What if your social anxiety isn’t happening entirely inside of you?

In this episode of Grow Through It, Ina gets vulnerable about her own evolving relationship with social anxiety, including a recent presentation that left her far more anxious than she expected and prompted a bigger question: Why do some environments allow us to feel completely like ourselves, while others seem to make us shrink, monitor, and second-guess ourselves?

We explore what social anxiety actually is, how self-monitoring can create a feedback loop of nervous-system activation, and the complicated intersection between social anxiety, high sensitivity, empathy, and our ability to read a room.

We’ll also zoom out from the individual to examine the environment. Because sometimes you may be accurately noticing tension, discomfort, hierarchy, or subtle social cues, even if anxiety doesn’t always interpret those cues accurately.

And in this episode’s Grow Through It / Walk Through It, you’ll examine the environments where you feel most—and least—like yourself, what your nervous system may be responding to, and how to stay connected to yourself even when the room changes.

Healing social anxiety isn’t only about learning how to feel comfortable everywhere. Sometimes it’s also about becoming curious about where you are, what you’re sensing, and what happens to you when you’re there.