Map 1.0: What It’s Like to Win the Social Anxiety Mind Game

Dear friend,

A while ago, I was waiting in the dentist chair for my X-rays when the assistant popped back in and said:

“Your scans came back a little weird”

And then she left. So I spent the next five minutes worrying about every sweet I had eaten in my life. All because she did one thing.

She put a thought in my head.

If taking an L in our thoughts leads to immediate anxiety, what should winning feel like? That’s the goal of the first version of Roadmap.

When You Win the Social Anxiety Mind Game, You Feel Peace

After examining my teeth, the assistant realized that there was just residue from a bad filling. My stress evaporated. She put another thought in my head.

We know we’ve won the social anxiety mind game when, even if it’s small, we feel a bit better. So at the end of every interaction, we’ll see if Roadmap helped people do that.

You can download the first version here. Here’s how it works and the feedback that got us there.

Step 1: Find Your Current Path

When you feel anxious, open Roadmap and find a thought that matches. I wanted this to be really easy because when we’re stressed, we need instant relief -- not a game of twenty questions.

We did receive feedback that asked,

“What if my thought isn’t in the app?”

In the future, you’ll be able to add your own & share with the community. My hope is to build a giant catalog of thoughts & how to overcome them. But for now, there’s a spot to write thoughts that aren’t in there.

Step 2: Recognize Dangerous Paths

After you tap a thought, it’ll show you a potential thought trap. We often chase approval of our ideas, appearance -- you name it. And it causes massive social anxiety.

We believe the lie that other people’s approval is the most important thing. We need thoughts to replace that.

Step 3: Choose a Better Path

Chasing approval causes anxiety, but appreciation brings peace. So Roadmap will help you appreciate your ideas, appearance, opinions and more. I find that writing is the best way to do that. But not everyone is a writer.

One person gave me feedback and said, “I don’t want to write a lot. Is anyone even going to read this?” So I slimmed down the prompt to be as short as a tweet.

And in the future, we can use your past thoughts of appreciation to lift you out of anxiety. It’s a win-win.

Try Roadmap for Yourself

Direct your thoughts, direct your feelings. Just like losing the mind game can give us anxiety, winning it should give us some peace in the short term.

That’s the goal of Roadmap v1: to give quick moments of peace when social anxiety comes. And over a long time, changing our thoughts changes our life.

Love,

-T.O.