To better understand what social anxiety is, how to identify it in yourself and others, and strategies for restructuring your thinking, check out this article: “I’m not good enough!”: Self-compassion and self-judgment in social anxiety.

Do you feel like you’re constantly being observed and judged in social situations? This debilitating feeling is called social anxiety and one in 14 people in the world deal with it. In this personal essay, Ascend editor Rakshitha Arni Ravishankar speaks with psychologist Ellen Hendriksen to understand what social anxiety is and how to cope with it.

According to data from the 2007 National Comorbidity Survey, an estimated 12.1 percent of U.S. adults experience social anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. For more information, see here. According to data from the World Mental Health Survey Initiative, the estimated lifetime prevalence for social anxiety disorder across all surveyed countries was 4 percent. For more information, see here.

According to data from the World Mental Health Survey, for individuals with either lifetime or 12-month social anxiety disorder (SAD), SAD preceded a mood disorder (major depressive episode or bipolar disorder) in approximately 70 percent of cases. Similarly, data from the US National Comorbidity Survey indicates that SAD precedes major depression in approximately 71.9 percent of individuals with both disorders