Cliched advice can be a hit or a miss, It depends on the context, how it’s received, and when it is given. When we dissect it, we can often extract multiple meanings. Some of it, however, is plain bad. One example, repeated countless times to individuals who struggle with some degree of social anxiety, is to stop caring what others think of you. That purported wisdom has a way of perpetuating harmful patterns in the socially anxious.
Social anxiety disorder is marked by an exaggerated fear of others’ judgments. While all of us experience some degree of social anxiety from time to time, the diagnosis denotes several factors.
- Cognitive dissonance is feeling uneasy and confused because what others say about you doesn’t match how you feel about yourself and, therefore, what you believe they truly think
- A preoccupation with internally resolving how they really feel about you
- Avoid drawing attention to yourself and avoiding people altogether whenever possible, therefore never having the tools (that is, others’ perspectives) to challenge our inner critics
- Believing that isolating and perfecting yourself will make you immune to criticism, both internal and external, resolves the discrepancy between how you see yourself and the world’s reflection of you.
The final element isn’t always present as some with this diagnosis believe improvement is impossible, so they hide in perpetuity.
Now, imagine telling someone with that disorder that they should stop caring what others think of them. The implicit message is: Who cares that they think poorly of you? The individual with SAD then determines that most, if not all, of the positive feedback received must have been a lie and the only way to overcome the grief around that discovery is somehow willing oneself to cultivate a distinct personal standard. Yet, more often than not, one of the problems associated with SAD is a distinct personal standard. It isn’t that one is needed; it’s that accompanying this diagnosis, again more often than not, is perfectionism, a personal standard that’s far beyond what anyone uses to judge you.
Contrary to this advice, often, we should start caring more about what others really think of us, rather than remaining fixated on what we believe they think, which, frequently, is false. Not only do they provide us with a mirror into ourselves, meaning we come to know who we are (to whatever extent possible) through feedback, especially because we have so many blind spots, but, in conjunction, they give us insights into our gifts through their excitement, joy, and validation. Their smiles provide more proof of who we are than our inner chatter. And, simultaneously, their feedback, biased just as ours is, betrays our general inability to fully know ourselves. Thus, the discrepancy we tend to feel is in part existential. There is no discoverable global set of standards we can measure ourselves against. All we have is each other.
Since that’s true, we need to take the assessments of others more seriously. The often repeated advice implies cynicism, a belief that we don’t need others because we can’t trust them. We can’t trust them to be honest with us nor, at the same time, can we trust them to be kind. To them, it may feel like a double-bind: I’m either lying when I praise you or cruel if I agree with you. Yet, in reality, people often have much better perspectives of us than we tend to have of ourselves (more positive and often more realistic), even if we disagree with them. Our patients often believe they’re unattractive, stupid, and unloved. And just as often, according to those who know them, those things don’t seem to be true. Rather than creating some false resolution by doubling down on an unrealistic standard, people with SAD would be better served by learning to live with ambiguity, holding two distinct ideas together: Others tend to like me even though I don’t like myself. While self-love may be unattainable, some version of self-neutrality, where competing perspectives offset each other could be. First, however, we have to learn to trust that our community is both willing and able to provide both honesty and kindness.
