Social Anxiety: Notes From Opq

Social anxiety disorder is intense fear of being watched or judged in social situations, strong enough that those situations are avoided or endured with dread, and lasting six months or more.

Also called: Social phobia, Social anxiety.

ICD-10 F40.1 · ICD-11 6B04

Personal reflections, not clinical guidance, and not a substitute for any of it. Just what I keep thinking about while building this.

September 2026

On "just shy"

Social anxiety is the condition most often mistaken for a personality. So the page opens by separating the two, and keeps coming back to it.

The eighth contested opening

A fear centre that overreacts. This is the only contested story on the site that is also true, as far as it goes. The dots show why that is not enough. The same result turns up for spiders and for trauma.

An experiment, not a button

Every other device asks the reader to do one thing. This one asks them to run the same test twice and compare the results. That is what the therapy actually is. I wanted the device to be the therapy in miniature.

The reel

Of all the specimens, the replay is the one I recognise most. The frame in the middle never changes. Everything around it does.