Ask Dora - Social Anxiety

I'm Dora Kamau, and I'm a meditation teacher here at Headspace. This is Ask Dora, an opportunity for you to ask me anything you'd like about meditation, mindfulness or whatever's on your mind. During this episode, I'll be talking about how we can manage social anxiety by practicing self-awareness and self-compassion. Let's get started. (gentle music) Today's question comes from Rosie who writes, "I have social anxiety and really find it hard engaging in big groups. I seem to lose who I am and just become a chameleon, even to the point where my manners change to fit the person that I'm talking to. Do you have any advice on being your true self and managing worry during and after social events?" Hi, Rosie, these are great questions. We'll begin with the first one of how we can be our true self. So often when we experience something like social anxiety, we shape-shift or transform ourselves so that we can fit in and not stand out. And what I have learned from my own anxiety is that I'm usually afraid of what people will think about me if I reveal who I truly am. I noticed that I have catastrophizing thoughts about rejection or disapproval from my peers. And sometimes we're afraid of what people will think about us when we're being ourselves. And this is what can cause that chameleon type effect. So a few ways that we can feel comfortable being our most authentic self in social situations is by first becoming aware of those thoughts and feelings that we have when we're around others. Sometimes we are our own harshest critic. So see if you can note those thoughts that may be a bit irrational and anxiety causing. When we can name those thoughts, we can counteract them or handle them in a much more helpful way. A personal practice of mine is challenging the thoughts that I have after interacting with someone. Sometimes I'll leave a conversation full of regret and ruminate on everything that I said during that interaction. So what's helpful for me, which may be helpful for you, is asking yourself is there any validity or truth to the thoughts that I'm having? Did I really blow it or am I exaggerating a bit? Again, counteracting some of those thoughts and feelings can be helpful because not all thoughts that we think are true. Most of the time they aren't at all. It's just how we're perceiving them and responding to them. Another way to be our true self is by practicing self-compassion. Sometimes what we think is our social performance is actually social perfectionism. We want to be and seem perfect in social settings, and this doesn't allow us to be human. As humans, we all have our own quirks and flaws and being able to show them in conversation actually helps to deepen our connection by being able to be vulnerable and reveal those different parts of ourselves. So when you...