Programs · Social anxiety · Spotlight
Spotlight
Overcoming social anxiety with CBT
The spotlight you feel in every room is running on a projector inside your own head — and this program has you test that, not take it on faith. Attention retraining, props dropped one by one, your predictions put on trial against what actually happened, and a ladder back into the rooms anxiety fenced off. Ten to fifteen minutes a day, scored by your own event log.
The spotlight has a shape
- You rehearse the sentence three times, and the moment passes before you say it.
- Meetings where you know the answer and keep it to yourself.
- The two am replay of one pause — verdict always guilty.
- Parties you leave early, or don't go to at all.
- A phone in your hand so your hands have somewhere to be.
Your own evidence drives the program
Not a course you watch — a case you build. Spotlight reads your social event log and prescribes your next step, the way an exposure therapist would.
Log
Sixty seconds before a social moment: how badly will it go, how harshly will you be judged? Sixty seconds after: what actually, observably happened. Every completed pair is a row of evidence.
60 s before · 60 s afterLearn
Short sessions with Elena teach the method — attention turned outward, props dropped one by one, predictions made specific enough to fail.
10–15 min · most daysAdjust
The weekly review reads your prediction gap and attention-focus shift, then prescribes your next ladder rung — cleared when it's evidenced, not just endured.
weekly review↻ the loop runs weekly — five times
The prediction gap is the number the program tunes against — the judgment you predicted before an event, next to what the evidence showed after. The ledger keeps producing the same shape: dread scored in the eighties, evidence in the teens. A ladder rung only clears once its gap has been demonstrated twice and fear sits at four or less on two separate visits.
Six weeks to switch it off
Seventeen sessions and five weekly reviews. The first week is free — including your baseline report.
Week 1The Spotlight IllusionThe audience that isn't there3 sessions
Week 2Turn the Attention OutThe felt self is not the seen self4 sessions
Week 3Drop the PropsWho's been stealing the credit4 sessions
Week 4Test the PredictionsYour dread, on the record4 sessions
Week 5Reclaim the RoomThe week that does the heavy lifting4 sessions
Week 6Keep the StageYour plan, your drill, your rooms3 sessions
Elena
Anxiety & exposure · guides 4 programs
The exposure specialist. Calm-under-fire, precise, gently confident — the voice you want when your alarm is screaming. Her warmth is in her steadiness.
“Hi, I'm Elena. The spotlight you feel on you isn't there — and I'm not asking you to believe that. This program is built so you can test it, with your own evidence, in your own life.”
The model that took social anxiety apart
Spotlight follows the Clark & Wells cognitive model of social anxiety — self-focused attention, safety behaviors, anticipatory worry and the post-event post-mortem — the account that underpins modern CBT for social anxiety. The spotlight illusion itself comes from the spotlight-effect research of Gilovich and colleagues. Original writing throughout; the protocol structure follows the published evidence base.
- Self-focused attention & attention retrainingClark & Wells
- Spotlight-effect psychoeducationGilovich et al.
- Safety-behavior experiments, with and without
- Prediction testing & graded social exposure
- Relapse prevention
Light gating, honest notes
Nothing in this program is contraindicated, so there are no locked tracks. Onboarding screens for two things that often share a house with social anxiety — low mood, and alcohol as a social prop — and each routes to an honest note, not a detour. If the heaviness is the bigger animal right now, we say so plainly and point to real support, crisis resources included.
This program is not medical advice. The felt experience is real, the audience isn't — and we'd rather tell you the truth about both than promise you a personality transplant.
Spotlight, next to the field
| SpotlightResiliens | THIS WAY UP — Social Anxiety Programthiswayup.org.au | MindShift CBTmindshiftcbt.com | Learn to Live — Social Anxietylearntolive.com | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $149 one-time (draft) — the program is yours | AU$59 self-help · free with a prescribing clinician | Free — no subscription | Employer / health-plan sponsored |
| Structure | 6 weeks · 17 sessions + weekly reviews | Six story-based modules, one every 1–2 weeks, self-paced over 90 days (~20 min, 3× week) | Toolbox, not a course — thought journal, coping cards, fear ladder, guided meditations, daily check-ins | Lesson-based CBT course with homework; lesson count not published |
| Personalization | Exposure ladder + attention-focus ratings + prediction-vs-outcome log | Self-paced module sequence with progress questionnaires; no adaptive engine | Self-directed tool choice; user-built fear ladders; no prescribed sequence | Program-level matching across eight condition tracks; within-program adaptivity not published |
| Human support | Self-guided · clinician-referral gates built in | None on the self-help pathway (technical assistance only); clinician monitoring if prescribed | None — peer community forum only (18+) | Live clinician coaching via phone, email, and text |
| Access | Self-serve, start today | Self-serve worldwide, or via a registered clinician | Self-serve, worldwide | Mostly via employers, health plans, health systems, and universities |
| Breadth | 24+ program catalog · bundle 2-3 related programs and save | One course in a catalog of condition-specific iCBT programs | General anxiety, worry, panic, phobias and social anxiety in one app | Eight programs (social anxiety, anxiety & worry, depression, insomnia, panic, trauma, substance use, resilience) |
| Platforms | Web · iOS · Android | Web | iOS · Android | Web · iOS · Android |
Sources: competitor pricing and program pages — every production value carries a source URL and access date, and unpublished facts are labeled "not published," never guessed.
Why we built it differently
- Evidenced, not endured. A ladder rung clears only when fear reads four or less on two separate visits and its prediction gap has been demonstrated in two completed log pairs. Other products count exposures; Spotlight counts evidence.
- The log is the treatment. Sixty seconds before, sixty after — every social event becomes a row of predicted-versus-evidenced judgment, and the weekly review reads your gap and prescribes the next rung. A modules-and-worksheets course can't compute that.
- It doesn't end at graduation. Maintenance mode runs a monthly check-in pulse and watches your warning lights — props creeping back, invitations quietly declined, post-mortems past ten minutes — and routes you to the cringe drill before the spotlight talks its way back in.
Start free. Continue if it's working.
First week
- Onboarding + two full sessions
- Social event log + evening check-in
- Your baseline report
Full program
- All six weeks of Spotlight, yours to keep
- Every session, review, and exercise
- Web + Untangle app access
Working on more than one thing? Related programs bundle together — two or three at a discount. Bundles are announced at launch.
Before you start
Do I need a diagnosis to use this?
No. Spotlight is built for the pattern — the rehearsing, the replaying, the rooms avoided — not a chart code. Onboarding measures where you're starting from and checks, honestly, whether something else should come first.
Will this make me confident and outgoing?
We won't promise you a stage presence. Nerves before big moments are permanent and human. What the program targets is the spotlight: the props, the post-mortem, the fenced-off rooms. Success is nerves without all that — rooms that stopped costing so much.
I usually need a drink or two to get through parties. Is that a problem?
No lecture coming — a lot of people discovered that two drinks turn the spotlight down, and it makes sense to use what works. The catch is the same as every prop: when the evening goes well, the drink takes the credit. The program treats alcohol like any other prop — something to test going without, one low-stakes experiment at a time. And if the drinking has started to feel like its own thing, that deserves real support, and we say so.
When do I have to do the scary stuff?
Week five — and you'll know that from day one. Everything before it is preparation that makes it possible: attention turned outward, props already dropped, a ledger of your own predictions failing to come true. Nobody walks in unprepared, and your ladder advances on evidence, not bravado.
Be first to step out of the spotlight
Spotlight is launching soon on the web and in the Untangle app. Join the early-access list and we'll let you know quietly — nobody will be watching.
One email when your program opens. No drip campaign.