The most important life goals of people with and without social anxiety disorder: Focusing on emotional interference and uncovering meaning in life

ABSTRACT

People with social anxiety disorder (SAD) display maladaptive attitudes towards emotions. In this experience-sampling study, we explored the extent to which people with SAD viewed anxiety and pain as an impediment to pursuing personal strivings and deriving meaning in life. Participants were adults diagnosed with SAD and a control comparison group who completed baseline questionnaires and daily surveys for 14 consecutive days. People with SAD perceived anxiety and pain as interfering with progress towards their strivings to a greater degree than healthy controls. Perception of emotion-related goal interference was inversely associated with daily meaning. This relationship was moderated by diagnostic group such that there was a strong, inverse association with daily meaning in life for people with SAD; for controls, no association was found. Results suggest that negative beliefs about the value of anxiety and pain are pronounced in people with SAD and may impede derivation of meaning in life.

KEYWORDS:

• Social anxiety
• strivings
• meaning in life
• experiential avoidance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by NIMH under grant R21-MH073937 (PI: Kashdan). During the preparation of this manuscript, Dr. Todd B. Kashdan was supported by the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being as Senior Scientist.