Yes, I guess I should have said more.

You are correct -- I am referring to a workshop where people practice
situations they find to be uncomfortable.

Let me say a bit about how I see the treatment of shyness. I'm pretty much
following the standard approach. First, a client such as myself takes a
standard course of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). For example, 1 day per
week for 16 weeks. During this he constructs a list of uncomfortable
situations ranging from fairly easy to impossible, and learns cognitive skills
to deal with them. He then practices situations starting at the bottom of the
list until he works his way to the top (at which point he is "cured", I guess).
A program used by many therapists is published in "Managing Social Anxiety" by
Debora A. Hope. It is also possible for a person to buy that book and do a
watered-down verson of treatment program by themselves.

Many situations, like introducing oneself to a stranger at a party, can be
broken into a series of baby steps. For instance, the easiest might be to just
run the scenario in their imagination. The hardest might be to do it at a
singles party. And in-between it is possible to construct situations with an
almost infinite variety of difficulty by role-playing things with other
socially anxious people.

At the end of the typical 16-week CBT treatment the therapist usually says
something along the lines of "Well, the treatment is over. Too bad there
aren't enough shy people in this city who are interested in follow-up practice
sessions, even though that would be very valuable for you. So you are on your
own. Have a good life and good luck!". As far as I can tell, it is very rare
to find followup groups.

It would seem to make sense to have weekend workshops where people from around
the country could fly in for practice. Of course most people would not be
interested in flying for this, but only about 6 or 8 people are needed,
nationwide. The weekend format also has the added benefit that there is a lot
of practice condensed into one weekend. Many people believe that concentrated
practice like this is more valuable than practice that is spaced out.

If I do find something like this, or even create it myself, I will post it at
my web site http://www.socialanxietyresources.com/ .

--Bob

--- Sam Rau <sam.rau@...> wrote:

> Unfortunately I'm unsure as to what this is referring to. It seems as if
> you're talking about a workshop where people could get together and practice
> social skills? Please fill me in on anything which may be added here.
>
> I've often wondered about this very same thing. It's easy to read a book or
> something and go out in the real world and practice--actually this is the
> best way to learn--but it seems to me that it'd be much more benificial if we
> were to join together for a common purpose. I've been making many
> improvements on my social skills lately, but it's a little difficult for me
> to interact with strangers, especially when I'm unsure of what there agenda
> is. If we could have common ground--all of us working to improve our social
> skills--we wouldn't have the problem of having to break the ice, so to speak.
>
> I think that maybe if we could organize something like this it would help out
> and greatly speed up the process of learning to do this stuff. I'd like to
> hear your thoughts on this, and perhaps we can get something going? I'm
> actually very interested in sharing my experiences--both about social
> improvements and improvements we may make in life in general--in front of
> groups of people; I plan to make money doing this some day, and I'd like to
> speak to a group who I know won't reject my ideas. I don't think that my
> ideas would be rejected outright anyway, but I'd be willing to bet that a
> group like this would be much more receptive and could give me a lot of tips
> on how I might improve.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Bob Mayo
> To: SocialFitnessForum@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 11:03 PM
> Subject: [SocialFitnessForum] Weekend practice workshop?
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I've done the typical 20-week CBT program and have read a dozen books on
> the
> subject.
>
> It looks like the next step for me is intensive role-playing of party-like
> situations (introductions, starting conversatons, etc). It seems so logical
> that somebody would offer an "all-exposure weekend", but I have been unable
> to
> find such a thing.
>
> Does anybody know of a workshop like that? (Anywhere worldwide, as long as
> it
> is held in English.)
>
> --Bob
>
>
>
>