Tom Cruise's clever advice for people suffering from social anxiety (2025)

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Hollywood action star Tom Cruise has some clever advice for people who suffer from social anxiety.

His Mission: Impossible costar Hayley Atwellshared the words of wisdom last week.

The British beauty said that the 62-year-old A-list actor told her exactly what to do when getting nervous as she appeared on the showReign With Josh Smith Podcast.

The tip Cruise gave her was surprisingly simple.

'If you walk into a room and you feel the anxieties coming, and it makes me want to retreat into myself, and I start to overthink and I start to go, "Do I look weird? Do I seem awkward? I'm not speaking, I'm just muffling my words or I need something to do to numb me from this," we go into ourselves,' Atwell said.

'And he said, "Try doing the opposite."'

And she added,'Try to look out, look around the room and go "Where is it? Where is the thing that I have attached on to my insecurity,"' Atwell recalled of Cruise's advice.

'"Is it that person over there that reminds me of my school bully? Is it that person over there that didn't give me a job once?

'"That person over there that I think was mean to me once? Where does it live outside of me and where do I feel like the source of it might be coming from?"' she added.

Atwell was in Tom's 2023 film Dead Reckoning Part One. And she will also pop up in 2025's The Final Reckoning.

'It can also be more contained instead of a free-floating one where I'm just in a total struggle internally with my own anxiety,' Atwell said.

'And I try and do that now more... If I'm scared of something, if I keep looking at it long enough, it tends to not sort of be the monster under the bed anymore.'

Haley also said that if she understands her anxieties then she 'has an opportunity to do something about it.'

She can then look at what insecurities she has.

'Like, if I maybe go up to that person and go, Hi. Or I go up to that person and go, "I'm really jealous of how amazing you are." It tends to just dissipate,' Atwell said.

'Being able to call it, to name the demon out loud and leave it on the floor, means that it's not living in me.'

'... [Cruise] was just like, "If you're scared of something, keep looking at it. Try not to close your eyes or turn away, just keep looking at it,'" she said of Cruise's message. 'It will often give you information about what to do to overcome it.'

The Final Reckoning will premiere in theaters on May 23, 2025.

The movie also stars Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Vanessa Kirby, Shea Whigham, Pom Klementieff and Henry Czerny.

Tom CruiseHayley Atwell

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