Do you have mild, moderate, marked, severe, or very severe social anxiety? You can see your social anxiety score by using the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale!
The Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale is a questionnaire that can help you determine the severity of your social anxiety. It gives you 24 social situations and asks you to grade your level of fear and avoidance of each social situation. This score will help you understand where you are at with your social anxiety as well as give you a baseline for where you started on your journey to overcoming social anxiety.
If you're struggling with social anxiety, the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale is a great way to assess your situation and see if what you are doing is working or is keeping you at the same level. Watch this video to get a breakdown of what the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale is and to do a run through of the questionnaire with myself based on my social anxiety levels when I was in high school.
Have you ever seen this man?
No, you haven't. This is Dr. Michael Leibowitz. Not sure how to pronounce that name, but we're gonna go with Leibowitz. And I can almost guarantee that none of you all that are watching even recognize this guy's name. Although, if you bring this up to people that live in the world of psychiatry, they would probably say something like, Oh, that's the social anxiety scale guy.
At least... That's what I imagine they would say. Dr. Leibowitz created the Leibowitz Social Anxiety Scale, which is a well vetted and validated in the psychiatry and mental health community as a 24 questionnaire designed to assess Both fear and avoidance of social and performance situations. It's primarily used by clinicians to screen people for social anxiety disorder and to measure their progress while in treatment.
Remember that last part because when I start to actually go through the libidoid social anxiety scale. We are going to come back to that. Before we do that though, I want to give you a little bit of background on Michael Leibovitz. Actually, little background is kind of a huge overstatement. There is hardly any information on really who this guy is.
Why he developed this questionnaire, how he did it. In fact, if you Google Michael Leibovitz, you're going to find a lot of information on this guy who is apparently Connecticut's favorite inmate, but that's a video for, uh, Completely different type of channel. And this is pretty much all we know about Dr.
Michael Leibovitz. He's been practicing in the field since the late sixties. He created the first anxiety disorders clinic. He developed the Leibovitz social anxiety scale, and he's now as a professor of psychiatry at Columbia university. I don't know why or how he is off the grid as much as he is. But let's just work with what we got and kind of get into the litz social anxiety scale, which from here on out, I'm gonna call the L S A S because it's too long, long to say that every time, like I said before, the L S A S.
It's something that clinicians use to help, you know, measure progress and screen people for Social Anxiety Disorder. And that doesn't mean you should use it to diagnose yourself. But I think it is a great way to measure your progress with social anxiety. See, I told you I'd bring that back up. To measure their progress while in treatment.
The thing with taking action on your social anxiety is, it's hard to tell if you're making progress or if you've made any at all. It's not like, you know, flipping on a light switch and being like, Oh, I don't feel anxious anymore. Progress with social anxiety It takes consistency, it takes time, it's a process, and it's not something that you're gonna overcome in a day or a week.
The LSAS allows you to track your progress to see how far you've come, because a lot of the times the process is so gradual that it may feel like you haven't made any progress, and that's because with the process being so gradual, you're getting used to being less and less anxious. and situations. So it's starting to become a normal for you.
So it's hard to tell you've made any progress. It's kind of like the similar thing is like when you're growing up and you look in the mirror and it's like, Oh, I think I've grown an inch. Like, no, you can't tell that because you've done it so gradually that you don't even notice you're getting taller.
And so what a lot of times happens is people start to take action in their social anxiety, feel like they're not making the progress. And then they say, Oh, This isn't working, I'm just gonna stop. You don't want that. So start using the LSAS to measure your progress so you know if what you're doing is working or isn't.
And then you can make adjustments if need to or you can just carry on with the plan. Here's how the questionnaire works. So, there's 24, not really questions, but more like situations in which you need to rank how often you avoid these situations and how much you fear these situations based on a scale of 0 to 3.
And you should answer all these questions based on your experience over the past week. There may be some that you haven't experienced over the past week and that's okay. Just kind of imagine if you did, how would you have handled it? How would you have felt? Would you have avoided it? Would you have not?
I'll put the link to the LSAS in the description of this video so you can take it on your own. But for now... I thought it would be interesting to do it together and I thought I would go through the whole Social anxiety scale quickly based on my experiences as a 15 16 year old, you know My experience when I was in high school, it was probably the most anxious time of my life and let's see what I score I don't want to do it based on my life now because i'm sure you don't want to watch me just put straight zeros because i'm totally Awesome now.
Totally kidding. I would not even be straight zeros and that wouldn't make me awesome. Anyways, time to make me tiny. All right, so you can probably find this a lot of places, but this will be the link that I put in the description and the national social anxiety center. Um, it's good to kind of look over these, you know, instructions, but I basically went over this.
So we're going to be doing this 15, 16 year old me. Sorry. All right, 15 year old me. Using a telephone in public. I would say mild fear and I probably never avoided that. I don't remember ever being anxious about stuff like that. Participating in a small group activity. Oof. This reminds me of those small groups that we had to do in school, especially in college.
I mean, definitely in 15 year old me, severe. How much I want to avoid it. I mean, every time I never got to, but eating in public, eating in pub, I'm thinking like eating at the cafeteria. I guess that made me kind of anxious. I'd rather just eating by myself. I know this is like a huge one for some people.
It's like never eat in public Um, wasn't as big for me. I'm gonna say moderate and avoidance I'm gonna say I did occasionally for sure drinking with others I'm gonna save this scene talking to someone in authority. Um, i'm gonna say Moderate and then my avoidance was usually yeah acting performing or speaking in front of an audience Okay.
You know, this is straight three. Severe and usual, going to a party, I'd say I was invited to many in high school. Wouldn't have went anyways. Definitely severe. Uh, definitely usually avoiding that. Working while being observed. Oh, no, no, no. I did not like that. Severe. Writing while being observed. Anybody observing me doing anything, I'm not gonna like.
I'm just not. Or I did. I still don't even particularly like that. I don't want someone over my shoulder, right? It's kinda creepy. Calling someone you don't know very well. Severe. And usual. This reminds me of when, uh, the Xbox 360 came out. And if you know anything about video games, or you had one, you know that They were kind of pieces of crap in the sense that they broke all the time.
Red light of death, if you know what I'm talking about there. But, uh, so you had the warranty on my X Box and you know, you had to call Microsoft to get it all sorted out. And I always made my dad do it cause I hate him. One time he made me do it and I loved my X Box so much. I actually did it and I did fine.
So yeah, it was cool. Thank you, dad, for making me do that. More parents should make. Their kids do stuff like that. Make them order the pizza. Make them set up their own doctor's appointments. Talking face to face with someone you don't know very well. Let's say severe. I'm gonna go with off. Off meeting strangers.
Not a fan. I mean I Three in Whoa. Three in Stop it. Urinating in a public bath. No, not, not a big one. Um, for me as a guy, I didn't like it when we didn't have the walls in between the urine. You know what I mean? I didn't like that. So if that was in there, I would have said, yeah. Fear, avoidance, both threes.
But just urinating and I'm going to say zero and zero. Entering a room when others are already seated. Oh yeah. You got all the eyes on you. Who's that guy? Where's he going to sit? Being the center of attention. Usually speaking up at a meeting. Now I'm going as 15 year old me. So if you're 15 year old me and have never been a part of meetings, so to speak, you just think your classroom, whatever.
But definitely, I was fantastic at being under the radar, not being called on, or raising my hand, taking a test of your ability, skill, or knowledge, expressing disagreement or disapproval to someone you don't know very well. Are you kidding me? No, I'd never, never practice confrontation whatsoever. Usually.
Looking at someone you don't know very well, straighten the eyes. Uh, I mean, I'm gonna say mild, and I often avoided that. Tried to like, at least every once in a while, kind of do a little glance up there in the back. Huh, huh. Giving a prepared oral talk to a group. Oh yeah. Severe. Unusual. Trying to make someone's acquaintance for the purpose of a romantic slash sexual relationship.
Um, well I'd say I never did this. I mean, even the couple girlfriends that I had in high school. It's not because of me. It's not because I was spitting game. It's because I'm so handsome and they came to me. I'm not sure why, but uh. Severe. Mute. Returning goods to a store for a refund. I would just eat that.
Eat that money. 20 bucks back. Giving a party. That makes me think of the guy who accidentally spit. 20 on bananas. That was on one of my reddit videos. I'll see if I can pull up that clip, but I doubt it I'm not gonna take the time to do you go find it. He was at Target and using self checkout He was weighing fruit and accidentally had lots of other things on the scale.
So it rang up as 25 Instead of around 5, he was too nervous to talk to the attendant to get it deleted, so he could redo the wait. So he just paid the extra 20. Giving a party. Giving a party. I don't remember this one, but I, I don't understand what that, like, creating a party, giving a party, I'm gonna say moderate.
I'll be honest, I really don't know what that means. It's been a while since I've done this. I didn't like prep through these questions for I did them with you, but that one, I don't resisting a high pressure salesperson always did it always resist. I never would like be like, okay, take my money, but never like, Oh, and to be honest, I still do this.
If I go into Walmart and to Sam's club. And I see a booth, people sitting up there with DirecTV trying to get people to buy on. I am going out of my way to go around. Not necessarily because I am anxious about it, I just don't want to deal with it. I don't want to even waste their time. And honestly, I've done that job.
So, and I don't want to waste your time. I don't want to hear this crap. I just want to, I just want to go in the store, get my stuff and leave. And there's nothing wrong with that. So now we're going to see my score. As you can see here, the scoring scale, you're a 29. You not suffer from social anxiety.
That's your goal, right? You want to get there 30 to 49 mild, moderate marked. I love this one marked social anxiety. Severe, very severe. So let's see what I got. Oh crap. 112. So when I was 15, I had very severe social anxiety. Oh man, this makes me feel really good about the place I'm in now. Before you go, how often should you do this?
So I mean, if you're working on your social anxiety right now, I would do this. I don't know. Every three months? Every six months? I wouldn't do it any earlier than every three months because like I said it's a gradual process so this may take a minute to get going. You may see very little change if you did it every week or maybe even every month I don't know.
I think every three months is a really good way to go about doing and then this way it gives you the ability to say oh I went down from a 75 down to a 50 now like I went down a whole nother level. That way you can actually track your progress. So this is what I always refer people to do is to check this out, do this every three months, every six months.
And if you're seeing that you're still at the same thing, it's like, okay, I'm either not taking on a very good plan. What I'm doing isn't working or I'm not putting in enough effort. Maybe you're just completely confused. Come reach out to, I'll, uh, point you in the right direction. My best ability. All right.
Well, as you see, 15 year old me suffered from very severe social anxiety. And now I talk about it on YouTube to strangers like yourself. So if I can do this, you can do this. Thank you very much.
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