SUMMARY
How To Get Rid of Self-Consciousness?
In this episode, Sebastiaan van der Schrier of https://www.social-anxiety-solutions.com talks about a technique on how you can deal with constantly being self-conscious. This is about that uncomfortable feeling you get when you feel as if all eyes are on you, watching and judging how you look, how you speak, how you act, and so on.
Sebastiaan briefly teaches you a simple exercise that you can do in the comfort of your own home to help you be less self-conscious.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
How do I get rid of self-consciousness?
That’s the question I’m going to answer today.
My name is Sebastiaan van der Schrier. I’m a former Social Anxiety Disorder sufferer and a Social Confidence Coach.
I’m a little bit high on coffee; I normally don’t drink. But I needed some energy.
And this is the answer that we’re going to give you today.
Here we go!
The question is from Paul. He writes:
Hi Seb – The main obstacle in my SA struggle is that of constant self-consciousness.
I am self-conscious of how I look, how I look when I talk to someone, how I look when I listen to someone, etc.
I’m self-conscious even when I’m alone.
When I’m self-conscious and around people, I don’t speak.
I think I’m afraid of looking too serious, too awkward, too anxious. So, somehow, I’ve been stuck constantly being hyperaware of what I look like.
When I’m like this, I struggle with eye contact big time. I’ve been struggling with this for most of my life, but I don’t have a specific past memory of when this started.
Is there a way of writing a script for me to tap on, because I’ve tapped on seemingly every aspect of this, but I haven’t gotten any substantial results?
Also, I thought I overcame my SA in college and I was super confident, but when it came back, the constant self-consciousness slowly but surely came back.
Also, is this something that I can bring up during our meetups?
Thanks for reading this.
Most sincerely,
Paul
Paul, first of all, definitely bring it up in meetups.
Absolutely, and the only one dealing with this. And you can also volunteer to be a client. We will work on it together, in front of the group. Everyone will benefit from it.
Then, answering this. A couple of things.
First of all, “I thought overcame it in college, and I was super confident” – Mmm…maybe you had created a certain persona, and you were acting in a particular way, and you felt confident doing so. Perhaps not really, authentically being yourself.
If you were, it would be a lasting change. And that’s what we’re after – lasting changes.
Then, in terms of, “It’s not working, I’m tapping all these aspects, but I’m not getting to where I want to be. And there is no particular memory.” – Yeah, I’m not surprised.
There’s typically not with self-consciousness. There’s typically not a particular memory where self-consciousness is held. And you clear the memory and voila, self-consciousness gone forever.
It’s more like, that there’s a bunch of small things that happened over a period of time that caused you to be very conscious of how you present yourself to the world to others.
Likely, there’s been a lot of criticism in your household.
Maybe there were high expectations of you. Maybe you were judged to be a certain way, and you feel you have to live up to that expectation. – “Oh, Paul is so smart. Or Paul’s a really good kid. Or Paul’s really bad kid” or something like that.
And so, there’s not necessarily one specific memory to work with.
Well, on that case, there are a variety of ways to address this. And they’re a little bit beyond what I can share on a video. But I’ll give you one idea.
And one idea is to experience that self-consciousness, you say you experience it when you’re in the comfort of your home already. So, when you’re sensing that, you can do the following exercise.
And if you’re not sensing that, if you’re not experiencing it, you might imagine yourself being in a particular situation. Then tune into that feeling.
See what you would see, hear what you would hear, feel what you would feel. Tune into that self-consciousness notice how you how it is that you’re feeling in your body, really tune into it.
Where do you feel it?
Is it warm? Is it cold? Is it moving? Is it stationary?
Just as best as you can, tune into however you’re feeling it.
And then you might ask yourself, “How old is the part of me that is feeling this way?“
And then, go with the first thing that comes to mind and your feeling might be, “well, I’m seven years old.” – Okay. Then there’s a younger Paul, a seven-year-old you that is holding on to these feelings. And there might be multiple parts of you, multiple younger parts of you that are feeling this way.
And then you can imagine that part of you outside of you, and you just make it up, visualize it, imagine it.
“What does that seven-year-old Paul look like?” — Well, he’s looking pretty insecure. And he’s looking quite nervous.
And then you can begin tapping on whatever it is that you’re perceiving that younger you.
And of course, you can use Steve Wells, psychologist and founder of the intention-based tapping technique called Tension tapping or Intention Based Energy Process.
You can say, Well, I release all my emotional attachments to…this younger me feeling so self-conscious, or whatever it is that you’re observing.
And you’re actually doing therapy with that younger you. Right?
And you’re helping that younger you, that’s feeling so self-conscious, that’s feeling so awkward, that’s feeling so uncomfortable, feel comfortable.
Because it’s these younger you that are holding on to the feelings and when you’re into here and now; here and now moments in particular situations, these older feelings are being triggered.
And you then relive the feelings of seven-year-old Paul, 10-year-old Paul, 12-year-old Paul, five-year-old Paul, etc.
And so, by helping these younger you release these feelings, they won’t get triggered anymore in the past.
My strong guess, based on experience, is that the self-conscious feeling is made up of a bunch of younger you that are holding on to particular feelings that altogether make up that self-consciousness, and working through that it’s going to be very helpful.
So, I hope this is helpful, my hyper explanation and definitely bring it to a session and we’ll look at it and we’ll do some work on it. It will be a good time.
Thank you so much!
This is Sebastiaan from www.social-anxiety-solutions.com
If you want to learn more about how to use tapping to overcome your social anxiety permanently. Or you want to be comfortable and at ease in social situations and make a start!
Start reducing your social anxiety already? Then go to my website www.social-anxiety-solutions.com click on overcome social anxiety for FREE and sign up you’ll get a really cool social confidence starter kit where I teach you to the tapping, the basics, and the foundations. So, you can already start making progress; already start reducing your social anxiety and reduce your suffering.
All right! Hope this has been helpful and I’ll see you very soon. Bye
If you experience Social Anxiety, click below to receive the FREE “7 Secrets to Social Confidence” Mini Course!
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