Haveo · How to prepare for a networking event when you have social anxiety
What to do if it becomes too much while you are there
Leave the room. A bathroom, a corridor or the street outside — any of them, now, without explaining to anyone. Then breathe out for longer than you breathe in for about two minutes. Decide whether to go back only after that, not during it.
Leave first, think afterwards
You do not need a reason and nobody will ask. Walking out of a room is the most ordinary thing a person at an event does.
Trying to decide whether it is bad enough to leave, while still standing in it, is what makes it worse.
Get Haveo free on the App Store →
Make the out-breath longer
In for four, out for six or eight. The long out-breath is the part that does the work; breathing in deeply on its own can make it sharper.
Two minutes. Set the timer on your phone so you are not also judging whether it has been long enough.
Get Haveo free on the App Store →
Put your attention on something outside you
Name five things you can see. It sounds trivial and it interrupts the loop, because the loop runs on inward attention.
Cold water on your wrists does something similar and is available in every bathroom.
Get Haveo free on the App Store →
Then decide, and either answer is fine
Going back in for one more conversation is a good outcome. Going home is also a good outcome. The bad outcome is standing in the corridor for an hour deciding.
If you go home, write down what happened tonight before you sleep — it stops the replay becoming the memory.
Get Haveo free on the App Store →
Afterwards
This is worth raising with a professional if it happens often, or if it is shaping what you will agree to attend. Haveo is a preparation tool, not treatment, and it does not pretend otherwise.
Get Haveo free on the App Store →
Rehearse it before you walk in.
Haveo builds your intro, lets you practice out loud with an AI coach, and keeps your notes one tap away in the room. Free on iPhone and iPad.
Download Haveo — free