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

by Ellen Hendriksen

“First question: What’s the worst that can happen?”

Watch for the red flags of imprecision—“always,” “never,” “everybody,” “nobody.”

So get specific. What exactly is the worst that can happen? What particular stupid thing do I expect I will do? Who, precisely, do I expect is going to judge me?

“How bad would that really be?” The Inner Critic scoffs again. “How bad would that really be? Bad! Really bad! People will reject me! Or ignore me! Or think I’m stupid! You can’t tell me those things aren’t bad. You’ve got nothing.” “Okay, it wouldn’t be pleasant,” allows the defense attorney. “But would any of those truly be a disaster of epic proportions?” “Totally disastrous!” “Would anyone die? Would you be irreversibly broken?” The Critic pauses. “Does dying inside count?” “No.” “But those things would totally suck!” “Yes, they would suck, but would they be disasters? Would they be worth getting really worked up over?”

decatastrophizing,

It’s bursting the bubble of the worst-case scenario. Don’t get me wrong, the problem is still there—someone out there indeed might momentarily think we’re weird, unattractive, or stupid. But how bad is that really? How bad is a little bit of judgment? Could we handle it?

You have to give it to the Critic: this is quite the talent—the ability to take a situation that’s ambiguous to slightly threatening and forecast a really huge catastrophe.

What are the odds? What are the odds you’ll really get fired for making a mistake in your presentation? What are the odds that every single person will conclude you’re an anxious freak because you’re sweaty? What are the odds that one date will doom you to be lonely forever?”

The odds are low that the worst our brain can conjure actually happens.

Is it more likely that you’ll be fired or that people will notice something’s off, feel a little pity for you, but then go back to mentally calculating their Weight Watchers points for the day?

“How could you cope?”

For example, if you actually got fired, what could you do? Seriously, what could you do? You could look for another job. You could tighten your budget for a while. You could ask friends and family if they can connect you anywhere. It wouldn’t be a cakewalk by any means. It would be really hard. But it wouldn’t be hopeless. You’d make it through. And that’s the point: even if your worries seem overwhelming, you can cope with pretty much anything life throws at you, from curveballs to screwballs to a few dates with oddballs.

To sum up, when your Inner Critic kicks the anxiety into gear, first ask, “What’s the worst that can happen?” Answer as precisely as possible; remember: specify, specify, specify. Then ask: “How bad would that really be?” “What are the odds?” “How could I cope?”

harsh criticism does two things to the first kid: first it shames, which is bad enough, but it also makes her not ever want to try again, which robs her of the opportunity to learn.

At its essence, Embrace is simply giving yourself the same support, warmth, and kindness you would get from a good friend or that you would offer a good friend. It’s a little help when you need it the most.

“Would a compassionate mother let her child eat all the candy?” No, of course not. Instead of allowing her child to be indulgent and undisciplined, she would acknowledge that candy sure is tempting and then kindly encourage a healthier choice. Self-compassion is about creating that same sort of supportive, kind, encouraging environment from which you can gather the courage to choose wisely. In short, self-compassion is the opposite of self-judgment. Self-judgment looks for what is vulnerable inside us and pounces, whereas self-compassion looks for what is human and meets it with understanding, graciousness, appreciation, and encouragement.

Remember, feelings aren’t facts. Thoughts are transient, not truth. Just because our Inner Critic is throwing harsh, anxious expectations of failure at us doesn’t mean we have to get tangled up in them. Instead, we can just watch the Inner Critic heave those thoughts and we don’t have to catch them.

What’s even more freaky is the realization that, up until now, the thoughts of I’m socially incompetent, or, I’ll have nothing to say, seemed as real and concrete as, I have brown eyes, or, I am thirty-nine years old. But on the movie screen of mindfulness, thoughts like, I’ll look stupid, are just beliefs. Just thoughts. With an existential sneeze, we shift from I am not good enough, to, I hold a belief that I’m not good enough. And that difference is everything. In one astonishing moment of clarity, we shift from absolute truth to merely a thought. And thoughts? They can be changed. Or, to stick with the spirit of mindfulness, simply watched.

If you’re a beginner, here are three mindfulness exercises to try, each of which only takes a few minutes. 5-4-3-2-1. This is a use-anywhere little exercise that can pull you out of worry and ground you in reality. Here’s how to do it: Work your way through your five senses. First, look around and name five things you can see. For me, I see my laptop, a mug of Earl Grey tea, an ornery printer, a stack of blue sticky notes, a biography of Albert Ellis. Next, name four things you can hear—a car outside, a bird chirping, the neighbor’s air conditioner, water running somewhere. Next, three things you can touch—my feet in my shoes, my back against my chair, the keyboard keys against my fingers. Two things you can smell—the aroma of the tea, the musty smell of the biography. And finally, one thing you can taste—for me, I take a slurp of Earl Grey, but if there’s nothing at hand you can simply pay attention to how your mouth tastes (generally gross) or, alternatively, say one nice thing about yourself (never gross).

Mindful listening. This is a good one for the “nonjudgmental” part of the definition. Simply listen to whatever’s happening around you.

The classic: mindful breathing. The tried-and-true peanut butter and jelly of mindfulness is mindful breathing. Pay attention, on purpose, to your breath. Feel the air enter your nostrils. Note how it feels cool against the inside of your nose. Forget any “in for four counts, out for six” nonsense. Just breathe. Feel your torso expand, and then feel it contract as you breathe out. Notice that the air is warm as it leaves your nose. Then do it again.

Self-compassion sees our inadequacies and failures and not only is cool with them but also provides a safe and caring place for them. Self-compassion loves the package deal that is you, or me. When you talk to yourself with compassion, you invert the Golden Rule—rather than treating others as you would like to be treated, you also treat yourself as well as you would treat others.

First Replace to challenge your thoughts. When _____________________________________, (SOCIAL SITUATION WHERE I FEEL ANXIOUS) it will become obvious that I am ______________________________________ (WHAT MY INNER CRITIC SAYS IS WRONG WITH ME). Now take your feared consequence and ask: “How bad would that really be?” Is this truly a disaster of epic proportions? Really? If you’ve already talked yourself down to less-than-disastrous proportions, you can go right to “How could I cope?” If not, ask, “What are the odds?” What’s more realistic? What is more likely to happen? And finally, “How could I cope?” Think of all the resources you could gather: family, friends, self-care, health insurance, gummy bears; pull out all the stops here! Next, use Embrace to show yourself some compassion: talk to yourself as you would to a good friend. Soothe, encourage, and support. Show appreciation for your efforts. Validate your fears. If you’re really hard-core and nobody’s watching, wrap your arms around yourself as you talk, literally supporting yourself. Give yourself pats on the back or an encouraging squeeze. If you hear a harsh edge creeping into your voice, forgive yourself and try again.

Our brains tell us the worst is possible, but with experience we learn it’s not probable. This is why the first approaches are the hardest—we don’t have the experience to temper the warnings of our well-meaning but overprotective brains.

Second, Brandon stated, I knew that I could handle it. No matter what happened—a rejection, a rude remark, an attempted hustle—Brandon found, to his surprise, that he could roll with pretty much anything. Failure to get a yes didn’t mean that he was a failure. It just meant that this time didn’t work out and he could try again. Indeed, the rejections taught Brandon more about his capabilities than the acceptances. They taught him to trust himself. And that, in turn, gave him the confidence to be himself.

“If you want to be comfortable talking to strangers,” he said, “the only way to do it is to approach strangers while you’re uncomfortable. You have to earn the comfort through being uncomfortable many, many times.”

So put action before confidence. Fake it till you make it, truly and genuinely. When you go ahead and try, your confidence will catch up as you build and learn, just like Brandon. Do the thing that scares you a little. Call it bravery. Being brave isn’t not being afraid. Indeed, fear is a prerequisite to bravery. True bravery is being afraid and doing it anyway.

Experience hasn’t yet balanced out our fearful imaginings of all possible worst-case scenarios. So while you’re in the tough early stages, base your achievement on what you do rather than how you feel. You were anxious and you said hi. You were sweating bullets and you asked for a raise. You didn’t have the perfect answer ready and you raised your hand. You felt like throwing up and you asked her out. Your anxiety isn’t credible, so don’t ask it for feedback. Instead, look at what you did. Let your accomplishments be the measure of your success. Your confidence is there. See? Here it comes. It’s sprinting to catch up.

Limitless options are overwhelming. If you’ve ever been faced with a yawning expanse of a blank page with no idea what to write or a looming white canvas with no idea what to paint, you know the pain of trying to start from scratch. Oddly, it’s much easier to work within constraints. Give me some direction, some structure, or a model to follow, and magically I feel much more confident. Contrary to common sense, limitations get things moving.

Even if there’s no predetermined job, you can still create structure by giving yourself an assignment. At a networking event, assign yourself the task of introducing yourself to three people. At the company holiday party, give yourself the job of chatting with your boss, your two closest colleagues, and the office manager.

So here’s the difference between structure that hinders you and structure that’s a stepping-stone to the ultimate role of being yourself: the role should come from within, not from someone else. It can’t come from your impossible-to-please mother, your boss, your current crush, American society, or whoever else. Instead, your role should be chosen and inhabited only by you.

Part of playing a role is looking the part. Arrange yourself in a powerful, confident posture, sitting or standing in a way you imagine someone open, strong, confident, and solid would present. This creates two feedback loops: one to yourself and one to others. Adopting a posture of confidence sends a message of confidence to your brain. And looking confident, whether you’re Brandon asking strangers in Manhattan for a sidewalk photo session or Aisha advocating for kids with autism, makes people treat you with respect. The phenomenon of power posing, pioneered by Dr. Amy Cuddy, was built on this principle. While researchers are still slugging it out on whether or not power posing “works” biologically by changing your cortisol and testosterone, it definitely changes your mindset, as power posing’s many adherents report. Indeed, you’re not pretending to feel powerful; you’re taking on the posture of someone who is powerful.

When you start to feel a cringe coming on, take a moment to arrange your body in a confident posture.

The only word of caution: don’t choose a structure that allows you to avoid. Helping with the dishes after a dinner party is generous, but if it keeps you in the kitchen while everyone else is chatting over coffee on the stoop your building goes neglected. Volunteering on the fundraising committee for your tai chi group is great structure, but not if the committee communicates only by text. Whatever structure you choose, whether big or small, extended or momentary, as you fulfill your roles you build up your building—your true self—brick by brick.

That peak might be high, but it’s actually a skinny little thing. To climb the peak and go over the top doesn’t actually take that long—maybe ten seconds to a minute. So commit to being brave for one minute. Once you do that, it’s all downhill from there. As we stay with it, it gets easier.

The first approaches are the hardest: the first conversation, the first book club, the first softball practice. But don’t stop at one. At your next opportunity, do it again. And again. Each time, both the intensity and duration of your anxiety will lessen. Your mountain of anxiety will erode into a molehill. And your confidence will grow into a mountain.

So pick a few things that scare you. Not pee-in-your-pants scare you, just things that scare you a little. In technical speak, facing your fears is called exposure, which sounds like either a misdemeanor or something that happens at latitude, but really, it’s just a fancy name for practice.

So ask yourself what you would be doing if you had faced down your fears and were on the other side. Not How would I feel? but What would I be doing? What would I be doing if I felt confident? For Brandon Stanton, the answer was: If I wasn’t uncomfortable, I’d be asking strangers if I could take their picture. For Albert Ellis, the answer was: If I wasn’t anxious, I’d be chatting with cute girls. For Jia, it was: If I was confident, I’d face rejection, dust myself off, and try again. How about you? Would you say yes to more invitations? Introduce yourself to more people? Show up even though you’re worried about blushing? Whatever your answer, haul out the concrete mixer and make your goals concrete. You’ll know you’re on the right track if you can check off your goal on a list: “Ask the professor a question after class.” Check. “Look at the audience the majority of the time while I give this presentation.” Check. “Call Customer Service without rehearsing what I want to say first.” Check. “Go to Jaime’s party and talk to two people.” Check. Why should your goals be so defined? With a vague, squishy goal like “Be confident,” “Make a good impression,” or “Act normal,” it’s impossible to know if you’ve achieved it. I know I could always be more confident, and my Inner Critic would snort with laughter if I asked it if I made a good impression or acted normal, no matter how things actually went. By contrast, with a concrete goal you’ll know when you’ve accomplished it. You get t...

A Challenge List is similar to a bucket list in that it’s a list of things to conquer.

Let’s take the first one. I hate it when someone is lying in wait for my parking space. I feel pressured, imagining the person is growing impatient with me. I worry they’ll honk in disapproval or give me the finger as they floor it and roar away. So for my own practice, I decided I would simply go at my normal pace the next time someone was waiting for my space. What happened? Nothing. The guy waited. It was such a nonissue I felt like it didn’t count. But it did. That was an easy Moment. A few days later, it happened again. That time, the driver slowly drove away after it became obvious I had a cart full of groceries and two wiggly boys unwilling to get in their booster seats. There were no honks or fingers. He just rolled on to someone who might vacate her space before, say, sundown. But even if he had honked or given me the finger? Remember Replace from chapter 5? How bad would that really be? What are the odds? How would I cope? Being on the receiving end of a honk or finger from a stranger would be a little alarming, but I could handle it. I could text my husband and say: “Can you believe this guy?” I could turn it into a teachable moment for the kids about the importance of being patient. All in all, it would be fine.

for your own Challenge List practice things that scare you, but don’t practice being a jerk.

Think of it this way: What would you be doing if anxiety weren’t standing in your way? What do you want to do without overthinking? What would the you-without-fear do? Put those things, big and little, on the list.

Let’s start with things that scare you a little. List some small, concrete things that buy you an express ticket to the land of (a little) social anxiety.

Then, at the next opportunity, try out the things on your list. Spoiler alert: you will feel far worse anticipating your challenges than actually completing them. This is so common it has a name: the worry mismatch.

Nothing catastrophic happens. No one calls the police. No one asks why we’re so stupid. No one gets angry. But we have to experience it to believe it.

Challenge by challenge, I keep learning that consequences are never what they seem. And even if something went wrong, I could handle it. And guess what? You could, too.

As you work through your Challenge List, don’t worry if you start to feel a little stuck.

“I did it, which I know is what counts, but I felt lousy the whole time,” they’ll lament. “My anxiety didn’t go down at all.” Don’t fret; this happens all the time. You’re willing to climb the mountain, so why don’t you slide down the other side? The answer: you may be hindering yourself without even realizing it.

Safety behaviors are the actions we take to conceal our perceived inadequacies—those things the Inner Critic says are wrong with us. But they are the very reason our fear remains. The things we’re doing to save ourselves are keeping us mired. It’s ironic, like being held underwater by a life preserver. Why do we keep using safety behaviors? When we do, there is a sense that we are hiding, which makes us feel safer. But instead of truly hiding, we are hiding in plain sight. Even though we feel like we are concealing our flaws, people can see us. I know that sounds obvious, but while we’re busy trying to keep ourselves safe we’re actually sending an entirely different message. We rehearse what to say in order to come across as well-spoken but end up appearing preoccupied. We pepper others with questions to avoid talking about ourselves but leave our conversational partner feeling interrogated. We agree with everything our boss says, which makes her wonder if we’re even listening.