How to overcome social fear:
You don’t have a choice, lol.
You just have to do it anyway, lol.
So just go do it, lol. Just get to it, lol.
Daily Metric:
Face a social fear every single day.
This is the holy grail. The rest of this article is just tools to make sure the above happens more consistently and effectively, but if you’re not going out and facing your social fears intentionally and immersively every single day, none of the below “tips and tricks” matter. So, keep your eyes on the prize ☝️. Track it by installing and using some daily habit tracker app on your phone.
Consistently taking meaningful action and being patient and taking it easy despite setbacks are key here.
Also remember that you have probably been programming these negative core beliefs for decade(s). So when you don’t see results after meaningfully taking action for a few weeks or a few months, remember, that you are fighting against decade(s) of programming. So take it easy. Do not let minor setbacks completely dissuade you. Get back on that horse. Keep pushing forward. This takes time.
Remember, SETBACKS are part of the process. As long as you are aware when you have a setback, and you label it as such, you know that it is just another step in the plan and you know what to do next then, which is take some rest, but not too much, and start back up small and gradually amp it back up again.
And also, especially when you’re doing well — don’t get arrogant — keep putting in the work. Action trumps everything else. Wisdom without action is completely useless. Literally 0% use. So go do stuff. Execute. Every single day. Consistently. Meaningfully.
It’s very important to observe and notice things in your life which are kinda uncomfortable to do, but they are good for you and feel good in the process itself, versus things that you do for quick dopamine hits where neither the process nor the feeling after it is tasteful and instead it is vile and disgusting.
Another way to look at it is — you don’t have any other choice. The path of effort and hard work towards your goals might be painful, but so is the path and vile and sloth. Might as well get something in return for all that pain.
Objective:
Remember, the goal is to rewire your brain to see reality as it is so that we can operate optimally within that reality. This is key. We are not going to keep doing scarier and scarier things, we are instead going to realize that things are nowhere near as scary as we think they are, and in that new reality we will be able to take more risks than before because we now realize taking those kinds of risks has nowhere near that amount of cost or probability of failure as we used to think they had. There will be a cost and probability of failure, but the only difference is you’ll realize its true values which are much less than what you thought, given that you have something like a social anxiety disorder.
Sorry to repeat, but this is key. We are not trying to be delusion-ally confident. We are instead trying to realize that we were delusion-ally under-confident because of false beliefs and negative reality distortions in our mind, and we’re removing them now to come to confidence through an accurate perception of reality and an accurate perception of the risks associated with taking certain actions.
Doesn’t mean that we are going to get whatever we want. Doesn’t mean that every single person you interact with from now on will fall in love with you. It just ties you to making good bets in life, because now you know about the odds and the costs. So you will be less afraid of going up to that girl and asking her out, because your model of reality allows you to do it. Whether she says yes or no is irrelevant and out of the scope of any type of self-improvement you can ever do. We can’t control her state of mind. We can’t “game” her any more than just improving ourselves. This is why they say, “attract, don’t chase”. This actually allows you to be more authentic, in turn attracting people that you actually like back, instead of those who just like you for your fake front and vice versa.
So, it is not outcome-oriented, but ideally, the way you should choose tasks is still based on some desired outcomes. What I mean by that is work on areas in your life you suck at and want to improve at. Pick your battles. You don’t necessarily need to improve every aspect of social fear. You could potentially start singing a song loudly in the middle of a crowd to face your social fears but is that optimal if it’s not helping you improve your life? No it isn’t. Well, there might be some transference, but again, if you want bigger biceps, focus on biceps, not lats, even if the lats exercise has some bicep activation. So while you could be the most socially confident person ever, if you don’t take action towards what you want, you could be the most socially confident sad guy.
So work backwards. Choose an end-goal like say you want a girlfriend. Then working backwards you might realize you need to start talking to people around you more, people you know first, and then people you don’t know yet. You can start with talking to people you are not sexually attracted to. Then eventually start talking to people you are sexually attracted to. (there are many ways to gradually dial-up fear, these were just a few, be creative and ask yourself how you can break things down into easier more manageable chunks). Working backwards also allows you to have “a why” such that when you don’t feel like doing something, you still do it “for the eventuality”.
So, to sum it up, the objective is to: Take an area of your life where your own cognitive distortions are severely hampering with your ability to succeed, and then working backwards to slowly chip away those cognitive distortions to operate optimally in the realm of reality with a true understanding of the odds and the costs of failure at hand, thereby empowering yourself with the ability to take fearless action, and eventually reap the rewards.
Process:
To achieve that objective, we will essentially be doing two things:
(1) EXPOSURE. (avoidance, stepladders, safety behaviors).
(2) AWARENESS. (attention focusing, thought challenging).
Now, in more detail:
EXPOSURE:
EXPOSE yourself to fear stimuli. You need to do this to start slowly letting your brain get a glimpse at reality, this might be painful, as your brain in it’s current state will be screaming SCARY!!! AVOID!!!! because of it’s distorted view of reality. So we’ll familiarize ourselves with the following concepts to do exposure tasks: (more details later):
AVOIDANCE.
STEP-LADDERS.
SAFETY BEHAVIORS.
AWARENESS:
Become AWARE of reality. The goal is not to keep doing scary things, the goal is to become very comfortable in situations where you currently are irrationally afraid. So you need to complete the feedback loop you started with exposure by raising your awareness around that exposure. (These things are also used as coping mechanisms to direct and ground your attention and thoughts to reality).
ATTENTION TRAINING. — You need to open your eyes to collect evidence. If you keep spiraling in negative thoughts and stay in your own head, you will not be able to truly make yourself see things as they are.
THOUGHT CHALLENGING. — your thoughts and your deeply embedded core beliefs. — THIS IS IMPORTANT. Because life is not all roses and rainbows. You will FAIL. But the goal here is not to succeed in interacting with every single person you meet, but to eradicate your negative thoughts and deeply embedded core beliefs about what failure truly means. Use the evidence you collected and use cold hard logic to dispute any negative thoughts and core beliefs you have. If there’s no direct evidence, the claims your mind is making are inadmissible. This allows you to maintain a realistic world view about the costs and probabilities involved. Again, remember, even if you have evidence of failing, do you truly have evidence of failing? Just because she doesn’t text you back she could be busy, but your negative core belief will make you think nope I’m a loser. Even if you literally hear her say you’re a loser, do you truly have evidence of that core belief? Like, did what she say the ultimate truth of the world? And also, if you truly did perform loser-like behavior, and she’s right, does that mean it’s the end of the world? Just because you fumbled with some people doesn’t mean you’ll fumble with every single person ever. As long as you keep working on going out there improving your mindset you will eventually meet people who you’ll deeply connect with. But it takes time and effort so you need to challenge these negative thoughts and not give up based on a distorted notion of reality. Be very cold and objective against the self-sabotaging parts of your brain. Be very harsh on the parts of your mind that are being harsh on you. “Anxiety is literally just conspiracy theories about yourself.”
1 — EXPOSURE:
1.1: — AVOIDANCE:
Problem: You just don’t seem to have any outlet to face your social fears. And you’re stuck in a cycle of procrastination or laziness. You just can’t seem to start, or just can’t seem to be consistent with facing your social fears every single day.
Solution: The first step is just going out with the intention of facing your social fears. Once you go out and actually see people around you, where there is potential for reaching out to them, you will already start feeling much better. The most probable reason you’re not getting off your ass is you’re probably thinking way too far off into the future and that anxiety is killing you. So just step out with the promise of that potential itself. No need to imagine doing crazy scary things.
Avoidance is a short term solution to feeling scared — which results in long term anxiety. If you avoid a social situation you’re scared of, you get instant relief. But that’s at the cost of never testing and challenging your negative thoughts and core beliefs thereby resulting in life-long anxiety.
To decide where to go, just work backwards, i.e., what is your desired end-result, and what kind of social fears would you progressively need to go through to make that end-result make “sense” to your brain. Examples of places you can go to — society, gym, bars, cafes, parks, etc. Just like to build your physical muscles, you really need to go to the gym, can’t really build them lying on your bed jacking off to porn. Same with your social fear muscles.
1.2: — STEPLADDERS:
You can use this both when you’re just starting off, or if you’ve been doing it for a while and have just been dealt with a major blow/setback, start back small and keep showing up.
Problem: You went out, but you just can’t seem to face your social fears.
Solution: REMEMBER TO BREAK IT DOWN. REMEMBER TO MAKE IT EASIER. Key word here is REMEMBER, because quite often, we “obviously know” that we need to break things down into manageable chunks, but in the moment we try to do something way out of our capabilities and break down ourselves.
Examples of breaking things down — instead of talking to someone you’re attracted to, talk to someone you’re not attracted to; instead of cracking a joke, just ask an innocuous question, you get the gist. Just keep making it easier until you can actually face your social fears.
Just like the gym, you need to progressively overload the weights, you can’t expect to lift the heaviest weights in the gym right off the bat if your muscles are not strong enough yet, you might end up injuring yourself. Of course, once your fear muscles adapt to a certain level of fear, you can dial it back up gradually.
It takes time, but some days, you’ll be surprised how fast progressions happens in the same day as well. But of course, you need to maintain it, so you need to keep doing it every single day.
1.3: — SAFETY BEHAVIORS:
Else, their’ll always be this IN-FATHOMABLE WALL between you and others.
Many times you don’t need to do something crazy, you need to do something normal so authentically that people just drop their guards. For that, you need to DROP YOUR GUARD, immensely, and fiercely.
A guard dropped good eye contact and genuine smile is worth 10,000 times more than a guarded and faked front of a 10 word intro.
A guard dropped “hi” is 10,000 times more potent than a guarded “you’re really cute, can I get your number?”
A guard dropped “huh” is 10,000 times more funnier than a guarded well-prepared joke.
FULLY IMMERSE YOURSELF IN FEAR. LEAN INTO IT. AS LONG AS YOU LOOK AWAY, IT SHALL REMAIN. BUT LOOK AT IT IN THE EYE, AND IT SHALL DISAPPEAR. (IT’S IRRATIONAL, AFTER ALL).
WHAT ARE YOU HIDING? OWN IT. OWN WHO YOU ARE. Learn to feel the feelings — good, bad; comfortable, uncomfortable. You are probably not fully immersing yourself in your fears and are putting up a front to “look cool” instead of being your true authentic self.
So if you have been (1) going out (2) facing fears step by step, but still not seeing any gains, make sure to truly lean into the fear without any small inhibitions — examples: don’t avoid pathways where you might meet people, don’t walk faster or slower to avoid people, don’t plan going to or leaving a place to avoid people, don’t wear earphones to avoid people, don’t use alcohol or drugs to “loosen up”, make strong eye contact, speak louder, take your time, lower the bar for what you think you can say, etc.
Safety behaviors are kinda like a subtle forms of avoidance. If you go out to engage in social situations but still incorporate safety behaviors, you’re just telling your brain “it is OK to socialize as long as I put up a front”. So SLOW DOWN and PROACTIVELY STAY IN THE FEAR SITUATION LONGER.
I like the gym analogy of form failure — i.e., you are not going to get bigger muscles only if you go to the gym and lift weights, you really need to lift until your muscles are so tired you cannot lift anymore while keeping good form. Only that will give your muscles stimulus to grow. The first few reps are just warm up, only the last few reps when it gets really difficult is where real growth is. So you need to instead start telling your brain through action that “it is OK to socialize and fully immerse myself in fear and lean into it further and nothing catastrophic is going to happen” and only then will your brain start to rewire and form new neural pathways allowing you to be super confident socially.
2 — AWARENESS:
2.1: — ATTENTION TRAINING:
If you’re overthinking and staying in your head instead of fully engaging with the situation.
Solution: Ground yourself to reality. When you look fear in the eye, it loses its meaning and it disappears. Pay attention to the facial expressions of people around you instead of spiraling in your own thoughts. Focus on the conversation. Be in the present moment. Ground yourself into reality by slowing down, breathing, naming a thing you can: {see, hear, taste, touch, smell}.
2.2: — THOUGHT CHALLENGING:
Problem: You are facing fears, but you are not adapting to them. ideally, over time, your fear muscles should grow and you should be able to lift up those fear weights with relative ease. this might happen because while you’re exposing your muscles to stress and breaking them down, your are not giving them adequate resources to build them back up.
Solution: YOUR THOUGHTS ARE NOT REALITY.
QUESTION EVERY THOUGHT. QUESTION EVERY ASSUMPTION.
For the exact same situation, two different people will have different thoughts and therefore feelings based on their internal lens of how the world works and who they are — i.e. core beliefs.
You can dig deeper if you keep asking why on a negative thought and reveal it’s baselessness by showing that there’s no concrete evidence for it.
This is a very useful tool. You can use it before after and during your fear tasks.
Before: (they can help you drop avoidance): you might get anxious before you even start thinking about doing a certain thing. it’s kind of like a nano fear task of it’s own. you need to analyze your thoughts and through evidence, come up with a more realistic picture.
During: (they can help you drop safety behaviors): You might start spiraling with negative thoughts while you’re in a fear situation. then you will start putting up a protected inauthentic front not allowing yourself to fully test your fears. in that case you need to be quicker and challenge your negative thoughts and assumptions to drop those safety behaviors.
After: Even after a situation, you might be familiar with retroactive cringing — that too is a form of cognitive distortion, again, challenge those thoughts.
Steps required:
Negative predictions, visualize them - to be specific about your fears, what do you actually mean? “I will look like an idiot” or “They will think I am an idiot”. The problem is that when we make such a general statement, it is unclear exactly what we mean. Specifically, what does looking like an “idiot” actually mean?
Look at contrary evidence — they could be from the past from your fear logs, they could be in the present from attention training, (evidence like a law court — cross-examine your shadow and ask for concrete evidence and provide your own concrete evidence to the opposite effect) — find objective evidence against negative thoughts — instead of thinking there’s a defect in you
Come up with more realistic probability and consequences.
Visualize a helpful image. If the situation plays out in the way that is most likely, what will that look like?