Episode 69 | Social Anxiety Through a Culturally Responsive CBT Lens with Dr. Janeé Steele

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In this episode of The Affirming Minds Podcast, Dr. Janeé M. Steele joins the conversation to explore social anxiety through a culturally responsive CBT lens. The discussion examines the core mechanisms that maintain social anxiety — including anticipatory processing, safety behaviors, and post-event rumination — and how these patterns intersect with lived experience, systemic bias, and stereotype threat.

Dr. Steele outlines practical strategies for differentiating between irrational fear and rational responses to discrimination, adapting exposure hierarchies with attention to real-world risk, using broaching to explore identity within the therapeutic relationship, and integrating micro-interventions and self-affirmation into clinical practice.

This episode offers clinicians concrete tools for delivering evidence-based treatment while honoring the broader social and cultural context in which anxiety develops and is maintained.