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

by Ellen Hendriksen

But in reality, safety behaviors send a loud and clear message, and it’s exactly the opposite of what we’re trying to do. We accidentally send the message of I’m aloof, I’m distant, I’m snobby, I’m prickly, when nothing could be further from the truth.

How to fix this? As Dr. Taylor puts it, “We want people to be scientists. First you need to have a good understanding of what safety behaviors you are using. Then you can do some experimental testing and see what happens if you remove the safety behavior.”

I certainly know what I used to do: I avoided eye contact and avoided introducing myself, preferring, oddly, to pretend that I already knew the person, which led to confusion on their part and awkwardness all around.

I act like I don't know a person is there when I barely know them and don't know if I should greet them or not. I act like I didn't hear anything when an Uber driver puts me in an awkward spot.

half the participants got the following instructions, with their personal fears and safety behaviors filled in the blanks, like so: In order to help overcome your anxiety, it is important to discover whether what you fear can actually happen. To accomplish this, you should try not to do the things you normally do to prevent the person from thinking you’re stupid. For example, during the conversation, do nothing to save yourself, do not avoid eye contact. Just think that you want to discover what will happen when you don’t avoid eye contact. By doing this, you will be better able to see if your expectations are confirmed.

But most interesting is that participants who dropped their safety behaviors thought the confederates liked them because they seemed less anxious. But in reality, the confederates said they liked them because they were friendlier, talked more openly, conveyed interest, and were actively engaged. In other words, the participants thought their partners liked them because they did less of the bad stuff, but in reality the partners liked them because they did more of the good stuff. Once all the bandwidth used for rehearsing sentences or managing their appearance was freed up, authentic friendliness—the good stuff—naturally filled in the gaps. There’s that word again: “authentic.” In other words, being yourself. Indeed, when we use safety behaviors we know we’re coming off as fake. We know it’s not our true self that we’re presenting to the world—instead, it’s a filtered, highly managed version. Safety behaviors are designed to hide your true self, the one your Inner Critic says is flawed. But instead, safety behaviors keep us stuck in the idea that we’re unlikable or deficient. We never get the chance to prove those ideas wrong.

After just two experiences, one with safety behaviors and one without, Jia had discovered a major secret: you set the tone. Act as if you were not anxious, drop your safety behaviors, and not only will you feel better; you’ll also get a better response. And guess what? No one can tell you’re acting. Guess what else? Eventually, you won’t be.

Almost twenty years later, I still remember this guy’s chutzpah with admiration. He needed a condom, urgently, which implied what he planned to do as soon as he found one. But he wasn’t afraid to reveal all this to a stranger and ask for help—two things that are usually one-way tickets to social anxiety. He could have easily thought, She’s going to think I’m creepy/weird/perverted, and snuck away, but instead he knocked, showed his face, and asked like it was no big deal.

This reminds me of when I've gone into pharmacies to buy pregnancy tests...THE LADY DIDN'T CARE

So when the opportunity to do a live radio interview came along, I let myself cringe for a minute (or an hour), then said to myself, “Do it before you feel confident and the confidence will catch up.”

5. Smile and start conversation with people I think don’t like me (several grumpy moms, one grumpy teacher, several grumpy co-workers). Do this repeatedly.

Over time, I did all of these and they turned out just fine. I was anxious for each of them, but I went over the mountain. That’s important: I was anxious. You will be, too. You won’t stop feeling anxious. You’ll feel anxious, square your shoulders, and do it anyway.

Whatever your life preserver, leave it at home and see what happens. Try it out. Or as a wise, short-statured social anxiety therapist once said, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

My challenge (what I would be doing if I weren’t anxious): ____________________ Safety behavior(s) I want to drop: ____________________

Instead, try this: affirm yourself with the values you are 100 percent rock-solid sure about, even if they have nothing to do with the task at hand. You heard that right. Even if it has nothing to do with your Challenge, affirm yourself with what you know is true about yourself. As the sun rises and sets, I am a loyal friend. I value being a good listener. I’m a really good mom. I’ve accomplished more than I ever thought possible through my own hard work.

Likewise, you can gain strength by affirming your own courageous acts. A 2017 eye-tracking study from a group of Dutch researchers found that when participants brought to mind a memory of their own integrity—the time they stood by a friend when no one else did, the time they could have thrown a colleague under the bus but didn’t—they were able to look pictures of angry faces square in the eye. So affirm your truths. Affirm the times you did the right thing. Remind yourself of your best and your best will show up.

What are some things that scare you a lot? Don’t move on to these until you’re done with the things that scare you a little, then the things that scare you a little more, and you’ve experimented with dropping your safety behaviors.

Something you may notice is that as you nudge yourself through the things that scare you a little and the things that scare you moderately, these biggest things may not scare you as much as they used to. They may still curl your toes, but there may be a tiny flame of willingness where there wasn’t one before. Why? As you move through your small and medium challenges, you may be incrementally resetting your social anxiety set point.

So let’s bring it on home. What are your big stretches? Think of some concrete things that make you want to hide behind the curtains. If you start planning an escape route, you know you’ve found your last big challenges.

If you’re not ready, that’s totally okay. Go back to the beginning or middle of your Challenge List and knock off a few more of those. Getting a running start can bolster confidence and make the scariest stuff a little less toe curling. So what are the things that scare you a lot? What is holding you back?

What will working your way through your Challenge List be like? Most of the time, it will be tough but well worth it. You’ll find that your confidence catches up. You’ll discover what you never knew was in you all along. But other times it may not go so well. You’ll disappoint yourself. You’ll pull out all the stops of your bravery, and nothing will change. You’ll feel like trying to stretch your range is futile. Your Inner Critic will tell you to sit down, shut up, and keep your head down. This isn’t for you, it will say. You weren’t built to have confidence. Plus, once in a while, something bad will happen. People are judgy; people talk. There are haters out there. But if your practice doesn’t go as planned, ask yourself who was acting inappropriately.

Remember Replace and Embrace from chapters 5 and 6? They’re not just a running start; you can use them as cleanup, too. Ask yourself how truly horrible was the experience? It feels cringe worthy now, but who will remember in a few days? (Probably no one besides you.) How often do things like this happen to people? (Probably often.) How many people has this happened to? (Lots—chalk one up for the human experience.)

Finally, ask yourself a question that should sound familiar by now: How can I cope?

So make your Challenge List. Then talk your way through with Replace and Embrace. Give yourself some structure—play a role that you choose. Be brave for the time it takes to get over the summit. Take on your challenges, a little at a time. And leave your life preservers at home. The mountain is all downhill from there. Slide down the hill and into your life. The more you practice, the easier it gets.

Finally, remember the confidence myth. You don’t gain confidence in a vacuum and then go off and conquer the world. Instead, you learn to be confident, to have courage, to get over anxiety, to live your life authentically, by doing challenging things. And an authentic life includes some rejection, some awkwardness, and some embarrassment. But guess what? It also includes deep satisfaction in your accomplishments, even when they don’t turn out exactly as you pictured them. And with ongoing practice, you’ll find it also includes many Moments and even some elation. By practicing, you’ll learn that even if bad stuff happens, you can keep moving forward, keep being brave. You can handle it.

“It was surprising how easy it was to get a yes. I realized how many opportunities I missed because I was afraid of people rejecting me, but I was just rejecting myself.”

Whether at a high school dance or our annual performance review we use our discomfort to determine how we are coming off to others. This is called the felt sense. We feel like an idiot, so we must be spouting nonsense. We feel like a loser, so everyone must be secretly signing an L on their foreheads when we turn around. Again, it feels true, so we ask our anxiety, arguably the least credible source of information, for reassurance. No wonder it’s not working.

Turn your attention to the task at hand: listening or speaking, rather than the running commentary of your Inner Critic. When you’re speaking, focus on the message, not the delivery. After some practice, when you catch yourself trapped in a closed circuit of anxiety during a conversation you’ll be able to shift your attention back to the tasks at hand: talking and listening with your conversation partner.

One way is to play a game with yourself. When you’re out and about, count how many people you see wearing glasses. Then count how many people are wearing earbuds. Or count how many people have facial hair. The counting is conscious, but it unconsciously teaches you to shift your attention to faces. In the end, the number of glasses, earbuds, or mustaches you count doesn’t matter, but the fact that you’re looking at human faces matters a lot. This will feel weird at first. Looking directly at people, even if they’re not looking back, might seem odd. But keep going. I do this myself when I’m in a crowded subway car, at the mall, or on the playground with my kids after school. When I deliberately look at faces, I feel more grounded and relaxed. It turns my attention outward, which gives me accurate information about what’s happening—I’m surrounded by bored commuters, weary shoppers, or energetic kids. As one of my clients, Anthony, exclaimed after we stood on a subway platform for an hour of looking at faces, “But wait, these are just people!”

The spotlight effect is a phenomenon in which we overestimate the extent to which our actions and appearance are noticed by others. This phenomenon strengthens when we feel particularly exposed or vulnerable.

But what if it was? Grumpy, judgy people are out there. Heaven knows most of us are related to at least one of them. But if something rude is said, who is acting inappropriately? You or them? Even if your worst-case scenario comes true, let’s go back to the tried-and-true tool: How bad would that really be? What are the odds? How would you cope?

And as a bonus, if something rude is said it says more about them than you. Being judged does not render the judgers correct.

First, we hold ourselves to strict, near-impossible standards but are understanding and compassionate to everyone else. As if that double standard weren’t bad enough, we also try to see the best in others, but assume others will see the worst in us.

The most damaging perfectionistic mind-set, however, is when our worth becomes contingent upon our social performance.

First, remember that people put their best foot forward on social media, posting only the highlight reel of their lives. We tend to post when things are going well—vacations, accomplishments, kids doing cute things, photos in which we look hot.

JOMO is the deliberate choice to enjoy the moment one is actually in.

Again, counter to the myth of I have lousy social skills, we don’t need more skills, we just need less inhibition. But guess what? You already know what to do to lower your inhibition: Like the assertive study participants, play a role—give yourself a mission. Dare to be average. Fake it until you are it. And finally, drop your safety behaviors. Step away from the body spray.

Those who get socially anxious often avoid social situations like parties or get-togethers. But when they’re forced to go, like David, they may drink relatively more in an attempt to “self-medicate” but have lower tolerance and less practice pacing themselves.

Maddy and Nora, respectively, have two problems common in social anxiety: either we feel like we don’t know anyone or we know enough people but don’t feel close to them. Either way, we often think, “What’s wrong with me?” Nothing’s wrong with you, but social anxiety magically confers filters that are getting in your way. Sometimes it’s our presumptions: we unconsciously create too stringent a filter and rule out too many people. It might be demographic: Oh, she’s married/single—that’s not going to work. It might be perception: Oh, she’s so busy—that’s not going to work, or, She probably has a lot of friends already—that’s not going to work. Or we might just have a low tolerance for ambiguity: if she’s not 100 percent unambiguously welcoming, we rule her out—that’s not going to work. Sometimes it’s our expectations. Remember the perfectionism chapter? Those of us prone to social anxiety tend to look for an instant, capital-F Friend. Without even realizing it, we’re looking for a ready-made BFF with whom we feel connected right away. We wish we could walk into an event and walk out arm in arm with a new buddy (or two!).

Social anxiety tells us we should find friends instantly. The semantics are subtle, but telling. Social anxiety tells us to find a friend—to win someone over right away—but real friends must be made. Friendship is a process, not a ready-made discovery. But that’s actually good news. Rather than searching for a diamond in the rough, it turns out the rough contains scores of potential friends. The raw stuff, the stardust that transforms into friends, is everywhere. Almost everyone is a candidate. Oddly, to make a friend, you don’t need the “right” person. Instead, the person becomes right over time.

Here’s where to start: Is someone friendly to you? Great, they’re in. This is the only bar. You’re not friends yet, but you’re friendly with each other. Some of your friend candidates will stay at this level, but three things will move others toward friendship.

REPETITION

Proximity was the biggest predictor of friendship: next-door neighbors were most likely to be friends. People who lived on either end of the first floor, at the foot of the stairwells, were downright popular, presumably because everyone on the second floor had to pass by their apartment multiple times a day.

To have the best shot at friendship, she needs to see a steady drumbeat of the same faces—the same people, regularly. That rules out most come-and-go situations like the gym but rules in specific gym classes where the same core people show up every week. It rules out onetime events or drop-in meetups where the people change constantly but rules in, say, dog parks at a consistent time of day. Classes can work, but only if they’re interactive, like tango or a writer’s workshop, not lecture-style. Forget about social media, bars, or clubs—here people bring the friends they already have and hang out together—the group is closed unless you’re trying to pick someone up. When you’re starting out, the best strategy is to join a ready-made community open to others: an ultimate frisbee team, a running group, a bike polo team, a choral group, community theater, a church group, and yes, a book club.

And then? Keep showing up. Give any new social endeavor at least a season, or around three or four months, but longer is better. Lore has it that it takes six to eight conversations (not just “hi”) before people consider each other a friend.

Then, once you’ve established yourself, a well-kept secret is to take on a leadership role. Remember chapter 8? Playing a role is a blessing for the shy among us because it requires less social improvising. You’ll have a set of duties and a reason to connect with everyone, even if it’s just to remind them about the holiday party or encourage them to donate to the food drive.

GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO WORK WITH

Like Nora, many of us have a collection of half-baked friendships and people we are friendly with, but we can’t seem to get beyond that. Sometimes this is the result of the perfectionist rearing its head again: “Nobody seems interested—everyone is so busy with life and kids and everything,” Nora says. Without really realizing it, Nora is waiting for someone to seem “interested,” meaning someone who unambiguously approaches her.

How to take it to the next level? To jargonize it, we use disclosure, which simply means sharing what we think, do, and feel with others. This seems easy enough, but it’s not intuitive. Folks susceptible to social anxiety don’t often talk about themselves. We’re polite and pleasant, but others often get the impression we’re distant, formal, or otherwise keep the world at arm’s length.

When I work with the Maddys and Noras of the world about disclosure, the next question is, inevitably, “But what do I talk about?” But that’s not actually their question. Just like Maddy doesn’t want to be told to volunteer, she doesn’t need a list of possible topics. The real question is, “How do I think through the paralyzing anxiety and come up with something that doesn’t sound totally stupid?” The answer is, yet again, to lower the bar. We think we have to be interesting, entertaining, or effortless. But that’s too much pressure. Indeed, if you tell yourself you are not allowed to say anything totally stupid you won’t say anything.

This will feel wrong at first. It will feel like you’re talking too much. It will feel selfish, like you’re taking up too much space or making it about you. But this is only because you are comparing it to being reticent. Try it and see what happens. Sometimes you’ll get a lame answer, “Yeah, that’s cool,” or, “Oh, really?” And then … nothing. A conversational tumbleweed will roll by. But that’s fine—a lot of conversations are lame, but here’s the thing: a lame conversation doesn’t mean you’re lame. Other times, you’ll get a relatively substantial answer, and then you’re off to the conversational races.

If someone starts a conversation with you, gently encourage yourself to disclose a little more than usual. It’s tempting to respond to, “Do you have any siblings?” with simply, “Yes, one younger brother,” but stretch it to, “Yes, one younger brother, but we were five years apart, so by the time I went to college he was still in middle school and every time I came home I felt like I had to get to know him again. Now that we’re both grown-ups we’re buddies. He’s an ER doc in Minneapolis.” Likewise, the answer to “Where are you from?” can shift from, “Houston,” to, “Houston, but I haven’t lived there in twenty years. Though I’ve gone back a couple of times for the rodeo.” Then? Do something you’re already good at: listen. Turn your attention inside out.