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 and is not yet open for enrollment. It will combine clear lessons, guided reflection, and practical exercises drawn from several established therapeutic approaches.
Current status
The course is not available yet. In the meantime, you can join the free 7-day email course or explore the Social Anxiety Library.
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 try to deal with it by avoiding situations, hiding anxiety, overpreparing, staying quiet, pleasing others, or replaying interactions afterward. These strategies often make sense in the moment. They can reduce anxiety temporarily. But over time, they may keep social anxiety going.
The Conquer Social Anxiety course is being created to help people understand these patterns and work with them more deliberately.
Rather than presenting one technique as the answer for everyone, it will help learners identify the processes that matter most in their own experience and build a more personal path forward.
What the Course Is Being Designed to Help With
The course is being created for people who want more than scattered tips, but who are not looking for vague motivational advice or unrealistic promises.
Understand the Pattern
Learn what social anxiety is, how it works, and why avoidance, safety behaviors, fear of judgment, self-monitoring, rumination, and shame can keep the problem going.
Learn What Can Help
Understand how exposure, behavioral experiments, acceptance, compassion, emotional awareness, social skills, and deeper self-understanding may support change.
Build a Realistic Path
Approach recovery in a way that is careful, 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 it understandable.
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 to understand the topic more clearly.
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;
- want a structured way to understand and work with your patterns;
- prefer a calm, educational, step-by-step approach;
- want to learn before, during, or after therapy.
What the Course Is Not
The course is not psychotherapy
The Conquer Social Anxiety course does not provide diagnosis, individualized assessment, crisis support, medication advice, or personal treatment planning.
It cannot replace working with a qualified mental health professional, especially if your symptoms are severe, complex, or connected to other mental health difficulties.
The course will not promise a cure. It will not claim that one method works for everyone. It will not present social anxiety as something that can be solved through one trick, one mindset shift, or one simple technique.
It is being designed as structured psychoeducation and guided self-help: a way to learn, reflect, practice, and understand yourself more clearly.
The Approach Behind the Course
Social anxiety is not maintained by one process alone.
For some people, avoidance is central. For others, the main problem is self-focused attention, fear of visible symptoms, shame, people-pleasing, perfectionism, rumination, low self-esteem, or difficulty asserting themselves. Many people experience several of these patterns at once.
Because of this, the course is being built from an integrative perspective.
It will draw from several therapeutic approaches, including cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure-based work, acceptance and commitment therapy, metacognitive therapy, compassion-focused therapy, social skills training, emotion-focused perspectives, and psychodynamic ideas.
Evidence matters
This does not mean all approaches have the same level of evidence for social anxiety. CBT and exposure-based approaches currently have the strongest and most established evidence base. Other approaches may still offer useful ways to understand specific processes such as shame, self-criticism, rumination, emotional avoidance, interpersonal patterns, and values.
The course will aim to present these ideas carefully, without turning therapy approaches into competing belief systems.
The planned curriculum brings together cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure, acceptance and commitment therapy, metacognitive therapy, social skills training, compassion-focused and mindful self-compassion approaches, emotion-focused therapy, and psychodynamic perspectives. Each is included for the particular questions and change processes it can help illuminate.
Who is developing the course?
The course is being developed by Martin Stork, psychologist, social anxiety researcher, and founder of Conquer Social Anxiety. You can learn more about Martin and the standards behind this website on the About page.
What the Course Will Include
The course is being developed as a structured learning experience rather than a collection of disconnected tips.
Clear Lessons
Short video lessons and clear explanations of key social anxiety patterns.
Practical Exercises
Guided exercises, reflection prompts, and ways to apply ideas to real-life situations.
Downloadable Support
Worksheets, summaries, or other materials designed to help you remember and apply what you learn.
Multiple Therapeutic Perspectives
An integrative curriculum that explains 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 as you move through the course.
A Personal Toolkit
A way to bring your most useful insights and strategies together so they remain accessible beyond individual lessons.
The exact structure may still change before launch. The priority is to make the course useful, careful, and ethically clear before it is published.
Current Status
The course is not open for enrollment yet.
It is currently being prepared, reviewed, and refined. The priority is to make the final course clear, useful, ethically responsible, and realistic about what structured online learning can and cannot provide.
When the course becomes available, this page will be updated with more details about the structure, curriculum, access, pricing, suitability, and frequently asked questions.
What to Do While You Wait
If you would like to begin learning now, you can start with the free resources on this website.
Free 7-Day Email Course
A simple, structured introduction to key ideas about social anxiety.
Start Here
A guided starting point if you are not sure which part of the website fits your situation.
Social Anxiety Library
A full library of clear 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 learning about social anxiety through a simple structured email sequence.
Understand what social anxiety is and how it differs from ordinary nervousness.
Learn about the emotional, physical, cognitive, and behavioral symptoms of social anxiety.
Compare major evidence-informed treatment approaches and what they may help with.
Learn what realistic recovery can look like over time.
CSA provides education, not emergency support or a substitute for professional diagnosis, treatment, or therapy. If you are in immediate danger or crisis, seek urgent local help. For more information, see Crisis Help and the Medical Disclaimer.