Is there online CBT treatment for social anxiety?
Written by the clinical team at The Lyceum Clinic. Clinically reviewed by Sanah Younis, Clinical Director, BABCP-accredited (no. 1000792). Published 28 October 2026. Last reviewed 28 October 2026.
Yes, and for social anxiety online delivery has a particular advantage: many of the situations people fear now happen on video calls anyway, so the therapy room and real life overlap. Attention training, dropping safety behaviours and video feedback all work well over video.
Why online suits social anxiety
The experiments that treat social anxiety are about being seen and heard while not performing the usual safety behaviours. A video session is itself a social situation, so the work starts the moment the call connects. Video feedback, the moment people see that they look normal rather than visibly terrified, is built into the medium. And the three-second pause before answering can be practised on the call, in meetings, and anywhere in between.
What to expect
A structured course, not a chat. The same Clark and Wells model used face to face, with attention training, experiments between sessions and outcome measures at every review. Face-to-face sessions can be added later for in-person experiments if that is where the fear lives.
For more detail, read about social anxiety therapy.
What to avoid
Self-help apps presented as treatment. The evidence for social anxiety is for therapist-delivered CBT with experiments, not for a programme you work through alone. Reading about safety behaviours does not drop them.
Where we deliver it
The Lyceum offers online CBT across the UK and to English-speaking clients in the Gulf, with the same accredited clinicians as the West London rooms, at a published fee of £110 a session.
A note on cameras
Turning the camera off is a safety behaviour, and we will ask you to keep it on. That is uncomfortable in week one and it is also the first experiment. By the end of a course most people have stopped noticing the camera at all, which is the point.