u/HardenPatch

Therapists are super useful because they have a model of social anxiety, they know what generally works for people like you, they know whether or not you are actually exceptionally screwed, they know how the process should look like. They know to recognize things you should do differently based on some pretty vague things that you yourself wouldn't have realized. They know when the problem isn't actually social anxiety and rather your mindset and they know how to tackle that.

Even a mediocre therapist is probably better than you alone, because no matter how smart or self aware you are you will probably get caught up in your blindness to yourself and the world.

And exposure is kinda a blanket term for these things.

You can expose yourself and if you haven't done it enough, the interaction will carry meaning about you. With just familiarity, observing the situation again and again, that decreases a lot.

And if you expose yourself over and over without changing things that you should've, and mind you this is a really easy mistake to make cause these things are sometimes really complicated and layered...
You'll basically teach yourself that you're ineffective in x situation, and of course you will feel anxiety. For me this is when I feel like I can't "reach" the other person due to my anxiety, what I used to do in the past was just random word generate without paying attention to anything and without calming down. Eye contact, listen, respond without hiding your personality, acknowledge, connect.