Some thoughts on social anxiety/people pleasing etc.

[PurpleTree]

So i think a lot of my (and maybe some of yours too) social anxiety comes from wanting to be loved by everybody.

I want everybody to love me, my looks, my thoughts etc.

Which obviously is impossible.

So then i try to micromanage peoples perception of me which is pointless and exhausting.

a lot of this is subconscious.

 

If instead of thinking i hope she/he/they love me, i could come to think i hope she/he hates me

then i could be free at last  because if they hate me already there's no need to micromanage anything and i can't change it

 

any thoughts on this?

[Windappreciator]

nothing wrong with wanting to be loved you guys

[PurpleTree]

1 minute ago, Windappreciator said:

nothing wrong with wanting to be loved you guys

yea it's normal human behaviour to an extent

but if it's so deeply ingrained from some childhood abandonment issues or whatever that i can't live my life the way i'd like

and i'm blocked all the time, then there is something very wrong with it  

so that's why maybe i have to go to the other extreme of, i don't care if they hate me

[Windappreciator]

32 minutes ago, PurpleTree said:

yea it's normal human behaviour to an extent

but if it's so deeply ingrained from some childhood abandonment issues or whatever that i can't live my life the way i'd like

and i'm blocked all the time, then there is something very wrong with it  

so that's why maybe i have to go to the other extreme of, i don't care if they hate me

you can do both!

but whatever you are comfortable with

Edited December 17, 2021 by Windappreciator

[PurpleTree]

20 minutes ago, Windappreciator said:

you can do both!

that would be great sure.

but i can probably only hold one concept or thought in my head at once.

and the pull of social anxiety is strong, makes me not think straight

[Windappreciator]

41 minutes ago, PurpleTree said:

that would be great sure.

but i can probably only hold one concept or thought in my head at once.

and the pull of social anxiety is strong, makes me not think straight

That's  alright regardless, i got your back.

BTW The idea is to combine both into one in a way where you don't have to sacrifice the benefits of both.

[Breakingthewall]

I understand you very well! I hate that feeling of being a bitch looking for approval. for me the trick is to look very carefully. as soon as I say or do something designed to elicit approval, admiration, etc., I detect it, it produces a cloying, humiliating feeling. like: how much more are you going to lower yourself, bitch? in exchange for? that they think you're cool? Can you be more pathetic? clown .... haha it sounds like a lot of self-punishment, but if you don't correct those behaviors, where is your self-esteem? What are you? a total idiot. as you detect more and more of those micro / bitch behavior, you find them less tolerable, until you prefer to be quiet before falling into it

[Preety_India]

For me social anxiety is a genetic disorder that I have suffered all my life so when people tell me to go out and make friends that's like telling a person who is badly injured to get up and walk. 

I inherited this disorder genetically through my mom, she had it as well. 

What you're describing looks closer to peer pressure than social anxiety. 

My anxiety is not associated with approval seeking. It simply exists as a fear of people watching me. 

Now coming to the topic of people pleasing and the pressure to fit in.. Don't give in to people pressure or social pressure. 

I totally agree with you that when you no longer feel the need to be loved, in the same moment you're relieved of the pressure to impress someone. 

I believe in being true to oneself. So I simply don't care much about what people think about me, and if this means that I have to lose people, so be it, at least I know I honored myself by not bending to whatever people wanted out of me. 

You need a fierce attitude, people might call it arrogance, but you have to be you at any cost. 

Also there is a secret advantage to this. Let me tell you. If you consistently practice being detached from people's approval, then you eventually meet(or you eventually attract) the kind of people who genuinely want to be with you for who you are rather than for what they want you to be. 

 

[Osaid]

Interesting, i'll try it lol

 

[Osaid]

19 minutes ago, Khr said:

You don’t want to make people hate you, you want to constantly remind yourself that you’re what matters most in your life. Sit down and write down everything that makes you happy - if everyone you know was dead what would you be doing with your life?

When people hate you, they are still giving you attention. Hate is not what makes people feel bad, it’s the indifference. Plus growing up with toxic parents you probably equate “negative” attention with some kind of love and and care.

Well, OP can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not about doing things to make people hate you more, but its more like a shift in mindset. You go from "how can I get this person to like me" to "lets see how much this person ends up hating me". So now, instead of manipulating people by hiding your personal beliefs and values so that they like you, you don't care about that more, and instead you're trying to see how much hate being authentic gets you. It might seem extreme, but tbh I think an extreme shift is needed because social anxiety is an extreme thing. I've never even tried it yet so we'll see.

It's a similar concept to getting yourself purposefully rejected in order to get over your fear of it, but in this case it's purposefully not pandering to what other people like for the sake of them liking you.

19 minutes ago, Khr said:

When you had toxic upbringing with either a narcissistic parent or just emotionally detached/unavailable parent who just doesn’t see you for who you are, doesn’t see an individual in you, and getting their needs met is a priority most of the time for them - you will learn that you are basically unimportant, you won’t know what your needs are, you may even grow up thinking you shouldn’t be having needs because it’s «bad»… so you will desperately try to have someone see you, see your talents, admire you, etc. 

A healthy parent raising a healthy child with a good self esteem knows how to see and reflect that child’s particular good qualities to the child so that they are confident in themselves and don’t crave that attention from others so much. 

This is interesting, I never thought about how parents could affect social life like that, but it definitely checks out in my case. My parents are definitely like that.

[Osaid]

2 minutes ago, Khr said:

When you have social anxiety your concern typically is that you will say or do something they will cause others to judge you as being anxious, stupid, weak or “crazy”. The reason why it concerns you is because those are probably some of the beliefs you hold about yourself yourself. I think @Nahm told me this before - if someone calls you a teapot, it won’t bother you because you fundamentally know that’s not who you are. 

True, that's very insightful, thanks

[Preety_India]

1 minute ago, Khr said:

When you have social anxiety your concern typically is that you will say or do something they will cause others to judge you as being anxious, stupid, weak or “crazy”. The reason why it concerns you is because those are probably some of the beliefs you hold about yourself yourself. I think @Nahm told me this before - if someone calls you a teapot, it won’t bother you because you fundamentally know that’s not who you are. 

I don't believe this to be completely true. 

For example if someone called me a "whore" and it hurts me, does it mean that I think that deep down im a "whore." absolutely not. It still impacts the psyche and creates feelings of distress because I  don't wish to be labeled something that I'm not and that creates conflict and resistance and the need to give back or retaliate. At the very least it does create feelings of anger at the derogation. 

[JonasVE12]

22 hours ago, PurpleTree said:

So i think a lot of my (and maybe some of yours too) social anxiety comes from wanting to be loved by everybody.

I want everybody to love me, my looks, my thoughts etc.

Which obviously is impossible.

So then i try to micromanage peoples perception of me which is pointless and exhausting.

a lot of this is subconscious.

 

If instead of thinking i hope she/he/they love me, i could come to think i hope she/he hates me

then i could be free at last  because if they hate me already there's no need to micromanage anything and i can't change it

 

any thoughts on this?

You need a more integrative embodiment practice that works with the emotional blockages in your body. Trying to change the thoughts in your mind for you to change your perspective can help, but it is not that holistic and realistic. It is very short term and brings little results. If you have social anxiety, the driver is your body which holds all this suppressed energy. Then your mind is formed around this and completely contracted. The thoughts in your mind are a lot less significant than the emotions in your body. Of course they are interconnected and both important, but changing the content of the thoughts will not help relieve the suppressed energy in your body. It helps though. It is emotions that steer the mind in a certain direction. So we need to work on the level of emotions which are on the level of the body. The body holds the contractions that are responsible for the social anxiety.

In the end, to heal social anxiety, a new minds perspective will not be enough. Your entire body and energetic system needs to be put in situations where it feels challenged, where it is resistant to go into. Where it feels a lot of tension. Then you need to ground that tension into the ground through your body. You need to allow the mind to go crazy and ground it into the earth until you release a lot of trauma energy. Most people will never heal this because they don't have the subtle awareness of the flow of consciousness in their body. 

This proces of exposure needs to be done for years in order to heal permanently. You need consistent daily exposure to these challenging situations. If you are not consistent enough, old patterns will take over. When you are consistent though, a lot faster then you think you will receive a lot of positive validation from your external environment that you are healing. People will receive you well and you first won't believe it, but then slowly your own mind will go on board as well and you become aligned to your own self love and validation and everything becomes healed.

Cold approaching strangers and trying to build rapport with them is what heals social anxiety. Sitting at home thinking about social anxiety and the cause and how you should fix it doesn't do much. I had been in that trap for years until I finally took action, Oh man, that clarity I received was amazing. 

Only people who make it a life goal and priority will heal fully. People in avoidance and thinking too much miss out on the healing opportunities. 

A great starting place are the workshops of the fearless man from YouTube

 

[flume]

Yes, great intuition there!

To quote Arthur Janov, the founder of Primal Therapy:

"The so-called need for self-esteem, for example, is not basic. A loved child feels wanted and worthy. He isn't spending his adult life trying to boost his ego or to feel important. He was important to the only people who counted when he was a baby - his parents. To be unimportant to them means to have 'low self-esteem'.

Being unloved makes one feel unattractive, thus the feeling, 'I could not attract them'. The later struggle then is to attract everyone, regardless of whether or not they really matter to one's life. The neurotic need to be reassured constantly about one's looks happens when you don't feel good about yourself. The child bases his worth in every sense on the love of the parents. Feeling loved allows her to base her worth on yourself."

And further:

"The treatment for low self-esteem is not about trying to feel worthy, nor of ego-boosting exercises. Quite the opposite. Treatment lies in letting oneself feel the devastating feeling of not being wanted or desired. This allows one to see that the inability to love was the parents' problems and was not due to some inherent flaw in the child. This can only happen when one stops struggling against needing constant reassurance, and feels to its depths the lack of love."

[Javfly33]

22 hours ago, JonasVE12 said:

You need a more integrative embodiment practice that works with the emotional blockages in your body. Trying to change the thoughts in your mind for you to change your perspective can help, but it is not that holistic and realistic. It is very short term and brings little results. If you have social anxiety, the driver is your body which holds all this suppressed energy. Then your mind is formed around this and completely contracted. The thoughts in your mind are a lot less significant than the emotions in your body. Of course they are interconnected and both important, but changing the content of the thoughts will not help relieve the suppressed energy in your body. It helps though. It is emotions that steer the mind in a certain direction. So we need to work on the level of emotions which are on the level of the body. The body holds the contractions that are responsible for the social anxiety.

In the end, to heal social anxiety, a new minds perspective will not be enough. Your entire body and energetic system needs to be put in situations where it feels challenged, where it is resistant to go into. Where it feels a lot of tension. Then you need to ground that tension into the ground through your body. You need to allow the mind to go crazy and ground it into the earth until you release a lot of trauma energy. Most people will never heal this because they don't have the subtle awareness of the flow of consciousness in their body. 

This proces of exposure needs to be done for years in order to heal permanently. You need consistent daily exposure to these challenging situations. If you are not consistent enough, old patterns will take over. When you are consistent though, a lot faster then you think you will receive a lot of positive validation from your external environment that you are healing. People will receive you well and you first won't believe it, but then slowly your own mind will go on board as well and you become aligned to your own self love and validation and everything becomes healed.

Cold approaching strangers and trying to build rapport with them is what heals social anxiety. Sitting at home thinking about social anxiety and the cause and how you should fix it doesn't do much. I had been in that trap for years until I finally took action, Oh man, that clarity I received was amazing. 

Only people who make it a life goal and priority will heal fully. People in avoidance and thinking too much miss out on the healing opportunities. 

A great starting place are the workshops of the fearless man from YouTube

 

?  Nail it hard. Yeap, hard work, a pair of balls and less intellectualizing/conceptualizing. 

Goal for 2022: Stop fucking around and follow @JonasVE12 advice more ? 

[JonasVE12]

On 19-12-2021 at 5:05 PM, Javfly33 said:

?  Nail it hard. Yeap, hard work, a pair of balls and less intellectualizing/conceptualizing. 

Goal for 2022: Stop fucking around and follow @JonasVE12 advice more ? 

Haha man, I remember when you started to use grounding and letting energy flow more through your body when you were approaching and instantly you made that one girl at the beach attracted. I heard her giggling from so far away . Really powerful stuff.

Edited December 20, 2021 by JonasVE12

[Javfly33]

6 hours ago, JonasVE12 said:

Haha man, I remember when you started to use grounding and letting energy flow more through your body when you were approaching and instantly you made that one girl at the beach attracted. I heard her giggling from so far away . Really powerful stuff.

???