Work meetings and social anxiety

Why meetings are hard

Work is one of the main places where social anxiety does damage. A study of more than 500,000 Reddit posts about social anxiety found that people described its effects in two main areas: social life, and work or study.

Meetings bring together many of the things people fear most:

• Being looked at. Everyone faces each other, or each other’s faces on a screen.
• Being called on. “What do you think?” can come at any moment.
• Round-robin introductions. “Tell us your name and one fun fact” means a long wait while your turn comes closer.
• Video calls. With the camera on, you can watch your own face the whole time. That makes it easy to keep checking how you look.

Waiting is often the worst part. The longer you wait to speak, the more time your mind has to predict disaster. Watching yourself while you wait makes you notice every sign of anxiety and makes it harder to think. What keeps social anxiety going explains this loop.

What people with social anxiety often do

• Stay silent through whole meetings, even with a good idea.
• Rehearse one sentence over and over and miss what others are saying.
• Keep the camera off, or sit where nobody can see them.
• Speak very fast and quietly to get it over with.
• Avoid meetings, or turn down roles that involve them.

These safety behaviours feel protective. They keep the fear going, because you never find out that speaking normally would have been fine. In an experiment, safety behaviours and watching yourself turned out to be unhelpful in several ways. Colleagues may read silence as lack of interest, when it is really fear.

You may also believe your nerves are obvious. In a set of experiments, people believed their feelings showed more than they really did. Researchers call this the illusion of transparency. Your racing heart is invisible to others.

Small steps to try

This is an example exposure ladder: steps you face on purpose, easiest first. Start with one that feels hard but possible. Repeat it in several meetings before moving up.

1. Turn your camera on for the first five minutes of a video call. Then hide your own view, so you look at the others instead of yourself.
2. Say one short thing at the start. “Morning, everyone” or “Thanks for setting this up.” Speaking early stops the dread building up.
3. Agree with someone out loud and add one reason. “I agree, especially because the deadline is close.”
4. Ask one question in a small meeting.
5. Give your update without reading it word for word. Keep three short notes, not a script.
6. Share an opinion that differs a little from someone else’s.
7. Speak up without being asked in a larger meeting.
8. Lead part of a meeting or present a few slides.

Each time, pick one safety behaviour to drop. Look at people’s faces instead of your notes. Let a pause sit for a second. If your mind goes blank, saying “Let me think about that and come back to you” is normal at work. When your mind goes blank has more on this.

Practising before the real thing

Some people practise speaking in front of a virtual meeting or audience. In therapy, VR exposure therapy lets you rehearse a meeting with a therapist adjusting how hard it is. It works about as well as real-life practice when it is part of therapy. VR apps you use at home are another option, with less evidence behind them. Whatever you practise in VR, try a real version within a few days.

When to get more help

If fear of meetings is holding back your career, it is worth getting help. The best-tested therapy is cognitive therapy for social anxiety. Help can also come through work services: in a US trial of 250 job seekers with social anxiety, group therapy focused on work, added to job services, reduced social anxiety a little more than job services alone by the end of treatment. The difference did not last at later check-ups, and hours worked were the same.

If presenting is the main fear, see public speaking. If blushing or shaking is what you dread, see blushing and shaking hands and voice.