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November 18, 2022 - January 5, 2023
for the 21 percent of capital-S Socially Anxious folks for whom nerves manifest as anger and irritability, impairment means sarcastic comments and critical judgment. It means losing friends and relationships by striking out in anger.2
social anxiety—whether for a moment or a lifetime, whether cowering in a corner or picking a fight—is the fear that people will see something bad about you and reject you for it.
Fear of being dismissed would qualify here too…
Fundamentally, social anxiety is seeing our true self in a distorted way and believing the distortion to be the truth. We magnify (or even flat-out imagine) our bad points. We worry about our perceived flaws, all while completely forgetting the myriad gifts we have to offer.
avoiding does make you feel better, at least in the short term. Avoidance makes the anxiety go away temporarily;
But long term, avoidance is disastrous. It is enemy number one of emotional well-being and perpetuates all anxieties, not just social. For social anxiety to become a problem, genetics and learning aren’t enough—the anxiety has to grow and be carefully maintained. Avoidance does just that, and does it perfectly.
This fear is the core of social anxiety. It’s the sense that something embarrassing, deficient, or flawed about us will become obvious to everyone. Jim feared what I call The Reveal. Social anxiety isn’t just fear of judgment; it’s fear the judgers are right. We think there is something wrong with us, and we avoid in order to conceal it. In our minds, if The Reveal comes to pass we’ll be rejected, humiliated, or exposed.
Avoidance is your brain’s equivalent of a fussy mother hen—it means well, but in protecting you from a situation it inadvertently sends the message that you can’t deal. In shielding you from threat, avoidance keeps you from learning “Hey, that wasn’t so bad,” or, “Wait, nothing terrible happened,” and blocks the resulting confidence that comes with succeeding in ever-larger challenges.
Second, with introversion, solitude makes you feel good. But with social anxiety, it just makes you less anxious.
in both speed and magnitude the response of a socially anxious prefrontal cortex never quite reaches the level of the non-anxious.
my anxiety is not credible. Seldom does anyone actually say, “Wow, you sure seem uncomfortable. You’re weird and don’t deserve to be here.” Or, “That’s it. You’ve paused in conversation one too many times—we’re all going to turn our backs on you now.” Or in my case, “Ma’am, is there a problem? The volume of milk in your cart clearly indicates you’re a freak.” Even if someone did, it would be the accuser who was unreasonable, not me. And if someone actually said to me, “You only eat milk and bananas! Wow, you have problems!” I could wave it off as the grumblings of a judgmental curmudgeon.
for those of us who experience social anxiety, the Inner Critic, rather than whispering in our ears, instead wields a megaphone. It attacks us with critical labels and embarrassing predictions. And then? Fight or flight is the response to all attacks, whether physical or emotional, whether from others or from our own heads.
It tells us we can’t do it, we might get embarrassed, that it’s too much for us.
social anxiety is the fear that whatever we’re trying to hide will be revealed to everyone like a gust of wind sweeps away a bad toupee.
social anxiety is about concealment. It’s less about fear and more about shame,
Something about the imminence of The Reveal had flattened their ability to access positive qualities but did nothing to slow their access to negative qualities. In short, the Inner Critic pulled out the megaphone, driving away their best selves.
preparing for good stuff isn’t crucial to survival, but anticipating bad stuff is.
Whatever your fear, it boils down to one thing: I am not good enough. And furthermore, everyone will see.
Researchers call it post-event processing. Whatever you call it, it’s a postmortem review of the bloopers reel of your social performance. As post-event processing expert Cyndi Lauper sings, “You can look and you will find me.” So we do: the Inner Critic looks and finds the imperfections—the awkward silence in conversation, the answer that didn’t come out quite right, the time someone laughed at the wrong point of our story—and strings them together into a Möbius strip of lowlights.
anxiety should match the task at hand. Anxiety before presenting to a crowd of thousands? Sure. But the same level of anxiety before joining a new Pilates class? That’s a mismatch.
the main difference between high and low socially anxious individuals is not the effect of anticipatory processing—that’s the same no matter who you are. The difference is that the socially anxious among us are more likely to engage in it.
if the Inner Critic’s cherry-picking of past lowlights happens before a big moment it’s called anticipatory processing. If it’s after the fact, it’s post-event processing. Either way, it’s hyper-focusing on stuff gone wrong. In each case—before and after—the Inner Critic puts us under the magnifying glass. But it’s a magnifying glass that not only enlarges; it also distorts. It makes us interpret the neutral as negative.
all our preparatory freaking out and after-the-fact self-flagellation not only doesn’t help; it actually sets us back,
The Inner Critic is already uncertain. Let’s show it that it’s actually wrong.
the Inner Critic doesn’t actually prepare or improve anything, from speeches done for course credit to life in general.
Anxiety is often vague: Everybody will think I’m weird! Something bad will happen! People will judge me! I will do something stupid! Anxiety would make a great horoscope writer. It’s hazy enough that we can read just about anything into its predictions. Watch for the red flags of imprecision—“always,” “never,” “everybody,” “nobody.”
The Inner Critic sends you a strong feeling, and that feeling feels like a fact. Because we feel inadequate, it must be true.
ask what that lurch in the stomach would say if it could talk. What would the urge to skip out on the wedding reception tell you if it was translated into words? Think of yourself as a cartoon character and ask what the thought bubble coming out of your head would say. Once the thought is verbal, it has a form, which means we can challenge it.
When Something embarrassing will happen is specified into I will go fetal and mute in front of the whole staff meeting, we realize it’s about as realistic as Barbie’s high-heeled feet.
decatastrophizing, which is like declawing a lion. 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? The consequences get put in perspective.
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? What are the odds everyone will think you’re an anxious freak? Is it more likely that one or two people will notice your sweaty shirt but assume you’re just overly warm? Or even that you’re nervous, but they’ll feel compassion for you?
our fear feels like a fact. We feel incapable, so we must be. We feel overwhelmed, so we must be in over our heads. But think of all the resources you could gather—your friends, your family, your inner strength, your faith, your mojo, that coupon for a free yoga class in the back of your desk drawer—to help you deal if your fear came to pass.
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?” These questions will have you covered for almost every socially anxious thought.
The supportive coach is not only more pleasant to be around; he’s also much more effective. And therein lies the crux of the next tool: we are much more likely to reach our goals in a supportive environment than a punitive one.
Telling ourselves we can’t do it, that we don’t have it in us, that we shouldn’t bother trying only makes us want to hide. To conceal. To avoid.
With Embrace, you get the same effect, but instead of from your friends, it comes from within. Your friends may not be available 24/7, after all, but you are.
“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,
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self-compassion has three components: mindfulness, self-kindness, and an awareness that we are all in this together, or what she calls our common humanity.
Mindfulness, simply, is paying attention to the present moment on purpose, without judgment.
mindfulness is not your actual thoughts or experience. Rather, it is a method for watching your thoughts and experience.
think to yourself, I really screwed that one up big-time. You probably feel some embarrassment, guilt, or shame. Now shift things a little and think to yourself, I’m having the thought that I really screwed that one up big-time. It’s subtle, but different. With the second example, there is distance, there is awareness.
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.
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.
The point is to be kind and supportive and, most important, brave. Notice self-compassion didn’t say, Oh, sweetheart, I know you’re scared. Why don’t you stay home and eat a pint of Cherry Garcia instead? Just as the second coach didn’t offer empty praise or let the kid go on kicking incorrectly, neither does self-compassion let you off the hook.
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.
I’m smart, I’m successful—are still just labels. The danger is that we tend to cling to positive labels and avoid trying new things that might threaten the label.
“Plus, you can handle feeling awkward for a few minutes. If you survived the last few years, you can make some phone calls. It’s okay to feel awkward as long as you keep moving forward.”
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!
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.
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.
The perception that we have to feel like doing something before we do it is amazingly common.
