How to overcome social anxiety?
One thing a lot of people suffer with, especially these days is being socially anxious. One possible scenario is you enter a classroom, to go a party, or an a date. What might usually happens is your heart will start to pound. Soon you begin to overthink and question why are you there, you start to observe every single little thing you do, you become nervous and overtime all of your actions, and maybe you start to sweat. You fear that what you might say, or do will be judged by others. What if they make fun of you? Or change their opinion about you. In any case one thing us certain, you’re not being yourself at all, this is not you, at least not the fun, talkable, and interesting person you’re when you’re comfortable.
If this situation seems familiar, if this ever happened to you, or if you don’t consider yourself a socially anxious person, so this article will help you to always be yourself without overthinking or getting nervous.
So how can you be yourself every time and in front of everyone?
First, you have to understand that all of us stand out in our own minds. In a 2000 study, called “The Spotlight Effect in Social Judgment – An Egocentric Bias in Estimates of the Salience of One’s Own Actions and Appearance” researchers provided evidence that we’re overestimating how our actions and appearance are seen by others. In the study, students were asked to join a room to fill a questionnaire. Before entering the room, they were stalled and asked to wear a t-shirt with a big picture of a celebrity on it, whether that was Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Marley, and Martin Luther King. The chairs inside the room were positioned in such a way, that every single one of them was looking towards the door, with the intentions that every one could see the student wearing the t-shirt when they enter the room. And you might see where this is going. The study was designed to replicate an embarrassing or uncomfortable social situation. The targeted students were intentionally stalled to be late and so they feel uncomfortable. After the session, the subjects wearing the t-shirts were asked to estimate how many students they think remembered them, while the students in the room were asked if they managed to notice and recall the targeted student or the picture of the celebrity they were wearing.
What they found out is the tested students substantially overestimated how attentive the observers were in that situation. They thought they were noticed and remembered much more than they actually were. They thought that around 45-50% of observers remembered their shirt, while in reality only 5-10% actually did. The study was also repeated with modified versions where students were asked to discuss on a given subject for 20 minutes. In that case students thought their minor mistakes, and their positive contributions were noticed more by fellow students, which was not the case.
The evidence in this research supports that people tend to believe they stand out more in the eyes of others, both positively and negatively, than they actually do. This phenomenon is called “The Spotlight Effect” because people feel that the social spotlight shines better on them. So next time you enter a room, remember thus study, remember The Spotlight Effect and it should calm you down, because you’re noticed less often than you think. If you’re going on a date, remember that your date feels the same social Spotlight on them, and that they are preoccupied with their thoughts to notice your mistakes. There’s this new culture emerging on short videos like Reels and Tik Tok where people start to glamorize ‘main character energy’. The objective reality is that, you’re a secondary character to almost everyone else’s life. And that’s a good thing to remember when you’re feeling anxious in public situations.
And if you’re not convinced that the spotlight effect actually exists, ask yourself this: Why do you almost always remember your own social blunders, but you rarely remember the blunders of other people? And this leads us to the second point. When you’re feeling anxious in a social setting, after thinking of the spotlight effect and realizing that others have the same fears, what you can do next to amplify the effect of this phenomenon and lower your anxiety even more is to start observing other people. The eye is a powerful organ, and aside from receiving visual sensations, it also directs attention. Which is very very important. When you look at something, the region in the brain responsible for focus and attention light up. So if you’re anxious or nervous your first instinct might be to look down or to the side, thus shifting your attention internally. Which is completely wrong. You need to look at other people and shift your focus on them. You cannot think about how awkward you are or that you don’t belong the room, all while looking and paying attention to other people. The mind cannot focus on two things simultaneously, and in your case you can use this limitation of the human brain to your advantage.
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