Lesson 1 · The opening

What social anxiety actually is

Someone you know walks up to say hi — at the supermarket, in a lift at work, on the street outside your building. You weren't expecting it. You freeze for a beat too long. You manage "hey" but nothing else. They move on. You spend the next hour replaying the thirty seconds in your head — what you said, what you didn't say, how you must have come across.

If you know that feeling — the freeze, the empty replay — you know social anxiety. Not "I'm a bit shy." Not "I'm an introvert." Something more specific is happening.

This lesson is about what that thing actually is.