The Conquer Social Anxiety Course
A structured, integrative online course for adults who want to understand social anxiety and begin working with it in a careful, evidence-informed way.
The course is currently in development. It is being designed to combine clear lessons, guided reflection, and practical exercises so that learners can understand their own patterns and take realistic steps toward change.
Enrollment is not open yet
Join the waitlist to be notified when enrollment opens and receive the introductory launch offer. Joining is free and does not commit you to purchasing the course.
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A structured course for social anxiety
Social anxiety can affect conversations, friendships, dating, work, school, public speaking, phone calls, physical symptoms, self-confidence, and the ability to feel at ease around other people.
Many people cope by avoiding situations, hiding anxiety, overpreparing, staying quiet, pleasing others, or replaying interactions afterwards. These responses often make sense in the moment and may reduce anxiety temporarily. Over time, however, they can also help maintain the pattern.
The Conquer Social Anxiety Course is being created to help learners understand these processes, identify which ones matter most in their own experience, and work with them more deliberately.
Rather than presenting one technique as the answer for everyone, the course will provide a structured framework for building a more personal and realistic path forward.
What the course is designed to help with
The course is intended for people who want more than scattered tips, but who are not looking for vague motivational advice or unrealistic promises.
Understand your pattern
Learn how fear of judgment, avoidance, safety behaviors, self-focused attention, rumination, shame, and other processes can interact and keep social anxiety going.
Practise new responses
Work with structured exercises informed by exposure, behavioral experiments, attention training, acceptance, compassion, emotional awareness, and interpersonal learning.
Build a realistic path
Approach change in a way that is gradual, sustainable, and grounded in psychological science rather than pressure, perfection, or quick fixes.
Key idea
The aim is not to make social anxiety sound simple. The aim is to make its patterns understandable enough to work with.
Who the course may be for
The course is being designed primarily for adults with social anxiety. It may also be useful for people who are unsure whether their difficulties fit social anxiety and want a clearer framework for understanding them.
It may be helpful if you:
- struggle with social anxiety or strong social fears;
- avoid social, professional, academic, or performance situations;
- fear being judged, embarrassed, rejected, exposed, or seen as awkward;
- experience physical symptoms such as blushing, shaking, sweating, tension, or a racing heart in social situations;
- rely on extensive preparation, self-monitoring, people-pleasing, or post-event review;
- want a calm, structured, step-by-step way to understand and work with your patterns;
- want educational support before, during, or after therapy.
What the course is not
The course is not psychotherapy
It will not provide diagnosis, individualized assessment, crisis support, medication advice, or personal treatment planning.
The course cannot replace working with a qualified mental health professional, especially when symptoms are severe, complex, connected to other mental health difficulties, or difficult to address independently.
It will not promise a cure or suggest that one method works for everyone. It is being designed as structured psychoeducation and guided self-help: a way to learn, reflect, practise, and understand yourself more clearly.
The approach behind the course
Social anxiety is rarely maintained by one process alone. Avoidance may be central for one person, while another may struggle most with visible symptoms, shame, perfectionism, self-criticism, rumination, people-pleasing, or difficulty asserting themselves.
Because these patterns can overlap, the course is being built from an integrative perspective. It will draw from several therapeutic traditions while remaining clear about differences in their evidence base.
Evidence matters
Disorder-specific cognitive behavioral therapy currently has the strongest and most established evidence base for social anxiety, and planned exposure is central to many effective CBT programmes. Other approaches have varying levels of direct evidence but may still offer useful ways to understand processes such as shame, self-criticism, rumination, emotional avoidance, interpersonal patterns, and values.
Planned material is expected to draw from cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure-based work, behavioral experiments, acceptance and commitment therapy, metacognitive therapy, compassion-focused therapy, social skills training, emotion-focused therapy, and psychodynamic perspectives.
These approaches will not be presented as competing belief systems. Each will be included only where it helps illuminate a relevant question or change process.
Who is developing the course?
The course is being developed by Martin Stork, MSc in Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy for Adults, social anxiety researcher, and founder of Conquer Social Anxiety. Learn more on the About Martin Stork page and in the Evidence Standards.
What the course is expected to include
The course is being developed as a connected learning process rather than a collection of disconnected tips.
Clear lessons
Concise lessons explaining central social anxiety patterns and why they persist.
Practical exercises
Guided exercises and reflection prompts for applying the material to real situations.
Downloadable support
Worksheets, summaries, and other materials designed to support practice beyond individual lessons.
Multiple perspectives
Careful explanations of where different approaches overlap, where they differ, and what each may contribute.
Personal reflection
Opportunities to identify your own fears, maintaining patterns, goals, and key learning.
A personal toolkit
A way to bring your most useful insights and strategies together so they remain accessible after the course.
The exact curriculum and delivery format may still change before launch. The priority is to make the course useful, coherent, ethically clear, and realistic about what online learning can provide.
What to do while you wait
You do not need to wait for the full course to begin learning about social anxiety.
Free 7-Day Email Course
Work through a structured introduction to the social anxiety cycle, feared predictions, safety behaviors, attention, behavioral experiments, and rumination.
Start Here
Use a guided starting point if you are not sure which part of the website best fits your situation.
Social Anxiety Library
Explore detailed guides on symptoms, causes, treatment, recovery, relationships, work, school, and everyday situations.
A careful path forward
Social anxiety can make life smaller, but change does not require becoming someone else.
It often begins with understanding what is happening, noticing what keeps the pattern going, and taking careful steps toward the situations, relationships, and parts of life that matter.
The Conquer Social Anxiety Course is being created to support that kind of process: structured, realistic, compassionate, and grounded in psychological science.
Continue Learning
These pages are useful next steps while the full course is being prepared.
Start with a structured seven-day introduction to important social anxiety processes.
Understand what social anxiety is and how it differs from ordinary nervousness.
Learn about emotional, physical, cognitive, and behavioral symptoms.
Compare major evidence-informed approaches and what they may help with.
Learn what realistic progress and recovery can look like over time.