Armand DiMele reframes addiction as a romance, arguing that substances and compulsive behaviors offer the unconditional love that people fail to find elsewhere. Social anxiety specialist Jonathan Berent then joins to discuss shyness, social phobia, selective mutism, and why avoidance only deepens over time.
Performance anxiety can freeze you at a job interview, a school meeting, or even walking into a room alone. Natalie H. Rogers, licensed clinical social worker and author of “The New Talk Power,” shares her step-by-step body-based approach: correcting your breathing, developing inner physical awareness, and building concentration so fear stops blocking speech.
Roughly 40 percent of young people now call themselves shy, and the number keeps climbing. Armand DiMele traces the roots of social fear, from genetics and brain chemistry to absent fathers and sheltered childhoods, and makes the case that facing the world anyway, fumbles and all, is how confidence actually grows.
