• Counseling helps build your self-esteem and self-confidence by helping you increase positive behavior that will best support the kind of life you want to lead. For example: if you want more closeness and better relationships in your life, you learn to reach out to others more.
• Counseling helps you build self-esteem and self-confidence by helping you become more assertive and take risks that will improve your life especially in the social, emotional, and career areas.
• Counseling helps you build your self-esteem and self-confidence by providing consistent and positive support.
• Many of the life changes that result from counseling are in the form of stronger self-esteem or self-confidence, rewarding relationships, meaningful work, and the simple everyday enjoyment of life.

Improving Social Anxiety

Social anxiety interferes with relating to people and social relationships. Social anxiety can be replaced by more socially effective behavior and a socially anxious person can learn to relax and enjoy social situations. Counseling and supportive coaching includes: Taking small steps toward improving social contact and practicing new social behavior. The steps need to be small enough to allow one to increase skills and confidence level.

• Learning to manage and eventually eliminate anxiety, tension, and nervousness. There are several skills that can be taught to reduce stress and tension around people.
• Learning how to meet people, hang out, date, and how to develop a satisfying relationship.

Goals of Counseling for social anxiety include:

• Becoming more at ease in social situations. Becoming more comfortable meeting new people.
• Working through past issues that may be interfering with new relationships.
• Learning about how relationships work and how to have a healthy relationship. Developing an internal support system to reduce stress in social situations.
• Developing an individually designed plan and set of steps for increasing social contact.