Self-consciousness — how to stop it stopping you
How do you stop self-consciousness holding you back.
“The less self-consciousness you are, the easier it is to be yourself, and to join in spontaneously with what is going on around you.” Gillian Butler
What happens when you are about to enter a ‘social interaction’ situation with a room full of strangers?
Is it anything like the image below?
You won’t be alone.
Time to take a step back and do the forensics.
What is going on — and what can be done to ease the situation?
How can you adjust your ‘squasher’ thinking/feeling habits that stop you showing up fully as your unsquashed self with joy and impact?
Let’s put ‘self-consciousness’ on the forensics table.
What is self-consciousness?
From my own experience -
For at least half of my life I looked in the mirror a lot.
I remember getting very emotional over clothes — putting on one outfit, taking it off, putting something else on etc.
That feeling of ‘I wonder what they are saying about me’ when leaving an event or a conversation.
Walking down the street and wondering ‘what do I look like’?
Trying to ‘say something interesting’.
Worrying that everyone else is being funny and I was boring.
Crazy conscious about how I was standing, what expression I had on my face..
Trying to ‘be’ rather than just — well — being!
What do all the above have in common?
Being consumed by inner scripts and fear of rejection.
Being inside your head rather than present and curious.
Inside your head is ‘a maze of thought highways cluttered with head-on collisions of sensations and noisy traffic jams of frustrated desires.’
That is a treat of a quote from the well respected Stanford University Professor of Pyschology Philip G. Zimbardo.
Self-consciousness is kind of what it says on the tin!
You can hear your own voice too much!
You are focusing your attention inwards.
All you can think about is what is inside your head — obsessively!
You feel like the spotlight is on you — but not in a good way.
There is actually a thing called ‘The Spotlight Effect’ — deeper dive forensics here. In a nutshell — people are way more pre-occupied with themselves than you!
Let’s pause for a little Eleanor wisdom.
I learned a liberating thing. If you will forget about yourself, whether or not you are making a good impression on people, what they think of you, and you will thing about them instead, you won’t be shy.
Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don’t be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticising you. It’s you attention to yourself that is so stultifying. Eleanor Roosevelt.
And back to Zimbardo —
he argues that there is a ‘public’ and a ‘private’ self-consciousness. The public version being all the ‘do they like me’ axieties. The private version being the internal ‘I don’t like me’ negative talk.
Is there a positive side to being self-conscious?
In his podcast Michael Neill talks about capital ‘S’ self-consciousness. He argues that this is simply “who we are when we are not trying to be somebody.”
Of course we will be aware of our self.
Self-consciousness is inevitable.
Being in touch with our core — our sense of self — is just fine!
Self-awareness is good — self-obsession not so good!
So what can be done about the non-helpful, holding back, joy-leeching ‘capital S’ self-consciousness?
Steps to reduce the squashing part of self-consciousness
First things first — it’s a feeling.
You are allowed to feel it!
Trying to ‘get rid of it’ would be daft and impossible.
BUT…
you do need to keep it from squashing you.
How?
Try these steps — born from experience and always part of the TOTO journey — Try, Observe, Try, Observe.
- Get out of your head!
Focus attention outwards — be present and curious.
I refer to this as adopting a ‘detective mindset’!
This also stops you being in ‘performance mode’.
2. Find activities that get you into a ‘flow state’ — deeper dive forensics here.
When you become aware of the joy of being ‘in flow’ you will also be aware of how this contrasts with your squashing self-conscious experiences.
I have experienced this ‘flow state’ as an actor and more recently as a climber!
But — it will be your thing of course.
It is not surprising that we should believe that our fate is primarily ordained by outside agencies. Yet we have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
3. Be aware of past negative associations.
Decide NOT to think about ‘awkward self-conscious’ experiences from the past.
That one time you walked into a room of strangers and tripped over — and ‘died of embarrasment’.
The time that you sung the wrong note in choir and everbody flinched.
Whatever!
Things happen.
They don’t then happen every time you are in a social situation.
4. Stop assuming you are ‘doing it wrong’.
Keep reminding yourself that there is no ‘ideal’ — they might all be ‘doing it wrong’ — why should it be you? Don’t fall into the ‘comformity’ trap — it will increase your ‘identity gap’ — the gap between ‘how we appear’ and ‘who we really are’. Deep dive on ‘identity gap’ in ‘Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself’ by Dr Joe Dispenza.
5. Find your supportive network.
Detach from people, environments and activities that make you feel useless and ‘less than’. As Zimbardo reminds us in his book ‘Shyness’ — ‘Life is too short to wast time on downers.’
6. Turn detective on your thoughts.
Dr Vlad Beliavsky describes this as ‘putting thoughts on trial’. This is a frequently used technique in CBT and in his book ‘The Pyramid Mind’ he outlines the exercise:
An original disturbing thought is put on trial. The defence is arguing that this thought is true, and the prosecution is arguing that the thought is false. Your role is to be the defence, prosecution, the jury or the judge at the same time. This way you can investigate a situaion from multiple angles.
Crucially — you are being objective and ‘out of your head’!
I also suggest you use the FIBs lense to look closer at ‘habits’ that hold you back.
What are the Fears, Illusions and Baggage that fuel your unhelpful bouts of self-consciousness?
For example:
Fears: They won’t like me.
Illusions: I am unlikable
Baggage: I was told I was unlikable by a teacher/boyfriend/boss
Now picture the scene again
Stay unsquashed and curious :)
Complement this with ‘How to Talk to Strangers’
Exploring your FIBs that are holding you back — unsquashing your self-belief — these are things I create resources on and explore with clients.
I also explore inner barriers — self-inflicted ‘self-squashing’ traps, in my book ‘The Mystery of the Squashed Self’ and my TEDx talk — ‘Beware the Self Squashing Prophecy’.
