Stop Trying To Be Socially Confident

SUMMARY

If you are struggling to find acceptance in what you are doing right now, this episode is for you!

Let’s talk about self-acceptance and how is it so important in overcoming your Social Anxiety.

In this episode, Sebastiaan will give you insights to stop thinking negatively onto yourself, and he will also give you a strategy and mindset to help you reach the goal you are aiming.

Enjoy!

FULL TRANSCRIPTION

I made a huge mistake when I started trying to overcome my Social Anxiety…

… and I see the same mistake being made by a lot of the members inside our Social Confidence Club, as well as in my clients.

And I want to help you avoid that mistake or stop making it so that you can truly empower yourself and overcome your Social Anxiety.

Because if you keep making this mistake, you will not overcome your Social Anxiety.

Hey! It’s Seb from Social Anxiety Solutions – where we combine the best of therapy with Energy Psychology to completely overcome your Social Anxiety.

So what’s the mistake I was making when I tried to overcome my Social Anxiety?

I was trying to become socially confident, completely 100% anxiety-free
Free to be myself
Confident talking to strangers
Saying whatever comes to mind
Not giving up what other people think of me
Talking to any attractive girl I wanted
Being able to make friends
And make everyone my friend.

Basically, I created this idealized image of myself, this ‘ideal social Seb’.

And I then began working on addressing all the problems that are in the way of me being that way so I could basically become socially perfect.

Now after years of doing this, I actually did make a lot of progress because tapping is very powerful.

I was doing a lot of inner work.

I was working with great practitioners so I did make a lot of progress…

… but I was still having Social Anxiety and I was also still blushing.

That didn’t change until I met my mentor, Dr. David Lake – who’s a Psychotherapist, a Therapist, and also a Tapping Expert.

And in our sessions, the focus was brought to acceptance:

acceptance of the anxiety
acceptance of the blushing
acceptance of the undesirable parts of me and the undesirable emotions
[acceptance of the] the insecurity
[acceptance of the] this shame
[acceptance of the] the part of me that was not cool
[acceptance of the] the part of me that wasn’t funny
[acceptance of the] the part of me that wasn’t smart
and so on

And this is what actually over time led to a complete neutralization of the problem.

So yes, I am anxiety free. It’s not a problem in my life and it hasn’t been a problem in my life for a long time.

And I feel comfortable and relaxed and at ease socially…

… but it was acceptance that helped me get there.

Acceptance of the shame

Acceptance of the blushing

Acceptance of the anxiety

I made room in my inner world for that to exist, and still accepting myself while I was feeling ashamed, while I was feeling insecure, and no longer needing to be Mr. Socially Perfect.

By accepting my weaknesses, and my disempowered, limiting circumstances, slowly over time…

… basically, by becoming a yes to what is, I stopped fearing Social Anxiety, I stopped fearing blushing.

I made room in my inner world for that to be there, for that to exist.

I ACCEPTED IT.

So that when I would become anxious, or when I would blush, it didn’t mean anything bad about me anymore.

It didn’t mean that I was a loser, that as weak or pathetic, or another real man, it was simply an experience that I was having.

I was experiencing all the emotions that were passing through…

… and that allowed them to do exactly that – to pass through.

And so, anxiety no longer triggered a stronger fight-flight-freeze response. This is what it can do:

If you experience anxiety over a long period of time, your brain can start to see the Social Anxiety symptoms like the lump in your throat, heart racing, etc, as it can label those as a threat as well.

And so now you notice your heart racing, and you get even more anxious.

So that went away as well.

So it didn’t trigger a stronger fight-flight-freeze response anymore, it could be with it, and just let it go and let it pass.

Now, this didn’t happen overnight at all.

This was a process and it took a lot of time, effort, energy, assistance…

… BUT IT WAS SO WORTH IT!

And the MINDSET OF ACCEPTANCE was absolutely key.

So while the advice I give here might sound counterintuitive, take the following to heart:

Stop focusing on trying to be Mr. Perfect Socially or Miss Perfect Socially becoming that
Stop trying to become socially confident
And instead focus on self-acceptance
Make your suffering OK, even though it’s tough and challenging
Make your shame, insecurity, and anxiety OK
And release your negative judgments
And make yourself judgments and your self-criticism okay because it’s just the pattern.

Don’t judge yourself for the pattern, it keeps you in the loop, except everything, except YOU. ALL OF YOU:

Your emotions
Your negative emotions
Your difficult emotions
Your difficult life circumstances
Your limitations because of this
Your lack of friendships or lack of ability to connect your awkwardness socially because of the anxiety
Your lack of being able to freely speak your mind
How difficult certain life circumstances are right now, etc.

Now, I know that this is a big ask and it doesn’t happen overnight, like I said.

And it’s very challenging to do this, especially if you don’t have tapping, but thank God you do have tapping.

BUT THIS IS IT.

This is an essential key to get to social ease, to get to effortless social ease, to freely being yourself socially, you need to have acceptance.

For lasting change to happen, acceptance is required.

I’ll read you this quote that David sent me once, “When I can stand in acceptance of where I am, then I open myself up to the possibility of moving beyond that point to another point.

I open myself up to the possibility of change.

However, the more I am pushed to change, the more I build up resistance against that change and the more impossible change becomes.

In this lies the paradox ‘Change comes not in frantic effort to become someone different, but an aware acceptance of who I am.'”

This is from Gestalt therapy, called The Paradox of Change.

Now it makes sense, like, “I want to change. I got to push myself. I got to do something about me. I got to change myself into someone else.”

… but it’s not like that.

Change and transformation don’t mean you’re going to become someone different.

You’re just going to feel safe being your true self.

And so change is all about:

making peace with who you are,
making peace with your emotions,
making peace with your life circumstances, even though they’re not the way you want them to be,
making peace with where you’re at.

Joseph Sandler, the British Psychoanalyst, described Psychotherapy as “The process of making friends with the unacceptable parts of ourselves.”

Because think about it, when you are OK with all of you, now you have nothing to hide and now you bring all of you to the party, now you bring all of you to the social interaction, there’s nothing you got to hide anymore.

How empowering is that?

Now I’m going to teach you a simple approach to start the process of acceptance.

But before we get to that, I first want to clean up some misconceptions about what acceptance is.

Self-acceptance does not mean:

That you want, like, or approve of the problems and unhelpful parts of you.
That you identify with these negative parts as YOU.
That you give up on getting rid of your triggers and working towards social ease.

THAT IS NOT WHAT IT MEANS.

Acceptance means becoming OK with what is.

OK with your emotions.

OK with your experience.

OK with yourself, all parts of you.

THE ACCEPTANCE PROCESS

Okay, I’m going to give you something to stop doing what you’re thinking.

I’ll give you a mindset and then I’ll give you a specific strategy to start using.

First, the mindset.

Stop being Mr. Socially Perfect. Stop trying to be Mr. or Mrs. Socially Perfect.

Nowadays, striving for Social Confidence takes the form of a lot of ‘should’ thinking:

I should be confident
I should be funny
I should be the best
I should be impressive
I should be cool
I should know what to say
I should be interesting.
I should be etc.

And also the other side, ‘I shouldn’t be’:

I shouldn’t be anxious
I shouldn’t be awkward
I shouldn’t be boring
I shouldn’t be lame
I shouldn’t be so quiet

This ‘should’ thinking is decreasing your self-acceptance.

SO STOP ‘SHOULDING’ ON YOURSELF.

Because when you do, you’re ‘shoulding’ yourself in the foot, and that hurts.

You’re damaging your self-esteem and you’re lowering your self-acceptance, and you’re making yourself feel more anxious because you’re not living up to the standards.

Start allowing your imperfections.

You are not the anxiety that you experience.

You are not the blushing problem that you have.

You are not your behavior.

You’re not your emotions.

You’re not your thinking.

You are the experiencer of THAT.

It doesn’t define you unless you decide that it does.

Now, this is of course all easier said than done.

And it’s not as easy as “Oh, just stop thinking in this way.”

Now actually that’s why I’m giving you a lot of therapeutic content here that’s very powerful in and of itself.

But there’s not that much that changes so much other than it increases your awareness and it puts your mindset in a different direction, which is very helpful.

But what is more powerful is to sever these patterns at their root, and this is where Energy Psychology comes in.

This is why this is such an exciting, powerful combination.

So I’m going to give you a strategy.

And before I give it to you, I just want to say that this is a helpful strategy, but it’s going to help a little bit, bit by bit over a period of time.

And it’s just something that you can start doing.

Now, there’s a lot more that you can do and there’s a lot more powerful stuff that you can do than just this strategy alone.

But this is just a simple YouTube video so just getting you an introduction to what is possible, a simple strategy that you can apply immediately.

And here it is:

Whenever you notice yourself negative thinking,

whenever you notice yourself feeling anxious,

whenever you notice yourself experiencing shame, or insecurity, or any other negative emotion…

… start tapping at any point and move from point to point and hold the intention to accept and allow what it is that you’re experiencing.

So that what you’re experiencing, YOU’RE A YES TO IT!

You’re observing it, you’re not associating your identity with it.

It’s an experience that you’re having so you’re holding the counterintuitive intention to accept and allow it.

That’s can be very challenging at the beginning. But the more you start doing that, the easier it becomes so you’re becoming a yes to your experience.

You’re not trying, I know that tapping works to release stuck negative emotions, and shift limiting beliefs, and so on.

But this tapping that we’re doing, the intention here is very different. It’s very specific.

It’s to allow the experience you’re having
To allow the anxiety to complete its cycle
To give room for that sadness, the process, and so on

There you go. That’s the strategy.

Now, this process interrupts automatic negative thinking – it allows the negative emotions to process.

And it begins to reduce and release negative emotions connected to thoughts (emotionalized negative thoughts) and it fosters an acceptance mindset.

Now, all of these empower you towards more self-acceptance and less Social Anxiety.

Now, there is more to becoming Social Anxiety free than self-acceptance alone, there are 2 other keys:

Overcoming subconscious resistance
Neutralizing that which triggers your social anxiety.

But accomplishing acceptance is an essential key to getting there, so don’t demand a 100% Social Confidence.

Instead, aim for self-acceptance.

Accept your flaws and imperfections.

Make room in your inner world for anxiety.

For parts that you don’t like:

accept them
accept your emotions
come to terms with behavioral patterns that suck

Make acceptance your focus because that will set the stage for effortless social ease.

But self-acceptance is an essential key.

Now, if you’d like to boost your self-acceptance in just 10 minutes, I suggest you check out these videos here – Fight Your Social Anxiety By Accepting It Using “EFT” Tapping and Achieving Self-Acceptance Using E.F.T Technique.

And in that video, I’ll guide you to an Emotional Release Technique (the tapping) and I’ll instruct your subconscious to deepen self-acceptance.

Go check that out right now.

I’ll talk to you very soon. Bye for now!

If you experience Social Anxiety, click below to receive the FREE “7 Secrets to Social Confidence” Mini Course!

April 30, 2022 #SASBlog

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Sebastiaan

Sebastiaan van der Schrier is a Social Confidence Coach and ex social anxiety sufferer. He helps socially anxious people become confident using a unique and painless approach. He is the host of the Social Anxiety Solutions podcast show and runs the first ever online Social Confidence Community.

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