Reward Processing and Exposure Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder

8 therapy sessions conducted individually with a therapist. Focuses on improving reward processing to increase positive emotional experience. Specific techniques include psychoeducation on mood cycle and positive emotions, mood monitoring, behavioral activation, and imaginal recounting and savoring of behavioral activation events. Intervention includes between-session practice.

8 therapy sessions conducted individually with a therapist. Focuses on mindfulness and relaxation skills. Specific techniques include mindfulness approaches from dialectical behavior therapy, diaphragmatic breathing, and progressive muscle relaxation. Intervention includes between-session practice.

8 therapy sessions conducted individually with a therapist using the inhibitory retrieval model of exposure therapy. Sessions are designed to include four exposures each (32 exposures total). Each exposure is a public speech delivered to an audience. Goal of this treatment is to reduce public speaking anxiety. Principles of exposure therapy that will be incorporated are maximizing prediction error, maintaining attention to the situation/stimuli that are perceived predictors of the feared outcome (e.g., social rejection), removing safety signals, variability, engaging in post-exposure rehearsal/consolidation, deepened extinction, and positive occasion setter extinction. Intervention does not include between-session practice.