Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can effectively treat social anxiety disorder, phobias and other anxiety and panic disorders, and using cognitive behavioral therapy For anxiety has become common.

CBT has two main components to it. The way that negative thoughts or actions make us anxious are addressed in cognitive therapy, whereas behavior therapy looks at how people react in situations that create anxiety.

CBT basically proposes that it is not the actual event or situation itself that triggers anxiety, but rather how we react to it. In other words, our thoughts affect how we feel. One way to understand the concept is to consider three different ways of thinking about the situation if you imagine that you have just received an invitation to a party, and how each of those would emotionally affect you.

Cognitive restructuring, or thought challenging, is a way to challenge your negative thinking, and replace it with positive thoughts. People with an anxiety disorder see something as more dangerous or stressful than it really is; a good example would be the fear of shaking hands, for fear of catching germs. You can probably see that this would be irrational in someone else, although if you have irrational behavior yourself, it is not so easy to identify and one method is to determine the point at which you felt anxious and ask yourself what you felt then.

The second step is to question and challenge your negative thoughts and you can do this by determining the pros and cons of avoiding whatever it is you fear, as well as trying to logically work out what the consequences would be if the thing you are worrying about does happen. Replacing the negative thoughts and worries with positive thinking is the next step, and your therapist may be able to help you devise calming statements.

Avoiding the things that make us anxious is a common strategy, although this means that we will never overcome that fear, and avoiding it actually makes the anxiety worse. Exposure therapy gently introduces us to those situations and things that we fear, allowing us to eventully overcome the fear by controlling it.