Embrace your fear of evaluation

Social anxiety is maintained by resistance to the possibility of judgment and rejection, due to intolerance of the feeling of embarrassment and shame and/or catastrophic thinking about the consequences of judgment. Let’s call this fear of evaluation.

Notice my focus on the possibility of judgment and rejection. It’s always a possibility. One thing none of us can control is how other people perceive and respond to us. All the time. It’s always uncertain. We never have any control over it.

Some of us persistently have the feeling of certainty about relationships. What a gift. My sense is that a lot of people don’t have the good fortune to persistently feel safe and certain about all of their relationships across their life. Many people have some relationships where they feel persistently safe and comfortable and others that trigger apprehension about judgment or rejection.

If you are sensitive to feelings of embarrassment, shame, and loneliness, the possibility of those feelings is going to seem like a threat. Everyone feels embarrassed sometimes and everyone sometimes feels lonely. If, when you feel those feelings, you criticize yourself, then these feelings become bigger threats. If you avoid experiences that might make you feel embarrassed or lonely at all costs, situations that could trigger those experiences will give you anticipatory anxiety and feel like triggers.

Fear of evaluation is a complex mix of biological sensitivity to embarrassment, shame, and loneliness plus reactions to previous experiences and cognitive and behavioral responses to your current life.

Fear of evaluation can be prominent for both people who have been judged and rejected a lot and those who have never been judged or rejected. Notice that your reaction to your own history of rejection matters more than your actual experience.

You could think, I’ve been rejected so many times that I just can’t bear it again.

OR, you could embrace it as an opportunity:

I’ve been rejected so many times… And, here I am! I can handle it! Rejection doesn’t scare me!

Similarly, you could think, I’ve never been judged or rejected in a significant way before. If it were to happen, it would ruin my life. I can’t make mistakes because I can’t risk being rejected.

OR, embrace that as an opportunity:

I’ve never been rejected, so I wonder what would happen if I tried? If I tried something uncertain, where I might not succeed, would something catastrophic actually happen or would I just handle it?

The important message here is that your response to your present life circumstances is more important for overcoming social anxiety than “processing” the emotions from your history. And, social anxiety is common for those without traumatic interpersonal histories, too.

That said, if you’ve lived through traumatic interpersonal experiences — including but not limited to persistently critical, rejecting, or emotionally neglectful parents, bullying, ostracization, shaming, and discrimination due to factors like gender, sexuality, race, religion, disability status, nationality or political beliefs — new experiences where you might feel judged might, understandably, give you some anticipatory anxiety. Before, during, or afterwards you might have memories of previous experiences and ruminate about them.

When you notice that you feel sensitive, insecure, or embarrassed about something that someone else could judge, remember this:

● Don’t minimize and don’t hedge. Refrain from making a joke about yourself, your appearance, or your performance at the task. Making fun of yourself before others due does not protect you from embarrassment.

● Don’t try to figure out what other people are thinking. Whether through the questions you ask or the replay in your head, it might feel like you have more control if you think you know what others are thinking. You don’t know. You can’t know. Act how you want to act and let go of trying to control how others respond.

● Don’t ask for reassurance and don’t check messages or social media. You can tell by the feeling in your body whether the texts you are sending or what you are posting on social media is a preference or a compulsion. If it feels urgent, and like you need to do it, slow down. Observe what you are thinking and feeling. What do you fear? Is it actually happening? If it happened, what skills do you need to access to handle it?

Fear of evaluation is a complex mix of biological sensitivity to embarrassment, shame, and loneliness plus reactions to previous experiences and cognitive and behavioral responses to your current life. Turning the possibility of judgment or rejection into an opportunity can decrease that sensitivity.