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Social Anxiety or the extreme irrational fear of being misjudged by other people in social conditions has been affecting the lives many American Adults. This fear led many people to isolate themselves, thereby hampering their performance at work, school or even personal relationships.

Psychologist, Shauna H. Springer had seen an effective treatment program to combat Social Anxiety in just one session, the Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy (ERP). This treatment is not only effective in curing SAD but also in treating excessive OCD. The concept is simple, and it essentially means guiding people to combat their worst fears until they have totally eliminated their responses to fear, Pyschology Today reported.

People are being exposed to their fears repeatedly until they are able to confront it, thereby eliminating the fear gradually. Similarly, Response Prevention keeps people from avoiding or escaping the problem. A person with Social Anxiety is set up in social experiments in order to be exposed to many people, The Sun reported.

Over the course of time, the exposure is gradually increased and becomes more intensified. This allows the patients to fully grasp the fear until it diminishes slowly, and thereby habituating to what triggers to their fear eventually.

ERP may be invasive and manipulative in some ways. This is because, patients are forced to make a decision to defy the anxiety and not to give in to it. Despite its downside, this therapy is still more effective especially when the guiding therapist would walk the patient during therapy sessions and conduct follow up homework assignments thereafter.