needs, anxiety or not. It helps you desensitize to the ritual of doing the performance – the words, the gestures, hearing the sound of your voice, making mistakes and working through how you’d correct them.
But it’s not just about repetition, it’s about using your tools along the way so that you will not feel as threatened and the ratings will go down.
This is not to say that you won’t have any anxiety. Most people, not just people with social anxiety disorder, have some anxiety about presentations, asking someone on a date, or confrontations. So being completely anxiety-free is not realistic, but you absolutely CAN be less threatened and be able to do the things you WANT to do.
What if I’ve tried exposure before and it didn’t work?
It’s not uncommon to hear “I talk to people at work every day and I’m still anxious”. Repetition goes a long way, but it’s not the only component of exposure. And repeating the same thing without results is frustrating and decreases motivation.
Based on my experience with running groups, when exposure doesn’t work it’s because of one of these reasons:
- Moving the goalpost: Remember, being completely free of anxiety isn’t realistic, but you can feel far less threatened and still do the things that matter to you. Some people claim to have made no progress because they still feel anxious, but when pressed they acknowledge that they were completely unable to do something before and now they can (but they’re still anxious).
- Poor recall of baseline: Similar to above, when progress is slow or gradual people can forget the severity of their starting point. That’s why it is important to write things down. When you look back often you will see that you were in fact a LOT more anxious and now it has minimized.
- Still telling yourself the same stories: Repetition alone won’t work if you’re still telling yourself how inept or inadequate you are and thinking of a million reasons why nobody would want to talk to you. Changing your own opinion of yourself needs to go hand in hand with your exposure experiments.
- Flooding: Flooding is another way to say “too much too soon”, or diving into the deep end. If you jump in to something that’s a 10/10 you are not likely to have much success. Unfortunately, sometimes we are forced to – school presentations come to mind. And when that happens it can actually cause trauma that tends to linger. Sometimes the negative emotions from even a single event can be so powerful, they can take on a life of their own. Resolving these emotions first is sometimes necessary but you can absolutely get past these events and move forward. Don’t let a bad experience lead you form a negative opinion of yourself and your potential.
So now what do I do?
Now that you understand the benefits of creating a fear hierarchy, why don’t you give it a try? Use our downloadable worksheet to rank your own situations or triggers, with your personal goals in mind. Then be intentional about reaching your goals. Set aside time every day and hold yourself accountable for taking the steps.
Final Thoughts
🎯 Set a clear, specific goal (not just “be less anxious”)
🧱 Break your fear into smaller steps, from low to high intensity
🔁 Practice regularly with support strategies from your toolbox
✍️ Track your progress and reflect on how far you’ve come
🎉 Celebrate every win—big or small!
You can read more insights and practical strategies in my other posts.
You can read my complete story in my book.
