Why Social Anxiety Feels Worse After the Pandemic

Updated 25th August 2026

To celebrate our new living arrangement, my partner and I organised a dinner party. We each decided to invite two guests who didn’t know each other particularly well. I made the conscious choice to extend one of my invitations to my most ‘plastic’ friend.

And I don’t mean plastic in the superficial or materialistic sense. She was my most socially adaptable friend, someone who could mould herself to almost any social situation and form a bond with almost anyone. She had also just returned to Melbourne after living away for a few years.

On the evening of the dinner party, however, when my dear friend walked through the door, I wasn’t as instantly soothed by her company as I had imagined I would be.

“What are you doing?” I asked as she stood lurking, stationary, in the doorway.

This was someone who could naturally fill uncomfortable silences, tell memorable stories and instigate laughter when I failed to. But the instant she arrived, I could tell something wasn’t quite right.

Feeling Inadequate and Awkward Since the Pandemic

At the dinner table, my friend’s surprising behaviour continued. She squirmed on the edge of her chair and, when she did speak, she spoke so softly and quickly that others struggled to hear her. I had never seen her like this. She seemed intimidated and uncomfortable to the point of wanting to leave her own skin.

At the end of the night, with the other guests gone, she finally seemed to return to her relaxed, outgoing self.

When I asked what had happened, she acknowledged it straight away. Since COVID, she said, she had developed a series of new insecurities. She had spent a lot of time comparing herself with others online and increasingly felt inadequate in company.

Initially, she had accepted these feelings as part of emerging from lockdown. But as time went on, she began to wonder why they hadn’t disappeared.

If anything, she told me, socialising seemed to be getting harder.

Was It Social Anxiety?

What my friend described had many features of social anxiety: feeling intensely self-conscious around others, worrying about being judged and becoming preoccupied with how she was coming across. Interestingly, most of this would probably have gone unnoticed by the other dinner guests. Many signs of social anxiety happen internally and can be surprisingly easy to miss.

Some social anxiety is a normal human experience. We might feel nervous walking into a room where we don’t know anyone, meeting new colleagues or speaking in front of a group. For some people, however, that fear becomes persistent enough to cause significant distress or make them avoid situations they actually want to be part of.

So, why might these feelings have appeared for my friend during COVID, when she had previously been so socially confident?

Part of the answer may lie in just how dramatically our everyday social lives changed. In Australia, lockdowns, physical distancing and working from home meant many of us suddenly had far fewer opportunities to interact with people outside our immediate circles. The incidental conversations, introductions and everyday social exchanges we had barely thought about disappeared.

At the same time, anxiety and depression increased by an estimated 25% worldwide during the first year of the pandemic. Of course, while there were many factors behind this increase, perhaps the loss of those small, everyday moments of connection mattered more than we realised.

When Socialising Stops Feeling Automatic

Before COVID, most of us probably didn’t think of ourselves as ‘practising’ socialising. We were simply doing it.

There were conversations on the way into work, introductions to new people, lunches with colleagues and chats while waiting for coffee. Along the way, we navigated pauses, different personalities and the occasional awkward moment without necessarily giving them much thought.

When those interactions become less frequent, socialising can start to feel less automatic.

COVID was an extreme example of disconnection, but it isn’t the only time our social confidence can shift. Moving somewhere new, becoming a parent, changing jobs, experiencing illness or simply going through a period where we see fewer people can have a similar effect.

Perhaps the unusual thing about COVID was that so many of us were finding our feet at the same time. The person you feared was noticing your awkwardness may well have been wondering what to say themselves.

We Never Really Went ‘Back to Normal’

It’s easy to talk about life ‘returning to normal’ after COVID, but socially, I’m not sure it ever happened quite that neatly.

Many Australians went from spending five days a week surrounded by colleagues to working almost entirely from home. Then offices reopened. Hybrid work became commonplace. For some people, working from home offered flexibility, accessibility and a better balance that they understandably didn’t want to give up.

Our lives outside work changed too. Telehealth, online shopping, home delivery and video calls became ordinary. We discovered that many things we once left the house to do could happen from our lounge rooms.

Many of these changes have been useful. But they have also reduced some of the incidental interactions that used to be built into everyday life.

And perhaps that has had a lasting effect on our social confidence. After years of changing how often, where and why we interact with other people, situations that once felt automatic can now feel like they require a little more effort. And, because they feel more uncomfortable, we can misinterpret this as bad (a common myth about anxiety).

The good news is that social confidence isn’t necessarily something you either have or don’t have. Like many kinds of confidence, it can grow through experience. The more opportunities we have to navigate conversations and sit through the occasional awkward silence, the more familiar socialising can begin to feel again.

Building Social Confidence Again

If you recognise yourself in my friend’s story, rebuilding social confidence doesn’t mean you need to suddenly fill your calendar or become the most outgoing person in the room.

It might start much smaller.

Perhaps you accept an invitation you’ve been tempted to turn down, strike up a conversation with someone new or speak when you would usually stay on the sidelines. The point isn’t to do these things perfectly or without anxiety. It’s to give yourself opportunities to have the social experiences that help confidence grow.

There may be awkward pauses. You might stumble over your words or walk away wondering whether you said the right thing. That’s part of socialising too.

If socialising feels less natural for you now, waiting until you feel confident before stepping back into it will keep you stuck. Confidence is often built through experience: we give something a go, discover that we can handle it, and slowly gather the evidence we need to trust ourselves a little more.

Still Stuck After Socialising More Often?

If you have increased your exposure to socialising, but still feel stuck, it is worth employing some evidence-based strategies.

When it comes to alleviating or treating social anxiety, it is important to understand that social anxiety is commonly driven by the belief that other people hold very high expectations of you and that their positive evaluation of you is contingent on meeting this standard.

This is false!

Once you recognise this, you can start to undo the thoughts and behaviours attached to this core belief. This strategy is taken from an approach is known as CBT for social anxiety.

When I find myself getting flustered and tongue-tied at a dinner party, or fretting over how my face feels when I’m listening to someone else speak, I try these practical strategies to reduce my social anxiety overwhelm.