Social fear

What possibilities are you afraid of in those situations?

You're most likely overly concerned and excessively cautious about doing the right thing. You're acting in a way that you think other people will like you for. Making a mistake means failure or rejection to you. To avoid that kind of pain, problem, and negative experience your mind becomes hyper aware of danger. So your mind prepares your body (with fear) in an attempt to protect itself from what you perceive to be dangerous (failure / rejection / making mistakes).

People tend to waste so much energy and time worrying about things that they can’t control, that they become paralyzed and fail to act on the things they can control. The stress that comes from spending your energy and attention on things you can't control primes your brain to see more problems than solutions, reduces your ability to figure out what is and isn’t in your control, and blunts motivation to take action on the things you do have influence over.

You believe that you shouldn't make mistakes, fail, or get rejected. That's your "how it's supposed to be".

How things really are in reality is that you have to make mistakes, fail, and get rejected in order to gain competency and confidence at something outside your comfort zone. In reality, you're imperfect just like everyone else who has ever lived.

When how things really are in reality is clashing with your belief of how things are supposed to be, that's when you experience tension / anxiety / fear. Because deep down you know that unless you're perfect and your desired outcome is guaranteed (which doesn't exist in reality) then you can't act because that would shatter your belief of how things are supposed to be.

Perfectionism is the result of a mental obsession with achieving the “ideal”—as a minimum requirement—in all situations and areas of life.

Perfectionism: obsession with the “ideal.” Perfectionism represents a belief system about how life should work—not how life actually does work, but how it should. This is a crucial point. Perfectionists live in an all-encompassing world of “shoulds.” They especially direct this toward themselves. They “should” be this, they “should” have done that, this “shouldn’t” have happened to them. And, in every case, what actually did happen never measures up to their judgment about what should have happened. Which leads to fear and procrastination. Perfectionism leads to a perpetual dissatisfaction with the past and pessimism about the future.

Whenever you play it safe, become overly cautious / excessively careful, avoid rejection / failure / mistakes that lead to experience and competence / uncertainty / tension / going outside your comfort zone / taking risks, escape from necessary pain / problems / negative experiences, try to control situations and other people, etc.... you reinforce the fearful belief that you can't handle reality. That you need easy, certain, and instant gratification (porn / drugs / alcohol / junk food).

You condition yourself to escape difficult and scary situations that are necessary to develop yourself and your reality. You're supposed to fail and get rejected. That's how you gain competence and confidence, but if you have a story in your mind that you have to be perfect and that you live in a delusion that everything is supposed to work in your favor and everyone is supposed to accept you, then you can't start the process of gaining competence and confidence. In the beginning it takes repeated courage with something you're incompetent and insecure about. Escaping that process just conditions you to become weaker while reality becomes a bigger and bigger mountain for you to climb.

You don't have to play it safe. You don't have to control the situations and people around you. You don't have to prepare for the unknown. Let go of the story that you're not supposed to fail or get rejected. All you can do is your best in the present moment. The present moment is the only reality that you can live.

Start doing the scary and difficult things that you know you should be doing to become the person that you want to be and have the life that you want to have. Start conditioning yourself to face pain, problems, and negative experiences. Start reinforcing the belief that "no matter what happens, I'll handle it".

Rejection? Failure? Looking foolish? Mistakes? I'll handle it. I might not know how and I might fuck up, but I'll figure it out. I'll handle it. I might be uncertain of the outcome, but I'm certain with this process and I accept that this is where I currently am while attempting to get better. I'm insecure and incompetent at this thing right now, but I'll handle it.

If you're attached to a specific outcome, then you're already fucked. Because you won't allow yourself to gain experience via failure and rejection. You'll reinforce the belief that you can't handle whatever happens. That you NEED this to work because you won't be able to handle the alternative.

So what type of person will you be? The person that says "no matter what happens, I'll handle it" or the person that says "I live in a fantasy world where I never fail or get rejected because I can't handle reality"?

 

From personal experience, i still have a fair measure of anxiety when socialising to the point that I'll most likely shake doing a personal presentation and won't really initiate conversations with people I don't really know, but what helped along the line was inadvertently engaging in social situations and coming face to face with the fears. I embarrassed myself in countless and frequent ways until I ultimately became fairly comfortable talking to people, to an extent. Granted that I was placed in those situations as a result of other people's decisions and expectations, (e.g. Compulsorily school social events) what I learned is that if I put myself in uncomfortable and fearful situations, I'll be far more capable of getting over my fears.

I don't know what the best way to describe this is, but I also learned that my brain set a false reality of how people would interact with me and view me in social situations. Yeah, I still had/have people who would openly laugh at me during public speaking occasions or simple person to person one's, but for the most part I started to notice that with each conversation I had, a lot of people didn't care how I packaged my words, whether I spoke without stumbling over my words, whether I came off cringeworthy and embarrassed myself, whether I was awkward, etc. Also, I stopped caring what people thought of me if it didn't jeopardise my character or anyone elses.

At the end of the day it's a personal and complex thing particular to you (what are you worried about? Why are you worried? Etc.) that I can't fully cover to give advice for (Although I do think the above comment might have done a good job) but the above stuff that I typed out is what I've learned from experience.

 

Nice to hear. Things might not heal and change as fast as we would like to, but commitedly taking action against the problems will definitely help. Keep it up, I trust you will do this.

 

Everyone gets stage fear. The more times you overcome it the easier it gets.