Your anxiety is a terrible forecaster — and here's the proof

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-07

[00:00:00]Your social anxiety has a prediction problem.

[00:00:03]It consistently, reliably, catastrophically overestimates how badly things are going to go. The meeting where you asked a question and people thought you were stupid. It didn't happen.

[00:00:16]The party where nobody talked to you and you stood alone all night. It didn't happen.

[00:00:22]The conversation where you said something awkward and everyone noticed and they're still thinking about it. It didn't happen.

[00:00:31]I'm not saying the fear isn't real. It absolutely is. I'm saying the forecast is wrong almost every time.

[00:00:39]The research on this is consistent.

[00:00:42]People with social anxiety dramatically overestimate the probability and severity of negative social outcomes and dramatically underestimate how quickly they recover when things do go imperfectly.

[00:00:55]The most powerful thing you can do is start keeping score. Every time you do something that scares you socially, write down what you predicted would happen. Then write down what actually did. The gap between those two things, that gap is your evidence. Evidence that your anxiety is a poor forecaster. Dot.

[00:01:15]And the more evidence you accumulate, the less authority it has over your decisions.

[00:01:21]Save this one. It's one of the most useful things I know. And follow along for more.