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

by Ellen Hendriksen

However, the first time I found myself in the grocery store with the co-op’s five-page shopping list, I realized I would need two carts, which in retrospect made sense for a week’s worth of twice-a-day snacks for fifty children. I wheeled the first cart around the store, loading it to the brim, and then dropped it off at Customer Service while I set out with the second. But when I looked at what remained on the list and realized my new cart would contain nothing but ten gallons of milk, forty bananas, and thirty apples, I felt that old sensation start to rise. As I maneuvered the cart over to the dairy section, I got stuck in my own head. I couldn’t help but imagine what other people would think: Well, she sure has a limited diet, Just buy a cow, lady, or, A little thirsty, are we? One by one, I hefted ten gallons into the cart, then pushed my considerably heavier load over to the produce section and topped it off with forty bananas. I don’t think I’d ever bought forty of anything before. Finally, as I was self-consciously bagging thirty apples, imagining the obnoxious things people might say, a man approached me. “Nice apples,” he intoned. I startled. In a flash, my adrenaline jolted—it was The Reveal. But when I looked up, I saw an old friend grinning back at me. I can guess what my face looked like because his expression quickly changed to alarmed and chastened. “Sorry I scared you,” he said. “No, no, it was totally me,” I said truthfully. “I was in my own world.” Pleas...