In a feared social situation, an automatic thought ("they can tell I'm anxious," "I'll say something stupid") triggers a wave of anxious feelings and body sensations. To cope, we reach for safety behaviors — avoiding eye contact, rehearsing sentences, leaving early. Safety behaviors bring short-term relief, but they quietly teach the brain that the situation really was dangerous, so the fear comes back just as strong next time.
CBT interrupts this loop in two ways: cognitive restructuring (examining and loosening the grip of the automatic thought) and graded exposure (facing feared situations in a planned order, without the usual safety behaviors, until anxiety naturally comes down on its own). This tool gives you a simple version of both: a Fear Ladder for planning exposure, a Thought Record for restructuring, and a focused practice space for one especially common safety behavior in social anxiety — avoiding eye contact.
1. Build your Fear Ladder — list situations you avoid or dread, from mildly uncomfortable to very difficult.
2. Before or after facing one, fill out a Thought Record for the automatic thought that showed up.
3. Use Eye-Contact Practice to rehearse steady, relaxed eye contact in a low-stakes setting before trying it in real conversations.
4. Check Progress to see your anxiety ratings trend over time.
List situations related to your social anxiety, and rate how distressing each feels right now using SUDS (Subjective Units of Distress, 0 = totally calm, 100 = worst anxiety imaginable). Work your way up from the bottom over time — you don't need to start with the hardest one.
Use this after (or during) a moment of social anxiety to examine the thought behind the feeling.
Avoiding eye contact is one of the most common safety behaviors in social anxiety. This exercise lets you rehearse holding steady, relaxed attention on a point — the amber dot — the way you would hold gaze with another person, before trying it in conversation.
If you turn on your camera, Steady gives you a rough, private steadiness estimate based on how centered your face stays in frame — a simple stand-in for "staying present" rather than true pupil/gaze tracking. It's a self-practice aid, not a clinical measurement, and the video is analyzed locally in your browser only; nothing is recorded or sent anywhere. You can also practice with the camera off using the timer alone.