How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety

by Ellen Hendriksen

When you’re first getting started, expect some false starts. We all get a little weird and desperate when we’re lonely. If you’re out of practice, you become less and less confident that you even know how to talk, much less form full sentences to which another human can respond. Worse, we also start interpreting everyone as threatening, every smile as scornful, every interaction as rejecting. But then we make it worse: we act as if the world is against us, a self-fulfilling prophecy called behavioral confirmation. If Maddy expects no one will talk to her, she won’t say hello. If Nora expects the moms to be judgy instead of friendly, she’ll make a beeline for home, not the playground. But don’t base success on the other person’s response. Don’t base success on how nervous you feel. Base success only on what you do. Did you manage to share a little bit of yourself? Great. The first times are the hardest. Try again, and try again soon—not weeks later. Keep the momentum going. It will get easier, I promise.