121. Befriending your social anxiety

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Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast, New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here. Back for another episode. Today, we are talking about a much requested topic and one that I think is highly personally relevant to me, understanding and overcoming our social anxiety. When we think about our twenties, there are a few generally universal experiences I think we can all agree on, and worrying about the opinions of others, being very self critical, concerned about whether we've embarrassed ourselves, our past mistakes, the times we've overshared or said the wrong thing. That is definitely one of them. It's definitely a common thing that haunts us and keeps us up at night. There are so many experiences like this that I think live in our head rent free, taking up the space that we perhaps could be using for other things, but also causing us to avoid certain situations or events out of fear of that really physical and emotional, even mental discomfort, and it can be really hard to wrangle with those thoughts and wrangle with that anxiety and bring it back into our control. This is particularly the case because, as we know, our brains are hardwired to seek the approval and the safety of others. So when we think that perhaps we've done something that is wrong, or we've done something that could be seen as awkward or cause us to be rejected or perceived negatively, our minds automatically set off an alarm system and it triggers a fear response that we come to know as social anxiety. And people feel this in so many areas of their lives, when it comes to making new friends, to dating, job interviews, to lowering their inhibitions in front of new people. And I want you to know that you are not alone in that experience. I think any type of anxiety can cause us to feel very solitary and isolated because the only person whose reality we really understand is our own, So we tend to be hypercritical and hyper fixated on our interpretation of an event rather than our objective reality, one in which most people really aren't looking at us that closely. We are all very much selfish beings who spend a lot of time ruminating on our faults, wondering who may be thinking about us when no one is, because we're all in the same boat. So today I really want to discuss some of the ways that we can control our social anxiety, or at least understand it better and make peace with those feelings and not let them hold us back from the joy, the excitement, the surprises of our twenties. We are going to examine why we feel socially anxious and what actually is perhaps a deeper social phobia. Where does that fear come from. We'll also look at the major cognitive distortions that try and convince us that we are awkward, that we are embarrassing, or socially inept, and why those distortions are false. There is also such an interesting relationship between overthinking perfectionism and social anxiety that is rarely discussed, and I think it relates to a lot of people that I speak to, and also my own situation as well. So how can we use that understanding, use that broader knowledge of our social anxiety to reclaim our authenticity, to reclaim our confidence and not live in that shadow of someone else's opinion or our perception of someone else's opinion of us. There is so much to cover as someone who still remembers every embarrassing thing that has happened to me since I was a child, the time I tripped and fell in front of the stairs of someone I really liked, or the time I got really drunk at a work event and said with things to my boss, I'm here with you. But I also have some of the psychology and the hidden explanations and also the advice for why we all feel this way sometimes and why it is not only natural but something that we can come to learn to control. So all of that and more, without further ado, let us get into the psychology behind our social anxiety. Every single one of us is going to experience occasional moments of embarrassment, of cringe, of anxiety around social interactions, wondering whether we overshared, whether we said something we don't remember, did that person like me? And all of those things are I think very common things that I've experienced myself, things that have sometimes really got in the way of me connecting with people deeply or feeling like I wanted to kind of curl up into a ball and hide away and never speak to anyone ever again. I think that occasional hyper focus on our ability to be perceived and therefore to be judged feels like one that is quite a heavy burden to bear, but also one that is felt by quite a few people out there. A part of these experiences and the feelings of being self conscious or over analyzing a social situation from time to time is really normal, despite it being uncle comfortable. This reaction is a function of our environment and our evolution, and simply put, historically our survival was dependent on group acceptance. We needed to be part of the tribe for things like food, shelter, and security, and if we were outcast, it was essentially a bit of a death sentence. So this necessitated and innate recognition of the opinions and the perspective of the group and also our reputation within it. So when we act in a way that we think brings attention to us or could put us on the out or garner negativity or rejection, what that triggers is a lot of fear or anxiety that is highly instinctual. That uncomfortable feeling, that sense of social anxiety is meant to protect us. As annoying as it is, it's meant to warn us not to do that again and provide an emotionally salient experience that will keep us in line. That evolutionary instinct that has come from a place of survival, it has lingered with us and it continues to create situations and feelings that make us feel uncomfortable, that make us question our worth and question whether other people like us, what their judgments of us are. There's a really important distinction here, though, between occasional feelings of being embarrassed or self conscious and a genuine diagnosable social anxiety disorder otherwise known as a social phobia. And really the distinction here is based on severity and frequency. So social anxiety disorder is definitely not uncommon. It's actually the third most common mental health condition behind depression and substance use disorders, and the most common form of anxiety. So it impacts between I think like six to ten percent depending on your estimates of people worldwide, and those numbers that those numbers are huge. What this says is that almost one in ten of us are walking around with an intense discomfort and even fear towards social situations, and inherent to that is this worry of being judged, of being humiliated, of being outcast, because we really do care about the opinions of others, even when we try not to. And what this can lead us to do is to avoid certain situations where we might be forced with forced to interact with people we don't know, or maybe you know, situations where we don't know what to say, where we're uncomfortable, unprepared, perhaps we kind of have to stand alone in the corner of the party, like waiting and awkwardly looking around for someone you know, literally the worst feeling ever. But this social anxiety, especially when it's linked to a social anxiety disorder, it causes us to be particularly fearful or anxious towards things like attending parties or social gatherings, going places where we don't know anyone, and having to meet new people or start a conversation. Another big one is things like public speaking or speaking up in public settings like in a classroom or during a work presentation. And then in more extreme cases, some people can have such an intense cognitive and emotional reaction that they struggle doing things like eating or drinking in front of other people, or using public spaces or public restrooms. The main triggers are situations in which we acknowledge that we can be perceived and that something about our behavior might reveal these parts of us that we are convinced of, but that we are trying to keep invisible those parts of us that we don't like. And we're worried what people will think if they see them, that we are a fraud, that we are awkward, that we have nothing to say, and if people were to find out about this kind of secret side of us, we believe it would be the end of the world. We believe that everything around us would come crumbling down, and we respond to this possibility with anxiety. And anxiety is essentially a fear response, particularly anticipatory anxiety, where we project our fears onto a future situation in anticipation of an event or a situation that might leave us feeling a bit unstable or a little bit uncertain, and the logic, the kind of illogic, almost goes that if we can anticipate what might go wrong, where we might misstep, we can put a plan in place to be prepared for the worst case. Scenario, and also our brain tells us that the easiest way to minimize the worst case scenario is by avoidance. If we actively avoid social situations, we don't have to feel anxious. And if our goal is to avoid anxiety, then that is a very effective way of going about it. But it's also unfortunately not very sustainable, nor is it particularly healthy, given that deep social connection and even casual everyday interaction is really vital for maintaining our mood and our well being. Also, whilst avoidance temporarily makes us feel better, it just makes us more fearful in the future because we never give ourselves the opportunity to prove that nasty, negative voice in our head wrong. We really cannot shy away from our need for deep vulnerability and meaningful relationships. But we're just worried about the judgments of others, and because of that worry, we never challenge the fear of the fear maintains itself. We find ourselves back at square one, and you know, everyone's going to have their own thoughts. Sometimes people will not like you, but I think very true, no one is thinking about you as much as you are thinking about yourself. We are innately very ego centric creatures. We are all too busy examining our own behavior, thinking about what we need to have for dinner, thinking about our to do list, thinking about our relationships, the things that are bothering us to really judge others. And we're going to talk more about that fallacy in a second. But the other way that our social anxiety can show up is through what we call post event rumination. So this occurs when we are obsessively critical of our social performance or behavior following some event or interaction. So post event rumination is when you find yourself really brooding overthinking every single gesture, tonal change, laugh interaction. You might focus on any of the mistakes you think you have made, but you also may imagine scenarios that didn't happen, like walking out of a room and people laughing at you the moment that you left, or being criticized or judged. Often these ruminating thoughts this tendency will become part of a cycle that maintains our social anxiety by promoting that future avoidance. You worry that you embarrassed yourself, which causes you to run through every detail of the event to provide yourself with self assurance. But the more time you spend thinking about your behavior, the more mistakes you see or the more mistakes you create. And these are called false memories, which can become implanted in our mind when we repeatedly revise a memory, when we repeatedly go back to it, and that just causes us to unfortunately worry even more than we need to. One situation where I see this a lot is after a night of heavy drinking, where our social anxiety kind of combines with the after effects of alcohol and can cause us to spiral even further until you know you're promising yourself you will never drink again, or refusing to look at your phone wondering when someone will text you to say how embarrassing you were or tell you something that you did. This is because alcohol, in particular activate some of those brain regions that are already being triggered by our social anxiety. So experts have theorized that anxiety is related to using alcohol to overcome social anxiety. So alcohol as a drug will initially help you feel better. You will feel more relaxed, you will feel more calm because it releases this neurotransmitter called gabba and gabber slows everything down, and it lessens the ability of our nerves to give and receive messages, meaning less overthinking, less inhibition less nerves. But in the morning, when the alcohol wears off, our brain need to rebalance all of the neurotransmitters working on our mind, and so it releases this neurotransmitter called glutamate to kind of counterbalance the excessive amount of gabba that the alcohol is triggered, and glutamate does the opposite of gamma. It excites our brain, It spikes our anxiety, and it also reactivates things like memory and cognition, so that blissful calm and ignorance is gone, and suddenly we are right back in this social anxiety spiral, except even more so now because we have this unbalanced kind of chemical pattern in our brain to deal with, which is making us more susceptible to ruminating on those embarrassing moments and how we behaved in front of others, despite it being highly highly likely that those people do not remember much more than you do. So why is it that other people's opinions take on so much importance in our lives? Well? Aside from that evolutionary explanation, we offered earlier. A lot of us develop what we call cognitive distortions, whereby we see social situations as being more meaningful than they actually are, and therefore we generalize that our behavior in those situations should take on more importance, we should examine them more closely. It's interesting because, as we spoke about before, we are quite egocentric beings because the only person's reality we truly understand is our own, and so we can't peer into someone else's mind and confirm or deny their opinion of us. We can't see ourselves the way others see us. We have to rely on our own judgments, which are often very skewed, and that has two consequences for feeling socially anxious. Number one, firstly, because we never know what others are thinking, this creates uncertainty, and that uncertainty causes us to catastrophize and to expect the worse, because if we are prepared for the worst case, any other scenario won't be as terrifying, even if we are horrifically rejected. At least we're prepared for this. At least that's what our anxiety has convinced us. We are already aware of that perception, and it makes us feel like we can cope if that is actually the outcome. Secondly, we have no context for how other people are feeling, specifically how they're probably feeling the same way. We think that it must just be us, that we just must be the most awkward, embarrassing person. This stuff never happens to other people. Everyone else has so much confidence because how can we confirm that others are feeling the same way or experiencing things as intensely as we are, And so the experience becomes really isolating, and sometimes talking about a particular situation in which we felt like we have misstepped can actually sting even more so we bury this thought, this negative reaction in overthinking and internalizing. There's two other cognitive distortions that we are socially anxious people can fall into. Sometimes we see ourselves more negatively than we are in reality. It's what we call a negative self concept, where we think that our behavior must be so much worse than we imagined, that what we said might actually be offensive and that we just didn't know it. We have trouble seeing ourselves as good people, as someone who is fun and who people want to be around and who people really do like. And I think if you're an anxious person, you already are highly sensitive to social cues from others. And if you have this baseline way of seeing yourself, any tiny suggestion you pick up from someone's behavior will act to confirm your bias. It will act to confirm this negative self concept, despite it being real or not. That person may have been having a really rough day, they may be worrying about their own insecurities. They may be just as anxious as you. However, you can't see those explanations because you have been misled by negative self talk, over analysis and your own self perception of your actions. I think it's important to remember just because you feel anxious, just because you feel awkward, just because you feel embarrassed, doesn't mean that those things are true. Your emotions are just your emotions. Your perceptions are just your perceptions. They are not character descriptions, they are not always reality. What you did is probably not as terrible as you think it was. That thing you're reminding on or obsessing about, it's unlikely anyone else even remembers it. And also, if a friend came to you with the same situation, you would probably not think twice about it, and you would see it very clearly from an objective point of view and tell them, you know, it's not that bad. It's not even close to being bad. It's kind of all made up in your head. And the same goes for the situation you're worried about. A lot of what we take from a situation is not based on reality. It's based on our opinion. The second cognitive distortion is that everyone is looking at you. It links back to the above. We are the center of our own universe, and so we notice when people are focusing on us, and we rarely remember those times when they weren't. Good news for us, though, is that the opinions of other people are fortunately none of our business. And if they are spending all that time we think they are judging, talking, considering our actions or our behavior, that is causing more harm to them than it is causing us. And really, what's the worst thing their opinions can do if they decide to go on some reputational tirade or say something behind your back that looks a lot worse on them than us, Especially if we stay true to our authenticity and our good nature. And we kind of keep our head above the frow. I also think we need to contemplate the following hypothetical. Can you remember the last time you judge someone and why did you judge them? What did you say? Was it something about their outfit, something they said? And how much time did you actually think about it? I'm guessing it couldn't have been for more than a few seconds, maybe minutes, because our brains are constantly thinking about the next thing. We only have such limited cognitive space to plan our lives, to worry about what our relationships are doing, to worry about ourselves, and that's really where everyone's focus is going. I think we need to remind ourselves that your social anxiety is lying to you, but it's also trying to protect you by overgeneralizing, by distorting your reality, or magnifying what are very small moments as a valuable way to kind of keep you in check. And counteracting those negative thoughts when they pop into your mind is really important if you want to live the life you want to live, if you want to live in your authenticity and make the most out of your social experiences. So how do we do that? How do we reclaim the narrative around how people choose to see us and why their opinion really shouldn't matter as much as we think it does. Well, we're going to talk about all of that and more after this shortbreak. It always fascinates me how much we allow others to be fallible, to be imperfect human beings, how much we're willing to overlook and laugh with them at their mistakes and hold off our judgment, but we never give ourselves permission to do the same. You know, if our friend tells us something embarrassing that happened to them, we don't feel it as deeply as they do because we can see it objectively. But also we let them be those kinds of people. We enjoy that they are not perfect, but we have to be perfect. We always have to be on our best behavior. We always have to be warm and charming and funny and so on. So it's no surprise I think that many of us who are anxious in other ways also find that we have a relationship to perfectionism and also a relationship to a tendency to overthink. There's been some really comprehensive studies on this correlation, whereby highly perfectionistic individuals have an increased probability and level of social anxiety, And on a very fundamental level, that makes a lot of sense. Perfectionist individuals tend to have extremely high personal standards, and they critically evaluate every little mistake they make, much like our social anxiety, wanting to come up perfect in every situation. Perfectionism also causes us to set very unrealistic standards for our performance in every areas of life. And whilst we typically think of that in terms of things like academics and professional success, our brains don't shut off that perfectionist part of us for one activity and keep it on for another. So, given our underlying inferiority and sense of inferiority is perfectionists and our tendency to view ourselves negatively, often what that also means is that we're going to criticize ourselves more harshly when we perceive we don't meet certain standards that are set by our society, specifically when it comes to social situations, and much like that avoidance we were talking about before, often that comes out as if I don't know how I'm going to be in this situation, if I don't have a game plan, if I'm not sure. I may as well avoid it because in those situations they could provide an opportunity for me to be exposed to feel shame and self consciousness, and that really mixes in with our social anxiety and it exacerbates all of that awkwardness and avoidance that we discussed before. And then there's the overthinking. Anyone who said the wrong thing or done something that they think was embarrassing in front of others will know the feeling of being haunted by that memory for weeks to come. That like cringe when you're like lying in bed and you remember that one time you did that one thing, and it's like that is the entire universe. At that moment, that is all you can think about, feeling the need to relive it again and again. Despite the sting is such a common experience. It's like a wound that we won't let heal because we fall into this faulty belief that if we contemplate this situation over and over again, somehow we'll find some closure or the pain will lessen. I always think about the metaphor of its like glass being washed around in the sea that eventually comes sand. You know, if we keep washing over this memory in our mind slowly will become smaller and smaller. The more we force ourselves to feel our embarrassment, the more we might become immune to it, or maybe on the other hand, we punish ourselves with it in order to prevent situations like the one we just lived through. Here's the truth, though, that tendency to overthink will only further in French, that cycle of anticipatory anxiety, avoidance, post event rumination and spiraling. It's really difficult to feel like our social anxiety is under our control. But also we're not aiming for the complete absence of those thoughts or to suppress those feelings entirely. I think that would be equally as maladaptive as social avoidance itself, because some part of us does need to have that healthy level of perception of other's feelings and how to respond to their social cues and receptiveness to other people to be socially adaptable humans. But when we let that fear hold us back from genuine connection or the possibility for connection because we are scared of what other people might think, I really believe we miss out on a lot of the beautiful experiences and surprises in life, even when sometimes they're a little bit uncomfortable. So what we want to do is replace that perfectionism with authenticity. Instead of being committed to impressing other people, remain committed to behaving in alignment with who you are, not what other people expect you to be. So what does that look like? Authenticity is really our capacity to identify and be loyal to our true selves, even the things we don't love, to be comfortable with the ways we're different, regardless of all the things society and others and your social anxiety is going to say. I think it's also about recognizing that we are incredibly multidimensional people. There is no one else like us, and our love for ourselves isn't dependent on someone else's acceptance of who we believe we are and our true selves. I think, really, at its core, authenticity comes from a place of confidence, even if that confidence isn't real, even if we need to fake it till we make it for a while, reinforcing though that it doesn't matter if other people don't like you, because you like yourself. It doesn't matter if you make mistakes, because mistakes make really good stories, And it really doesn't matter if other people think you're weird or awkward, because you know who you are, their opinion is very much fleeting. You don't have to engage with them if that's how they're going to choose to treat you, and you're going to choose to love those parts of you regardless. You know, if someone decides to make a snap judgment of your character based on one moment or one instant, that says a lot more about them than it says about you. Really, at the end of the day, it says so much about their closed mindedness, but also their insecurity that they're looking to minimize your acceptance of yourself to feel better about themselves. These reminders, when implemented regularly in the face of socially anxious thoughts, really recondition our brain to see social situations not as scary or deserving of a few response, but as opportunities in which we can prove ourselves and further deepen our character. This might still be accompanied by a little bit of anxiety. That's normal, that's totally natural to feel some nerves. But the thing about anxiety is that it feels a lot like excitement, and we can use our thoughts to treat that feeling like energy and motivation rather than as something to fear. You tell yourself before an event, before you need to meet new people that you're excited by that feeling, that you're excited by the possibility, and turn that churning stomach, those sweaty palms, all of those physical symptoms into a good feeling that is excitement, not fear, rather than one that can hold you back. The other way to rewire our cognitive distortions, particularly around the possibility of judgment from others, is to use what I call these so what or the what next? Method. So often, when we encounter social anxiety, if we immediately jump to the worst case scenario and we let our brains catastrophize and viewer situation is considerably worse than it actually is, we really get stuck in that thought pattern. When we catastrophize, we relinquish control over our thoughts and over our lives. So we need to realize that those thoughts can be changed and that they might not be rational. So think back to an experience that maybe caused you to cringe at yourself and feel that shame. For a second. Let's say you think someone you met didn't like you instead of feeling like that's the end of the world, ask yourself, so what? And maybe the answer to that is, well, if they didn't like me, they might think that I'm a bad person. So what? So they may tell their friends, So what? So their friends weren't like me, So what will the world end? Will you be completely outcast? Will you die? Will the worst case scenario happen? Because that's what your brain's trying to tell you, that this is somehow the worst thing to ever happen to you, that it means more than it needs to. But when you push back on that thinking, when you ask that feeling, so what, So what if that's what happened? You bring back that sense of control. You realize that the outcome you think will happen most likely won't, and that it also will never be as bad as you think. Control that cognitive distortion, try and recognize the ways that your brain is lying to you, and finally treat your emotions as just friendly creatures trying to help you out, like advice rather than truth, because that's really what they are. All that worry and anxiety that we feel from time to time. It may have come from a past situation where we were rejected or we felt excluded or disliked, and that event probably really hurt. But the thing is is that we survived it. We're still here, still breathing. You're listening to this episode. But our brain likes to take those past events and apply them to what it thinks us similar scenarios to protect us. However, we can't predict the future. Our brain cannot do that. Just because something happened in the past doesn't increase the likelihood of it happening in the future, and it also does not say anything about who you are. Just like you are not your emotions, you are also not your past. So instead of thinking I'm embarrassing, I'm awkward, I'm cringe, replace that with that situation made me feel anxious. That situation was uncomfortable, But that is just an emotion that is not who I am. I'm going to give you for final affirmations to repeat to yourselves when you find that you're maybe investing too much in other people's opinions or the fear of a future situation or what could go wrong. Number one, no one is judging you as closely as you are judging yourself. Number two, the opinions of others do not determine your character. Number three, you are never going to be criticized by someone who's doing better than you. Number four, you are going to choose to be authentic over being perfect. I know it can be hard to live with those thoughts of what if people don't like me, what if I've humiliated myself, what if I say something wrong? But really true freedom really does begin when we see that those thoughts are not going to change the outcome. Right, It's just fear. It's just fear, and fear is just a feeling. It's not the truth, it's not your reality. All you can do is kind of come to every situation with authenticity, confidence, kindness towards other people. And I think that most of the time that is reciprocated. And once again, if they don't like you, that is such a disappointment for them, That is such a loss because you are the type of person who will elevate their life the way that you elevate your own and those around you. And you are sure of that, and you know that about yourself, and you know that whatever they think about you, that is not going to change that truth. So I think that's all we have time for today a little brief episode on social anxiety, and I hope that if this is something you're struggling with, that you learn some important skills, but also a deeper knowledge of why this might be going on, what kind of cognitive distortions are really causing this. It's also something I deal with. I totally understand what it feels like to sometimes almost feel sick thinking about having to interact with other people and really worrying about how it's going to turn out. But sometimes you just got to feel the fear and do it. Anyways, That's something we say on the show all the time, so hopefully that has resonated with you in some way or another. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening right now, follow us on Instagram at that Psychology podcast if you have some thoughts on this episode, if you have an episode suggestion, if you just want to share what's on your mind, building that community over there and hearing what's going on in your lives, And as always, we will be back next week with another episode