system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Philosophy for anxiety?

Are there any philosophical texts that can help me deal with social anxiety?
gpt
There is a lot of philosophy about the concept of anxiety from Kierkegaard onward. Some of the big texts are Kierkegaards *Concept of Anxiety*, Heidegger's *Being and Time*, Sartre's *Being and Nothingness*, Lacan's seminars book X (*Anxiety*).

A common thread running through these thinkers is that anxiety has no object. In fear, you know what scares you: a perilous height, a disease, etc. In anxiety, you feel the disquiet of fear, but you cannot find an object for it. Some suggest the whole world becomes an object of anxiety (Heidegger says something like this). Others suggest you run around trying to pin your anxiety on various objects to justify feeling so disturbed. Sara Ahmed has made this sort of argument in relation to terroristm anxiety, in which vaguely brown people keep getting suspected of being terrorists (translating anxiety into fear). 

When it comes to "social anxiety," these philosophers would probably have a problem with terminology. Adding "social" limits anxiety, giving it a quasi-object and adulterating the pure "objectlessness" of anxiety.

And then, of course, the majority of philosophy is not about helping people in a direct or prescriptive way. On the other hand, most people who study philosophy seriously find it enriches their lives in sometimes unexpected ways.