To say that I had crippling social anxiety would be an overstatement. My anxiety was present but not overwhelming. It did, however, drive me into a corner very quickly. An isolated hole that at first was being dug for me. Somewhere along the way though, I started doing the digging. I began to actually relish in the hollow feeling I had and I stopped fighting it for awhile. For a good part of my high-school life I felt a significant amount of fear talking to people. Having never received an actual diagnosis for social anxiety I can’t automatically claim that I had/have it. But after reading this chapter and understanding more about the symptoms of social anxiety I can definitively say I related to a lot of those symptoms. Specifically, I wanted to speak about the self-presentation theory (SPT) created by Leary and Kowalski in 1995 (Gruman 2017).
The theory speaks to two different values, self-presentational motivation and self efficacy. According to Leary and Kowalski, in order for someone to experience debilitating social anxiety they would need to have a high self-presentational motivation and low self-efficacy (Gruman 2017). This would mean that they would aspire, obsessively, to have others perceive them in their desired image yet they do not have the confidence (efficacy) to be able to project that desired image. This, in a way, is very much how I was. While I never obsessed about it I yearned for people to see me the way I wanted to be seen but I could never find the confidence to project that social image.
Looking back on it now I actually realize how inadvertently selfish my thinking was. I was under the impression, in a roundabout way, that everyone was thinking about me. All the time. Everyone. I mean really, I can barely decide what I want for breakfast in my own life let alone think about some strangers life. So why am I expecting them to be thinking about me? These thoughts would swim through my head and I would understand but when crunch time came to it I would freeze. My brain would be going as fast as a racecar and as slow as a snail at the same time trying to think of even just something to add to a conversation. It was exhausting. In this stage of my life my self-presentational motivation was high and I really couldn’t see a light at the end of my tunnel. My efficacy was actually not that low but I was not able to present the true image I wanted to present. It took a good friend to drag me out of that tunnel and into my light, and he wasn’t even really trying to do that.
Obviously, for privacy’s sake, no names will be mentioned but this friend had discovered early in his life that people don’t care what you do and that interactions with strangers were (usually) nothing to fear. This translated into his personality in ways that would come to change my life. He was a huge fan of messing with strangers; having fun with random people on the street. At this time in my life the thought of talking to a stranger sent me into a cold sweat. So, being him, he decided to push the envelope and develop a game where we pretend we’re in a debate and have a stranger we just cornered in a shopping mall settle the debate for us. He would think of the topics on the fly and he would just go. At first, I couldn’t keep up and I embarrassed myself. But, it was at this stage that I realized my “life-changing epiphany”. I was the only one embarrassed. The stranger made no indication that he was weirded out by me (beyond the usual stranger walking up to you weird) and gave no indication that he thought negatively of my image or character. It really was all in my head.
Now, looking at this purely objectively of course he wouldn’t care about me because he doesn’t know me. But to me, at this time, this revelation was the most freeing thing. In fact, those “mock-debates” soon became a game I loved to play. I can’t say that the change was instantaneous, but over the course of time what diminished the most is my negative outcome expectancies response (Gruman 2017). Negative outcome expectancies are, in layman’s terms, scenarios you create of a perceived threat due to being unable to communicate your desired image. Basically, you think something bad is going to happen because of something you either did or did not do. In my case, I would allow my friends to make fun of me because of my perceived fear that if I fought back they would abandon me. These negative outcome expectancies would prevent me from acting the way I wished to be perceived and as a result prevented people from perceiving my image the way I wanted. By gaining experience as a result of those games, I slowly stopped feeling that dread in my gut and I stopped holding back my true self (for the most part). The anxiety is something I feel today and I don’t think I will ever fully be able to escape it. But, as of my life today, conversations with strangers are things I now actively (within reason) pursue.
References:
Gruman, J. A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
Wow, I loved reading about your story and how you overcame your social anxiety. This is something that I can relate to as well. For the longest time, I struggled in school because I wouldn’t be able to speak to people. I would want to but no words would come out. It became very hard for me to have the will to go to school every day. As I got older and I started to gain more confidence in myself that social anxiety faded away a little bit. Taking psychology classes also really helped me find ways to overcome and cope with my social anxiety. I am a very stubborn person and always have to do things my way so reading about the behavior change theory was very eye-opening to me as it made me think oh shoot I’m the one that needs to make a change in order to better myself. I still struggle with having conversations with people but I know that it’s something I can do it’s just not my favorite.
Gruman, J.A., Schneider, F.W., and Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
I really enjoyed your blog post, and social anxiety is a phenomenon I really want to talk about. Many of the stories you’ve written about yourself in your blog are very similar to mine. But most of that happened after I came to the United States. Language is the cause of my social anxiety. Technically, I’m not introverted. I’m even a very social person. I am sociable and I can make good friends with people of all ages. Whether online or in life, I am a person who likes to express my own opinions. However, any communication needs to be through words and language. I don’t get very anxious when using words. The reason is that we can’t see each other’s faces, which can avoid a lot of embarrassment. However, when I need to speak English, that anxiety comes with it. I am not a good English speaker, which makes me unable to express my meaning completely in English. According to Leary and Kowalski, Self-presentational motivation refers to the degree to which people are concerned with how others perceive them and Social self-efficacy is defined as a person’s level of confidence in his or her ability to convey a particular image to another person (Gruman, Schneider, & Coutts, 2017, p.103). And I am a person who cares intensely about what other people think of me. When I use Chinese, I have great confidence to convey a good image. When I use English, I have no such confidence at all. The sharp contrast led me to refuse to use English to communicate with others, or even deliberately avoid this situation.
I like the friend example you brought up, this kind of behavior helps you a lot. Most of the time, it’s not that we can’t do something, but we don’t have the courage to do it. As long as we take the first step, the following process will not be as difficult as we imagined. I think I will learn your attitude and behavior and try my best to get out of this dilemma.
References:
Gruman, J.A., Schneider, F.W., and Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.