My recipe for overcoming social anxiety? Habituation. Pick a social thing that scares you but that you enjoy doing, and keep doing it over and over again, even if it’s hard at first. You will learn to recognize the patterns of your feelings and begin to be able to insert a rational thought into the emotional loop – “this fear is not real!” – which will lessen the severity of the emotion.

1. Social Anxiety and Fitness
Tracking using humans vs technology
Lisette
Sutherland

2. Social Anxiety: how it
developed
 Grade school: lived on American
AFB, went to German school
 Moved to US: culturally different than
others
 Teens: Goth
 University: Hydrologist Goth
 Natural personality trait: ENFX (90%
F)

3. Social Anxiety: How did it
manifest?
 Low self-esteem
 Lots of self doubt
 Highly sensitive (ENFX)
 Wanted to go out but dreaded it
(ENFX)
Got tired of dreading it and started
looking for solutions!

4. Therapist as
Quantifier/Judge
Social anxiety is an irrational fear:
wanted a sympathetic/compassionate
solution and an objective judge
Criteria:
 objective/honest judge
 someone not a part of my life
 “normal” well-adapted person

5. Social Anxiety: Habituation
Repeated presentation of a stimulus will
cause a decrease in reaction to the
stimulus

6. Social Anxiety: The Plan
HABITUATION
Choose activity I like but dread
Do it over and over again
Report experience

7. Social Anxiety: The Plan
HABITUATION
Choose activity I like but dread
Going dancing at clubs
Do it over and over again
Death Guild every Monday
Report experience
Weekly therapy sessions: use objective
human to guide directions

8. Social Anxiety: Findings
I SHOULD HAVE QUANTIFIED! (how
much faster would therapy have
been?)
But I can say:
 Feel better overall
 Healthy self-esteem/confidence
 Go out regularly
 Go out alone without hesitation
 Armed with coping mechanisms &
knowledge

9. Social Anxiety: Findings
 Reprogramming is possible! Cheer!
 Habituation is an awesome tool
 Habituation is totally hard
 Important to find activity you truly like
 Over time (~5 years), the feelings
became so familiar. I learned to
recognize that they weren’t real.
Severity decreased.
 The human sympathy from therapist
was helpful & motivating

10. And now... real quantification
How much can I eat and weigh 63kg?

11. Fitness: Tracking Tools
 MyFoodDiary.com
◦ Calories
◦ Exercise
◦ Sleep
◦ Body measurements
 RunKeeper.com
◦ Routes
◦ Exercise types
◦ Times
◦ Trends

12. Net Calories vs Weight
(MFD)

13. Exercise (RunKeeper)
SHIN SPLINTS

15. Fitness: Findings
 Food has too many calories! 
 To weigh 63kg: Eat less and move more
◦ Eat less than 1500 net calories per day
◦ Add walk to end of day of all sitting
◦ No eating after 9pm
◦ Consider ADCR/16-8
 Tracking exercise helps motivate me to do
more
 Tracking calories helps me eat less
 I have more self control before 4pm than after
 Good reminder: Be careful of meaningless
coincidence

16. Meaningless coincidence
I never cycle on the 11th, 24th, or 29th

17. Tracking: Human vs
Technology
 Accountability partnerships are
powerful
 Tracking/quantifying is essential
 Use methods/tools designed to fit your
situation and your style