Does social anxiety go away?

The short answer

Without treatment, social anxiety usually lasts. With treatment, the outlook is much better.

• Left alone, it tends to stay for years, often rising and falling. Full recovery without help is uncommon.
• With the right therapy, many people improve a lot, and many no longer have the disorder at the end.
• The gains from therapy tend to last for years.

It is not too late at 25, 35 or 60. The habits that keep social anxiety going can change at any age.

What happens over the years

Several long studies have followed people over time.

• In Munich, Germany, a study followed young people aged 14 to 24 for 10 years. By the end, 56.7% still had at least some symptoms. Only 15.1% had fully recovered. Starting young, being a cautious child and having a parent with social anxiety all made it more likely to last.
• In a US study of people who had sought treatment, social phobia had the lowest chance of recovery over 12 years of the three anxiety disorders studied. Depression and alcohol or drug problems made recovery less likely.
• A review of long-term studies found that over 5 years, 27% of people from clinics and 40% of people from the general population recovered.

So “kids grow out of it” is mostly wrong for the disorder. Ordinary teenage worry about what others think often fades. Social anxiety disorder tends not to.

Does it get better with age?

A little, perhaps. In a Canadian survey of people aged 55 and over, 4.94% had ever had social anxiety, but only 1.32% had it in the past year. Rates were lower in older age groups.

Nobody knows for sure why. Some people may recover. Some may face fewer feared situations once work ends. The fears themselves stayed the same in older people who still had it.

Waiting decades is not a plan. Treatment works much faster.

What happens with treatment

Results depend on the treatment.

• Cognitive therapy for social anxiety. In one trial, 84% of people no longer had social anxiety disorder after this therapy. Of people who had exposure plus relaxation training, 42% no longer had it. Of people on the waiting list, none recovered. The differences held a year later.
• Other therapies. In a large German trial of 495 people, 36% recovered fully with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). 26% recovered fully with psychodynamic therapy, a talking therapy that explores feelings and past relationships. On the waiting list, 9% did. Many more improved without fully recovering.
• Online CBT. A Swedish study followed 80 people for 5 years after online CBT. Their symptoms had dropped a lot, and the gains were still there 5 years later.

“Recovery” means different things in different studies. Often it means no longer meeting the criteria for the disorder. Some anxiety may remain. Many people describe this as “managed, not cured”, and still say their life changed.

What about medication?

Medicines such as SSRIs help many people with social anxiety while they take them. When people stop, the risk of the anxiety coming back goes up. Across 28 trials in different anxiety disorders, within up to a year, 36.4% of people who stopped their antidepressant relapsed, compared with 16.4% of people who kept taking it.

That does not mean you must take medicine forever. It means stopping should be planned with your doctor, slowly, and ideally with therapy skills in place. Never stop or change a medicine on your own.

Why it lasts without help

Social anxiety is kept going by habits that feel protective: avoiding, hiding, watching yourself and replaying what went wrong. They stop you from learning that things go better than you fear. See what keeps it going.

This is also why the condition does not simply fade. The habits keep it going after the reasons it started are long gone.

Most people never get treated

Across 24 countries, only 22.8% of people with social anxiety had ever been treated. Those who did get treatment had waited about 15.5 years on average. Of those who were treated, 65.1% said it helped.

If you have had this for years, you are in very common company. The research is clear that it is worth trying now.

Where to start

• The start here guide: what you can do this week.
• Self-help books and online CBT: good options if therapy is hard to reach.
• Talking to your doctor: words to use and how to book.

If you feel hopeless about it ever changing, or have thoughts of harming yourself, please reach out now. See crisis lines.