Social anxiety is maintained by resistance to the possibility of judgment and rejection, due to intolerance of the feeling of embarrassment and shame and/or catastrophic thinking about the consequences of judgment. Let’s call this fear of evaluation.

Notice my focus on the possibility of judgment and rejection. It’s always a possibility. One thing none of us can control is how other people perceive and respond to us. All the time. It’s always uncertain. We never have any control over it.

Some of us persistently have the feeling of certainty about relationships. What a gift. My sense is that a lot of people don’t have the good fortune to persistently feel safe and certain about all of their relationships across their life. Many people have some relationships where they feel persistently safe and comfortable and others that trigger apprehension about judgment or rejection.

If you are sensitive to feelings of embarrassment, shame, and loneliness, the possibility of those feelings is going to seem like a threat. Everyone feels embarrassed sometimes and everyone sometimes feels lonely. If, when you feel those feelings, you criticize yourself, then these feelings become bigger threats. If you avoid experiences that might make you feel embarrassed or lonely at all costs, situations that could trigger those experiences will give you anticipatory anxiety and feel like triggers.

Fear of evaluation can be prominent for both people who have been judged and rejected a lot and those who have never been judged or rejected. Notice that your reaction to your own history of rejection matters more than your actual experience.

You could think, I’ve been rejected so many times that I just can’t bear it again.

OR, you could embrace it as an opportunity:

I’ve been rejected so many times… And, here I am! I can handle it! Rejection doesn’t scare me!

Similarly, you could think, I’ve never been judged or rejected in a significant way before. If it were to happen, it would ruin my life. I can’t make mistakes because I can’t risk being rejected.

OR, embrace that as an opportunity:

I’ve never been rejected, so I wonder what would happen if I tried? If I tried something uncertain, where I might not succeed, would something catastrophic actually happen or would I just handle it?

The important message here is that your response to your present life circumstances is more important for overcoming social anxiety than “processing” the emotions from your history. And, social anxiety is common for those without traumatic interpersonal histories, too.

That said, if you’ve lived through traumatic interpersonal experiences — including but not limited to persistently critical, rejecting, or emotionally neglectful parents, bullying, ostracization, shaming, and discrimination due to factors like gender, sexuality, race, religion, disability status, nationality or political beliefs — new experiences where you might feel judged might, understandably, give you some anticipatory anxiety. Before, during, or afterwards you might have memories of previous experiences and ruminate about them.

When you notice that you feel sensitive, insecure, or embarrassed about something that someone else could judge, remember this:

● Don’t minimize and don’t hedge. Refrain from making a joke about yourself, your appearance, or your performance at the task. Making fun of yourself before others due does not protect you from embarrassment.

● Don’t try to figure out what other people are thinking. Whether through the questions you ask or the replay in your head, it might feel like you have more control if you think you know what others are thinking. You don’t know. You can’t know. Act how you want to act and let go of trying to control how others respond.

● Don’t ask for reassurance and don’t check messages or social media. You can tell by the feeling in your body whether the texts you are sending or what you are posting on social media is a preference or a compulsion. If it feels urgent, and like you need to do it, slow down. Observe what you are thinking and feeling. What do you fear? Is it actually happening? If it happened, what skills do you need to access to handle it?

Fear of evaluation is a complex mix of biological sensitivity to embarrassment, shame, and loneliness plus reactions to previous experiences and cognitive and behavioral responses to your current life. Turning the possibility of judgment or rejection into an opportunity can decrease that sensitivity.

Imposter syndrome occurs when there is a discrepancy between your performance and your beliefs about your performance. I differentiate between two types of imposter syndrome: anxiety-driven imposter syndrome and developmental imposter syndrome. Anxiety-driven imposter syndrome occurs when you have the skills to perform at the level that is expected of you, but you feel anxious about your skills anyway. Developmental imposter syndrome occurs when you have the potential to perform at the level that is expected of you, and you feel anxious about the process of reaching that potential.

Both fear of positive evaluation and fear of negative evaluation can show up in both types of imposter syndromes. Assuming you have the appropriate skills, fear of positive evaluation can be maintained by the pressure to maintain high performance, by the belief that confidence is synonymous with arrogance and dissonance between your belief about your worthiness and the evidence of positive evaluation.

Pressure to maintain high performance

Consistent high performance (in any area of life) is a paradox. If you fear a lapse in performance, or “failure,” you will likely do things that make it harder to perform consistently over time. If you don’t fear a lapse in performance and embrace wherever you are on any given day, your performance in the long-run will be more consistent and more effective.

If you demand of yourself that all of your chores are done perfectly — or your parenting, or your work, or your friendships — you might have some good days, but those days are likely sporadic and unpredictable. You are really vulnerable to procrastination and intense self-criticism to keep yourself motivated. Procrastination makes you feel far from your values; self-criticism makes you feel apathetic, burnt out, and depressed. You may feel confused about why activities that are consistent with your values stop bringing you meaning and fulfillment and feel like chores. This is likely because of the rigidity of your standards.

Belief that accepting compliments and acting with confidence is synonymous with arrogance

Sometimes fear of positive evaluation has a scrupulous flair to it. You might believe or be afraid that if you let yourself be confident, you’ll become too cocky or arrogant and that might make you a bad person. You probably believe that other people deserve positive evaluation and compliments, but that you don’t.

Many people have the fear that compassion will make them lazy or arrogant, as if by treating themselves with compassion, they are letting themselves off the hook for mistakes. If you believe that you must self-criticize to stay motivated, you will probably also have trouble receiving positive feedback. Paradoxically, it might be hard for you to perform at your best if you avoid evaluation, either positive or negative. To break the vicious cycle, consider trying out compassion, relax into positive feedback, and see what happens to your performance.

It’s okay to feel guilty while you practice this new behavior and you don’t have to do it forever. It’s just an experiment! If you accept positive feedback and turn into a bad person, you can always go back to rejecting positive feedback and go back to being a good person.

Dissonance between feelings of worthlessness and evidence of worthiness

You may have persistent, pervasive beliefs that you are unworthy of care, love, and affection and that your actions in the world don’t impact or matter to others. There are all kinds of painful reasons why you may have arrived at this belief. Your beliefs are worth exploring, so that you can come to understand the narrative that leads you to this belief and then work to shift it in everyday life.

Positive evaluation will give you dissonance if you believe that you aren’t worthy of it. You have to act as though you are worthy in order to open yourself up to the possibility of positive evaluation. When positive evaluation occurs, at first it will be uncomfortable and take work to accept it. Eventually, I hope you are able to enjoy it and then even use it to continue to grow.

Here are some questions to ask yourself about anxiety-driven imposter syndrome and fear of positive evaluation

● Do you struggle between procrastination and perfectionism? What is it like for you to consider beginning a task without demanding that you complete it and complete it perfectly?

● Do you believe that accepting compliments and positive feedback will make you too cocky or arrogant? Are there areas of life where you can use positive feedback to become or maintain motivation?

● Do you use criticism to stay motivated? What are your beliefs about compassion these days?

● Are there areas of your life where you feel worthless? From where do you think the belief that you are worthless began?

Imposter syndrome occurs when there is a discrepancy between performance and beliefs about performance. I differentiate between two types of imposter syndrome: anxiety-driven imposter syndrome and developmental imposter syndrome. Anxiety-driven imposter syndrome occurs when you have the skills to perform at the level that is expected of you, but you feel anxious about your skills anyway. Developmental imposter syndrome occurs when you have the potential to perform at the level that is expected of you, and you feel anxious about the process of reaching that potential.

Developmental imposter syndrome

Developmental imposter syndrome shows up in any area of life where there is an opportunity for learning. It is the opposite of playing. In the process of learning, there is a discrepancy between what you know and do and what you have the potential to know and do. If you experienced a relatively safe childhood educational environment, this truth was so fundamental to your growth process that you didn’t notice.

Each day that you showed up to second grade, for example, you assumed that you would engage in some activity that you may or may have ever heard of before. If your teachers and parents gave you reasonable guidance and boundaries, let you make mistakes, and reinforced your effort, you were ideally able to learn and grow without anxiety. Under these conditions, the uncertainty of what you don’t know is a real opportunity. Unfortunately for many people, a biological vulnerability to anxiety and the way their parents and teachers respond to mistakes can mean that they already felt anxiety in some areas of life by second grade. If this is the case for you, try bringing up a compassionate attitude to that younger self and notice the parts of your life that were still anxiety-free.

Everyone has some areas of life that at some time have been anxiety-free, because most of the time in most areas of life growth in children and adults occurs naturally. When you were exposed to enough words, you eventually learned to talk. When you were exposed to reading, you eventually learned to write. When you had space to move, you developed the coordination needed to run, dance, and play sports.

You didn’t know on the first day of second grade what you would know by the last day of second grade, but you likely trusted that your environment would support you while you learned and trusted that your mind and body would be up to the task of whatever your environment demanded. If you didn’t anxiously check on your learning process or avoid tasks that required persistence to master, you progressed through the developmental tasks of childhood in a non-linear, curious way, using trial and error to master the skills.

By middle school, you had social awareness of your aptitude and how it compared to others. The combination of the development of abstract thinking plus puberty plus increased social awareness means that your natural capacity to learn and grow through curiosity and trial and error was likely challenged by the pressure to fit in by this time.

How well any of us manage the pressure to fit in depends a lot on biological vulnerabilities and strengths as well as the demands of the environment at that time. For those for whom the pressure creates anxiety and the urge to either check on their performance or avoid performing, they likely began habits to manage their anxiety that have made it worse and worse over the last decade or five. Notice how reasonable it is to have the urge to check, neutralize, or avoid challenging or uncertain tasks when you don’t know whether the way you perform will end in harsh judgment and rejection. There’s nothing wrong with that response or urge to respond, except that if you do it rigidly, it will make anxiety about performance worse.

As always, it is not circumstances, but our responses to circumstances, that predict our flexibility, wellbeing, and happiness. Notice also that comparatively to childhood, we all have a lot more choice over with whom we live, work, and play. If developmental imposter syndrome (that is, fear of the discrepancy between who you are now and who you have the potential to become) is prominent because of actual harsh judgment and routine criticism, then anxiety is a signal, not noise.

Questions to ask yourself about developmental imposter syndrome and developing playfulness

● Can you remember when your developmental imposter syndrome started?

● In what areas of life performance (such as school, work, friendships, professional relationships, romantic relationships, hobbies, activities of daily living) are you hyperaware of the discrepancy between how you currently perform and your potential to perform?

● What do you typically do when that hyperawareness, preoccupation, or anxiety shows up (examples include avoid, worry, fixate, distract yourself, abuse substances)?

● In what areas of life performance (such as school, work, friendships, professional relationships, romantic relationships, hobbies, activities of daily living), are you able to relax into who you currently are and enjoy the process of growing with curiosity? In other words, in what areas of life are you able to play?

● What’s the difference between the areas of life about which you have serious, hyperawareness of your performance v. the areas of life about which you can play?

● After reflecting on a time in your life where you could approach performance in some areas of life with playfulness, what types of responses would you like to commit to and practice in your daily life now to increase your capacity to play?

It takes humility and courage to accurately assess where you are and commit to the next step.

If you feel intense anxiety getting out of your house, the idea of obtaining and committing to a job on a daily basis might seem beyond what’s possible for you. If you feel intense anxiety sending an introductory text message to a potential romantic partner, the ongoing vulnerability required to sustain a long-term relationship might seem overwhelming.

Thinking about this, many individuals with anxiety disorders get so discouraged that they lose motivation to take the next step.

It’s important to see this as part of the pattern of anxiety’s game.

Anxiety (and his allies self-criticism and depression) will tell you:

What you’re currently doing isn’t good enough. This shouldn’t be hard for you. You shouldn’t have to practice this. You’ll never get where you want to be.

You need to be ready for this type of message and say back to it:

Every time I identify, label, and allow an uncomfortable thought, feeling, or sensation, you get less power. What I’m practicing is a new process; it’s not about my outcome in any given moment. It’s okay that this is where I am and what I have to do. My fear circuitry has become conditioned by associations that don’t make rational sense. For whatever reason, other people’s fear circuitry has different associations than I have. The only way I’ll get to where I want to be is to gradually change these associations.

If it’s difficult to muster the compassion, humility, and courage to set small, achievable goals on the way to overcoming an anxiety disorder, consider how you would teach a child how to read.

The child may really want to start reading a Harry Potter novel, but if he doesn’t know his letters, he can’t just jump into a text like that one. He also might not completely understand how identifying letters is the beginning of a more complex process of combining letters to make sounds, combining sounds to make words, combining words to make sentences, and combining sentences to make stories that convey ideas and make meaning. You know that.

So, you’re likely to be very patient with the child, encouraging him to start with the first step, continue to practice, reminding him that eventually he will be able to read.

You wouldn’t criticize the child if he isn’t making progress fast enough, because there is no pace that is right for everything, and you know that pressuring him to try to be someone he isn’t won’t help him read faster. If you saw him struggling, you’d make it “easier,” meaning that you’d break it into a smaller component. You wouldn’t make it easier because you don’t believe in him. You’d make it easier, because you understand that he has to master the smaller components before he can master the more complex process. Reading is also a skill to be mastered, meaning that having greater motivation will increase his skill-based acquisition. As a good teacher, you’d work to keep him motivated, because staying motivated is part of the process.

Can you see the comparison to overcoming an anxiety disorder?

Anxiety disorders are created, intensified, and maintained by a cycle of fear, resistance, and avoidance of the thoughts, feelings, and sensations.

The skills you need to step out of this cycle are the opposite of what you’ve tried so far:

In the past, you have minimized, disregarded, and avoided your anxious thoughts, sensations, and feelings.

Now, you’ll be identifying, labeling, inviting, and even provoking more anxious thoughts, sensations, and feelings. This identifying and labeling process is like learning the alphabet of anxiety. Per the metaphor, you won’t be able to read — that is, do what you care about in the presence of anxiety with skill and grace — until you’ve practiced the basics over and over.

It’s important to do whatever it takes to stay motivated to take small steps. Self-compassion and humor are helpful strategies for staying motivated.

Responding effectively to anxiety is a challenging skill that develops experientially with time and practice.

Think of a challenging skill you’ve acquired in your life: riding a bike, learning to read, speaking a foreign language or learning a programming language, or playing a sport.

You didn’t have trust in your ability to execute those skills — that is, you didn’t have confidence — until you had many experiences of practicing and succeeding. If the skill was important to you, you likely had feelings of anticipatory anxiety prior to experiences that would test your ability because you didn’t know what would happen. That’s perfect! That’s exactly how anticipatory anxiety works! It’s not alerting you that you can’t do something. It’s alerting you that you don’t know yet how you’ll do.

For this reason, decreases in anticipatory anxiety will be the last part of overcoming an anxiety disorder. For many people, anticipatory anxiety is the worst part. They want it to go away now!

Anticipatory anxiety is a clever trickster that causes people to avoid, become demoralized, self-criticize, and waver in their decision-making. Do not be fooled! Your mind is actually working adaptively.

Like learning anything else, your body won’t give you the feelings of confidence until you’ve practiced the actions of confidence.

Thus, you have to face situational anxiety-provoking stimuli while feeling unsure what will happen in order to eventually have the confidence that nothing catastrophic will happen. You have to act as though you can face the thing you fear until your feelings match up with your experience and you feel as though you can do it too.

Making a decision about how you will act is one way to get relief from dread. One barrier many people face as they are trying to take this approach is that they wish they had made more progress than they have. Setting small, achievable realistic goals and giving yourself credit for what you’ve achieved is the best way to build trust in yourself.