I Used to Be Socially Anxious
By: Yann Costa
Tags: Personal Development, Self Improvement, Self Love, Freedom, Personal Growth

1) No one cares about you

I know, that one hurts the ego. And that’s the whole point. The first step to breaking free is to destroy your ego.

Beyond a handful of humans who are very close to you, most people don’t give a damn about anything you do or say. From the moment you were born until your last breath on this Earth. At first glance, it may seem like bad news. Maybe I’ve even offended you by telling you this. However, if you really think about it, this realization is actually liberating.

Look at it this way: if no one cares, then you are free to do whatever you want.

People have their own lives, problems, goals, and plans. The amount of attention you get is infinitely small. Yet your ego is very good at making you believe that others are always judging you.

This is all an illusion.

If you do something really surprising — like playing with an anaconda in a ball pool — the collective attention may turn to you for a few minutes. Then, in a snap of the fingers, life will go on and everyone will have forgotten you forever.

That’s the issue with celebrities in need of media coverage. They end up having to do more and more crazy stuff just to try and get our attention. In an economy where attention has become the scarcest commodity, what were once extreme events are no longer enough to surprise us.

I realized this when I started publishing articles and communicating intensely on social media. Before I did it, I was afraid of how people would react. I told myself that no one was going to take me seriously. I thought that people would think I was an idiot.

Then I did it.

A lot of people encouraged me, others reacted badly to my content, some were surprised. But they all had one thing in common: within a few hours, they had completely forgotten about me. Their limited attention was invested in their lives, not mine.

So much anxiety was relieved at that moment.

Once you understand this, life becomes a playground. The world, a laboratory for experimentation. You are only a drop in the ocean. You might as well enjoy the wave and have fun while you can.

Photo by Myles Tan on Unsplash

2) You are your own judge

“When you point at someone, remember that three of your fingers are pointing at yourself.” — Unknown source

This metaphor teaches us something essential: the way you judge others, and the way you think others judge you, is actually the way you judge yourself.

It wasn’t easy, I know. Take your time and read it again.

The yardstick we use for ourselves is the yardstick we use for the outside world. For this reason, freeing yourself from other people’s judgment consists first of all in freeing yourself from your own judgment.

Stop for a few seconds and think about how those around you make judgments.

Chances are your smart friend is judging people based on their cognitive abilities. She probably admires people who are more educated than she is, and has a slight disdain for others. Your rich and stylish friend probably sees the world as a popularity contest. Again, he probably has an attraction for powerful and charismatic people, while neglecting people with low social status.

The one who is complexed by her body spends her time noticing the beauty of all the other women. Your manic friend can’t help but notice how messy it was in that store you just left. You know what I mean: the way we value ourselves is the way we value the world around us. We measure the value of others on the scale with which we measure our own value.

Therefore, when you judge someone, you are literally judging yourself. Since you are on the same scale, you are forced to admit that you are lower or higher than the person in question. And when you imagine others judging you, all you do is project your own judgment of yourself onto the people around you.

You are much harder on yourself than anyone else.

When I realized this, I first thought that the solution to breaking this infernal circle was to judge myself positively all the time, to “think positive”. But this reasoning brought me right back to the very narcissism I was trying to avoid.

Positive thinking by all means only lulled me into delusion and made me more and more vulnerable to adversity.

The lasting solution is therefore to suspend all unnecessary judgment. In the beginning, the habit of judging will be so ingrained in you that you will continue to do it automatically. It doesn’t matter: observe your judgments, and let them go as they come, without giving them any importance. Don’t get attached.

As you practice this exercise, they will become fewer and fewer, and you will gradually regain control over your mind.

Over time, you will lose the notions of inferiority and superiority, both of which are making you more vulnerable today. You will be able to appreciate your value and the value of others unconditionally, for what they are.

When you free yourself from your own judgment, the judgment of others suddenly becomes irrelevant. Since you have stopped confirming it with your own judgment, the judgment of others becomes insignificant.

3) People love you as much as they hate you

We are social animals. The reason we have trouble letting go is that we try to please others. Or at the very least, not to displease them.

We want to be accepted, respected, even admired. Simply put: we want to be loved. But as always, there is a counter-intuitive phenomenon about this: the more you please some, the less you please others.

The best way to avoid displeasure is to do nothing. Say nothing, express nothing, risk nothing. By being completely neutral, you don’t trigger anyone, don’t offend anyone, don’t push anyone away. But by molding your character to the expectations of others, you also end up not pleasing anyone.

This is due to our need for authenticity. Just as you don’t offend anyone, you don’t inspire anyone. By trying not to push anyone away, you attract no one. And as you try not to offend anyone, you don’t reach anyone either.

The problem is that we only consider the cost of being ourselves. This cost is immediately tangible: when confronted with opposing values, we are potentially exposed to conflict. Or even to rejection.

However, we often forget to consider the benefits of honesty, as these are much less obvious.

While in the short term you will tend to push some people away, in the long term you will attract those who embody values similar to yours. You will make unexpected encounters simply because you have dared to be yourself. These are the relationships that matter. Because unlike the ones you’ve lost, they accept you for who you really are.

They inspire you to be better.

But be careful not to adopt this attitude so that others will love you/hate you. Otherwise, you will fall back exactly into the same logic: to please. The key is not to act so that people will like/hate you, but despite the fact that people love/hate you. In this way, you will inspire authenticity, and the right relationships will flow naturally from it. Without you having to make anything happen.

Photo by Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash

4) You are fully responsible for your self-esteem

Self-esteem is such a fundamental need that the famous psychologist Abraham Maslow decided to integrate it into his pyramid. Right next to eating, breathing, and having a roof over one’s head.

This is not about Sunday brunch or the latest pair of fashionable sneakers. No, self-esteem is serious stuff. In a world where suicide has become the second leading cause of death among young people, it’s even a matter of survival.

There are two ways to build self-esteem:

Self-love Other people’s love (let’s call it “social validation”)

That being said, these years have taught me something essential: you only become completely free from other people’s opinions once you fall deeply in love with yourself.

To depend on social validation for one’s self-esteem is to be at the mercy of others. That is to give up a part of our person, in exchange for a small piece of self-esteem. To live for other people is to engage in a perpetual transaction, the terms of which are brutally unfair.

By following this logic, the minute we get the validation of the others, the question arises: what can I do to keep it? And the minute we lose the love of others, our self-esteem goes away with it.

This is a fragile reliance for a simple reason: we have no control over other people’s opinions. People only see us through their value systems, beliefs, and assumptions. They only see what they want to see, and no one can ever change that.

So we live in a frantic race for self-esteem at the expense of others, while our aspirations wait patiently by our side. That’s why we cling to a career that doesn’t satisfy us, stay in a relationship that doesn’t fulfill us, and buy things we don’t need.

Self-love is the best antidote to narcissism.

If narcissism was a tree, self-insufficiency would be the root of it. Conversely, once you’re self-sufficient, you don’t need to admire or belittle others to feel good.

But unfortunately, many people confuse self-esteem with self-indulgence. They associate self-love with allowing yourself all kinds of pleasures. Convincing yourself that you are special and great, no matter what the reality is.

For this reason, self-esteem is often perceived as a form of narcissism. But I’m talking about a completely different form of self-esteem.

Think about how you would raise a kid you love. You wouldn’t be stuffing him with chocolate cake and gifts all day long. Unless you wanted to raise an ungrateful asshole. No, you would teach him patience, earn his rewards, and become independent. So why would you do anything different with yourself?

Unlike toxic self-esteem that revolves around external values such as social validation or money, healthy self-esteem is based on the things you control in your life.

For example, you can’t directly control how much money you currently earn, but you can control the efforts you make and the skills you build to feel useful to society. Instead of losing esteem for your lack of money, you gain esteem for your work ethic and your ability to develop new knowledge. Instead of being eaten up because you are momentarily single, you pride yourself on being an honest person who treats everyone with respect and dignity.

These values will make you feel like a deserving person and will eventually attract the things you want in your life, which will further strengthen your self-esteem. They will always be under your control and will help you avoid a lot of anxiety.

Only you know why you do what you do. As long as you are comfortable with it, no one can take it away from you. Everything else is just frivolous opinions.

It’s your life, not theirs.

Once you stop basing your self-esteem on social validation and start basing it on self-esteem, you’re in control. You become your own yardstick. You have an infinite supply of self-esteem because you are the one who sets the rules.

You stop torturing yourself to get the approval of others and start treating yourself the way you would treat a loved one. You suddenly start taking care of yourself. Doing what’s best for you. After all, why would you mistreat someone you deeply love?

Photo by Dane Wetton on Unsplash

5) Freedom starts here

It was only when I decided to live despite the opinions of others that I started feeling truly free. Every time you alienate your nature to please other people, you add an extra bar to the cage you’re building around yourself.

It’s time to break out of that cage.

Others may tell you that self-esteem borders on narcissism, and that a certain amount of repression is necessary to live in a society. This worldview is characteristic of a resentment that the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used to call Sklavenmoral (slave morality).

Hiding your intentions and desires for fear of displeasing is a waste of time. Not only for yourself but also for others. And guess who wants to lose the most precious, if not the only thing we possess?

No one.

Humanity is characterized by non-aligned values and divergent desires. In this sense, human interaction will always be conflicting. Avoiding conflict is simply postponing it. And the more they accumulate, the more they grow, like little piles of snow that together end up causing a deadly avalanche.

Occasional conflicts are necessary to adjust your relationships. Expressing your positions clearly does not necessarily make you a selfish person, as long as you do so with respect and consideration for others. On the contrary, not expressing them potentially leads you to become a vicious and manipulative person, for no matter how much you contain yourself, you can never really escape them.

“Life begins the second you stop caring about your self-image.” — Raphaël Enthoven, French essayist

Just like sleep, the love you crave so much is one of those things you can only find once you stop looking for it. The more you try to sleep, the longer insomnia lasts. The more you try to be funny, the fewer people laugh. The more you try to be happy, the less you live.

Well, the more you try to please others, the more lonely you’ll feel. People will accept you as long as you dare to open up. After all, how can they love you if they don’t know who you are?