What if social anxiety didn’t hold you back?
Welcome!
We’re WalkTheTalk, a peer support community for people living with social anxiety. Our free online groups meet each week for anyone struggling with any aspect of social anxiety. Here’s where you can learn more about meeting structure and the theory behind it.
Living with social anxiety?
Although it feels like it, you’re not alone. 1 in 15 of us live with social anxiety disorder. Not natural pre-presentation or first date nerves, but the life-altering anxiety that comes with everyday interactions.
It takes us an average 20 years before we ‘do’ something about it. We start to adopt ‘safety behaviours’ such as avoidance. These give us a short-term relief, but soon subside to feelings of guilt, low self esteem and act as a slow puncture to our confidence. It becomes hard to get out of the hole.
Saying no to life means missed opportunities. Relationships can suffer, earnings can take a hit and joy and meaning can be sucked out of life.
But the good news is, it’s entirely reversible.
Our team
We’re a volunteer-run organisation and reliant on funding to keep going. Our team is really a group of people who care about social anxiety and are willing to give up their time to realise our vision.
Additionally we have an advisory board. Their role is to make sure that we’re delivering on our community benefit, to challenge and guide us to make sure that:
• We’re effective and can demonstrate it
• We’re acting in best interests of people living with social anxiety
• We’re operating sustainably
• We’re acting with due care and skill
• We’re doing the best we can to deliver
Tom is the founder of WalkTheTalk after a period of lived experience. He’s an experienced growth leader in early-stage impact startups.
He previously founded leading non-university jobs site notgoingtouni, scaling it to tens of thousands of monthly active students, and has helped early stage orgs such as what3words, Beam and Leva grow.
Tom has been featured in the Guardian, BBC News and The Times, and on BBC Breakfast, Sky News and Channel 4.
Lusia Stopa is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Southampton, UK.
She has worked on social anxiety since the beginning of her career and was a member of the NICE Guideline Development Group that wrote the current treatment recommendations. She established cognitive therapy training in Southampton in 2000 and is an active CBT practitioner.
Her research investigates the ways in which negative views of self, often represented by mental images, contribute to the maintenance of anxiety in social anxiety and other disorders.
Her book Imagery in cognitive behavioural therapy (2021) is a leading text for practitioners on how to use imagery therapeutically.
She is very excited to be a member of the advisory group for WalkTheTalk and sees it as a great opportunity to provide additional resources for people suffering from social anxiety.
Jo is a Health Psychologist and CBT Therapist (HCPC and BABCP accredited).
Jo has almost 20 years of mental health experience, working within a variety of Academic, NHS and private settings.
During her time in the NHS Jo was involved in the set up and running of the first Primary Care Mental Health Provision in Surrey. She also set up and ran the first Psychological Pain Management programme for East Surrey.
For 8 years, Jo was Director of Studies at the University of Surrey on the Post Graduate Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner programme.
As a therapist, Jo now works with people suffering from a variety of life stresses and mental health difficulties, including depression, panic, OCD, social and performance anxiety, phobias, PTSD, stress etc. As a Health Psychologist, Jo also works with people experiencing long-term persistent pain and other chronic physical health conditions.
Jamish is a startup consultant who enjoys helping organisations solve their strategic and operational challenges. He started his career in the launch team at Uber and went on to work for multiple UK-based startups, including what3words and TrueLayer.
He was the Chief of Staff at Uncapped, where he scaled the company from 10 to 130 people and raised hundreds of millions in funding alongside the founders.
He brings a strong understanding of how to grow companies efficiently using systems, processes and best practices, and is passionate about mental health
Elodie is a strategic learning & development consultant with a background in education, mental health, health and social care and the charity sector.
She is also a cold swimmer, recipe book enthusiast, and overthinker.
Elodie has her own lived experience recovering from social anxiety and hopes to be part of WalktheTalk becoming an accessible, well-known route for support for anyone experiencing social anxiety.
Yasmina is a commercial leader who has spent the past decade working at top-tier companies to open access to opportunity for diverse talent.
With a track-record of driving strategic growth and innovation in both start-ups and corporates, she’s featured in media outlets including the BBC, The Lawyer and Black Tech Fest speaking on diversity and inclusion, tech for good, innovation and early talent strategies.
She is currently working on several projects, including leading the go-to-market strategy for cutting-edge racial literacy technology in education, and advising social impact businesses on their commercialisation and growth strategies.
Bio pending
Additionally, active and highly regarded members of WalkTheTalk sit on the advisory board, but would prefer to not be publicly known.