“He won’t like me anymore”, “I’m acting so stupid, everyone will consider me an idiot” … If you are one of those who are unsettled by any mistake, who are terribly afraid of doing something wrong, then most likely you are haunted by the fear of negative estimates. Get over it with the seven-step system from cognitive psychologist Robert Leahy.
The fear of making a bad impression greatly complicates our lives, affecting personal, friendship and business relationships. You do not want to get to know someone once again, do you feel anxiety during any testing (when the very fact that you will be evaluated humiliates)? This insecurity also interferes with sexual relationships, increasing dependence on alcohol or drugs for the sake of achieving a sense of comfort.
What to do? First of all, let’s clarify whether you have a fear of negative evaluation. Yes, if you agree with the statements:
- I tense up and get nervous when I know I’m being judged.
- I get very upset when I make a mistake.
- If someone evaluates me, I tend to expect the worst.
- I often worry that I will say or do something wrong.
Where does this fear come from? Psychotherapist Robert Leahy cites several reasons:
1. You may have your own standards of impeccable behavior in society. You are preoccupied with not making mistakes, and you are convinced that you usually do things poorly. Being in public, you are sure that others are only watching you, only thinking about you. And they are extremely critical. As a result, your self-esteem becomes even lower, and you stop attributing even real success to yourself. Moreover, you can consider yourself an impostor who will be exposed and expelled in disgrace as soon as you are better known.
One of the signs of emotional stability is the ability to make realistic self-assessments even in the face of disapproval.
2. You may not be able to distinguish or isolate different parts of your Self. You don’t realize that your personality is made up of many components, each of which is different from the others. If we have different selves, then the approval of our behavior in a particular situation should be considered as a special case, and not a holistic image of our personality.
3. The reason for the fear of negative evaluation may be that your self-esteem is inflexible and inadequate. One of the hallmarks of emotional stability is the ability to make realistic self-assessments even in the face of disapproval. Precisely to the realistic, because we need to know what our mistakes or problems are.
By having a more flexible self-perception, you will be able to use disapproval as a signal. This means that if someone doesn’t like something you said or did, you use that opinion as information about what needs to be changed. In addition, by better understanding the various aspects of your personality, you can learn to discard negative feedback if it does not agree with other, positive information about you. This is what people with high self-esteem do.
4. You may be the introverted personality type characterized by low self-esteem, sensitivity to rejection or external evaluation, and fear of interacting with others. People with this type of personality escape into an imaginary life and are prone to individual activities where they will not face rejection.
Seven Steps to Overcome the Fear of Negative Evaluation
Let’s try to cope with the fears of negative evaluation with the help of a seven-step program. Let’s say you’re constantly worried about being seen as boring and awkward. You are worried that others will notice that you look bad, because you yourself noticed new wrinkles today. When you are going to an important meeting, you worry about makeup, how the bangs that you have been styling for an hour are. And most importantly, for what you say and how others will react to it.
Step One: Divide Worries into Productive and Unproductive
What is the use of your worries? You may think that the fears listed above will prepare you for the worst — for people’s sidelong glances and critical remarks. Or hope that excitement will motivate you to work harder to look interesting and attractive.
Is there evidence that your anxiety actually helps? If you behave this way for years, do you notice improvements? Do you feel more comfortable in negotiations? Unlikely.
How can you be productive? First of all, do what you can do right now: put on makeup, put on a business suit, go to a meeting and talk to people. Unproductive are all those “what ifs” that you can’t control (for example, how other people will treat you). Why struggle with questions that cannot be answered?
Step two: accept and do
Keep your distance. Make a few simple judgments about your experience: “I had a thought that I didn’t look as good as I would like” and “I noticed that my heart was pounding.” It is very likely that these thoughts are only a consequence of internal sensations that do not reflect reality.
By shifting the focus of attention to other people and their view of the world, you feel less and less in the center of attention.
Describe what is in front of you. Try during the meeting to focus on what will be directly in front of you. Look around and describe what you saw: who was wearing what, what is the color of the eyes and hair of the interlocutors. So you can easily distract from your experiences.
Remove yourself from the situation. Think about the fact that everyone who came to this meeting has their own “reality” — their own story and their own view of the world. They were not there for you and not to spite you. If someone in a special way looked at you or said something, then in this action there is more of themselves than of their attitude towards you.
Task: look at the meeting from the point of view of the other two participants, imagine what problems they might be concerned about at the moment? What is their personal history? By shifting the focus of attention to other people and their view of the world, you feel less and less in the center of attention — and the excitement subsides.
Disappear and see reality. Imagine that you are not in the room and you are watching the meeting on television. No one sees you, you observe and describe everything from the outside. Your shyness will disappear.
Remember that if you wait for ideal conditions, you will never budge.
Practice emotional imagery. If the fear of rejection scares you the most, try to create a clear and detailed «video sequence» of the story of your possible «exile». Everyone around starts laughing loudly, they say how ridiculous and ridiculous you are, what nonsense you are talking about, they don’t want to see and hear you anymore. Scroll through these pictures in your head every day for twenty minutes. They will soon bore you, because you will quickly realize that this will never really happen.
Promise to change. To get rid of anxiety, you need to force yourself to do the exact opposite of what you did before. For example, going to parties more often, meeting people, and learning to be more laid-back.
To achieve this, you will have to do things that make you uncomfortable. Accept the fact of your imperfection, that is, an imperfect appearance, uninteresting speech, anxiety and even tediousness. And also to endure the excitement that will arise when you go to a new party and, contrary to the usual scenario, start talking to people. But remember that if you wait for ideal conditions, you will never budge!
Step Three: Challenge Your Anxious Thoughts
Write down what worries you. Keep a diary of your worries and expectations. Entries might be something like this: “I will look ridiculous and old. All other women will be more attractive. Nobody will talk to me. I will feel restless and awkward. What if my hands shake? What if I blush? Or will it all fly out of your head? What if I don’t think of something to say?
Write daily for twenty minutes for two weeks. Soon you will notice that the entries are repeated over and over again. And this is understandable: almost always we are worried about the same thing.
Check your expectations. Formulate specific expectations, for example, about a festive evening. Imagine the worst possible outcome. Then — the most likely. Then — the best. After returning, check your forecast.
It is very likely that not a single expectation that frightens you has come true or justified itself by a maximum of 10%. No one has been rude or unkind to you. Some conversations certainly cut short, but that was okay. In some cases, this was because you yourself were losing interest.
Step Four: Focus on the Biggest Danger
Basic beliefs about yourself include beliefs that you are helpless, or have flaws, or are charming and responsible, or unattractive. As a result of these beliefs, your reaction to a negative evaluation may be very different from that of the other person.
Fearing that your “deep inferiority” will become obvious, you try not to open up to people
A woman who considers herself helpless, unable to take care of herself, will see in a negative assessment confirmation that she cannot do anything right. The other person will judge the negative in light of how great their flaws are (for example, they are stupid, boring, or ugly). A woman who believes that she needs to look chic may believe that if someone does not like her, she has lost the advantage of exceptional appearance and now no one will pay attention to her anymore.
People with inflated conceit, convinced of their superiority, will be upset if they are not recognized as better than everyone else. They need to feel like all the attention is on them, their feelings are easily hurt or hurt.
Reveal basic beliefs about yourself and others. Suppose your core beliefs are that you are unattractive, boring, and inferior, and that others are superior to you and reject you. How have these beliefs affected you? Fearing that your «deep inferiority» will become apparent, you try not to open up to people even after you get to know them a little.
Ask yourself: why do the people who know you best love you instead of rejecting you? Do not demand more from yourself than from others
Of course, this makes it more difficult to form closer relationships with men, because, you think, they will certainly understand that you are boring with you, and quickly lose interest.
Because of this fear of communication, you often leave the party early. As a result, others simply do not have time to get to know you better. In fact, you look at other people from a similar perspective: they are necessarily “interesting,” “fun,” and “the center of attention.”
Analyze situations in which you made a good impression on someone. Remember the times when interesting people at first turned out to be boring. This is how you begin to notice shades in the black and white attitude towards yourself and others.
How to refute these beliefs? You probably have close friends who have confidence in you. Ask yourself: why do the people who know you best love you instead of rejecting you? Do not demand more from yourself than from others. You do not dare to condemn an outsider shy person, but why are you so ruthless to yourself?
Perhaps there is some truth in your beliefs and you are sometimes quite boring, you can say stupid things. But we are all boring and monotonous from time to time, so this can apply to any of us.
Step Five: Turn Failures Into Opportunities
A person with inflated demands on himself can consider almost any interaction with people a “complete failure”. Here’s another technique for dealing with the fear of failure: Focus on a bigger goal than just avoiding failure. For example, a goal might be: “learn to meet new people and form relationships.” And then you can look at the next «failed meeting» as a step in gaining experience.
There is no need to be successful immediately. Getting results in one party is not our goal at all. There are things that will pay off in the future. From time to time you may notice that you are now doing better than before. You have learned to stay in the present, observe, notice what others say and do, and even initiated a few conversations. What’s bad about it?
You really show progress. Failure means you tried. Much worse is to refuse to act at all. Doing things that make you uncomfortable is a way to overcome your anxieties. Refusing to go to parties would only perpetuate your fear of meeting people.
Step Six: Use Emotions, Don’t Worry About Them
It seems to you that shyness and anxiety are “out of control” and “will last forever.” That no one can understand you. You are ashamed of your shyness. After analyzing these negative assessments of your feelings, you will see that your excitement is quite logical. But it doesn’t last «forever» because it’s almost entirely situational—focused on the moment you meet. As soon as the acquaintance has taken place, anxiety and shyness disappear.
Accepting your feelings, rather than fighting them, will help you act without regard to anxiety.
Ask your friends: do they see any reason for concern in your behavior? Moreover, some of them are also shy, this thought will help you realize that shyness is actually normal.
Learn to accept your feelings. Just allow yourself to feel uneasy and don’t even try to «calm down». Accepting your feelings—rather than fighting them—will help you move beyond your anxiety: “Why not just accept that it won’t be very comfortable for a while and keep doing the uncomfortable things?”
Less guilt and embarrassment. Like many shy people, you are embarrassed by your embarrassment in public. The facts say that there is nothing «malicious» or «immoral» about feeling embarrassed and worried. No one was hurt, no one got worse except you.
Task: meet a stranger at a party, and then tell him about your shyness. Even if you do not hear mutual recognition in response, you will see that almost everyone has experienced this. Don’t think that you are very different from the rest.
Step Seven: Take Control of Your Time
Anxious people are usually fixated on waiting for the moment when they experience «failure». Work on your sense of time so that you can look ahead to the future without losing sight of the present moment.
Take a break from the urgency. In a negotiation, you think, “I need to calm down right now! Why can’t I stop worrying?» Wanting to deal with unnecessary experiences in one fell swoop, you are more and more nervous.
Forget urgency. Nothing terrible or life-threatening happens. You can’t see a freight train rushing towards you. Recognizing that you cannot control your fleeting experiences will help you stop seeing the situation as urgent and emergency.
Experiences are almost entirely focused on the future, and the future is not what it is, and it is not a fact that it will ever be.
Notice how your experiences change. Pulling away for a moment, you will notice that the feelings are fickle, at the moment you are worried, and after a few seconds you are already thinking about something else. Feelings, thoughts and excitement are changeable, like the weather.
Dive into the present. Experiences are almost entirely focused on the future, and the future is not what it is, and it is not a fact that it will be at all. Feeling the present moment and thinking about what is happening right now is an effective antidote to anxiety. Enjoy the current moment. You heard a beautiful song, noticed someone’s beautiful dress, tasted delicious food, saw exquisite dishes on the table… There is always something in the present that will make you feel good, comfortable and calm.
Take a look at the timeline. Every time you think that the anxiety that has arisen will never go away. You know intellectually that this is not so, but you feel as if there is no end to the excitement.
Task: imagine a very long line — a hundred meters long, and then make a mark. This dot means party events. Now imagine all the good things that will happen to you in the future after this party, and all the good things that happened in the past. Comparison of time scales will help you worry less about a single moment in time.
Source: R. Leahy “Cure for nerves. How to stop worrying and enjoy life” (Peter, 2018).
About the Expert: Robert Leahy is a cognitive psychotherapist, director of the American Institute for Cognitive Psychotherapy, and author of Anxiety Freedom and The Nerve Cure (both Peter, 2017, 2018).