April 21, 2025 • 44 mins
Our fear of being perceived is more than just social anxiety, its a real phobia around being scrutinised, observed and primarily judged by others. It's also greatly limiting your potential and ability to be your true self. But there is a way through, there is a way to escape the constant fixation on what others are thinking about you. In today's episode, we discuss:
- The origins and effects of scopophobia
- How our fear of being perceived is both a social and specific phobia
- Why do we worry about what other people think?
- Perfectionism and our fear of being perceived
- The impact of early childhood experiences
- Three mental shifts to overcome your fear of being perceived
Listen now for all that and more!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here
back for another episode. Today's episode, though you may have
already noticed, is a rerun, So over the next two weeks,
I am putting out some of my best episodes from
(00:21):
the last four years of almost NonStop podcasting as I
just take some time away to launch my debut book,
Person in Progress, A Roadmap to the Psychology of Your Twenties.
Do not fret. I will be back on the twenty
ninth of April, but I just wanted to give my
book a little bit of extra love these next two
weeks because it's a big deal and I'm not going
to talk about it too much. I'm sure you're just
(00:43):
here to listen to the podcast and probably sick of
me talking about it, but I just want to say
thank you. I want to say a huge thank you
for allowing me to write this book and put it
out in the world. This is only possible because of
you all. Because of you, guys, the listeners. Literally, that's it.
That's the only reason I'm able to do this. And
(01:03):
I've wanted to be an author since I was five.
Twenty years later, you guys made that happen for me,
So just thank you, Thank you so much. I would
obviously love it if you could pre order it, buy it,
gift it to a friend, but you've already done so much,
and I just feel honored to have had this opportunity.
(01:24):
Most of all, I'm just really pumped for you guys
to read it. I hope that you learn something. I'm
sure if you love the podcast, you will love Person
in Progress as well. But it's a really exciting time
and the main feeling I have right now is one
of gratitude. So thank you so much. Without further ado,
I hope you enjoy this rerun of one of my
(01:45):
favorite all time episodes.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here back for another episode. As we of
course break down the psychology of our twenties. Worrying about
(02:28):
what other people think about us can take up a
lot of mental real estate. We kind of know that
we shouldn't care. We know that we are loved, We
know that no one is really watching us that closely.
But for some of us, it's not really a choice.
We are overwhelmed by this deep, persistent fear of being perceived.
(02:48):
We're constantly aware of those invisible judgments that others might
be making, what parts of us they might not like,
Who we might offend if we say the wrong thing,
who we make cringe, And it keeps us in this
place of self denial, denial of our true selves, of
our potential, of our ambitions, of our authenticity. And today
(03:13):
I want to talk about it because it's a fear
that is definitely not spoken about enough, despite being something
that a lot of us in our twenties and beyond
manage on a daily basis. Being in this decade of life,
it comes with a lot of insecurity. For sure. You know,
it's our first decade of adulthood and we're normally lost,
(03:35):
we're lonely. Maybe we're trying to fit in, and this
fear of being perceived feeds on these worries to make
us feel even more out of place and insecure. What
you may not know is that there is a lot
more to be said about this than just the typical
explanation that we get of social anxiety or low self confidence.
(03:55):
Our fear of being perceived has its roots in early
experiences of social exclusion, bullying, even perfectionism, and how our
brains process social and emotional information. Learning about this really
helps us accept this reality that has kind of been
thrust on us right and with that knowledge comes power,
(04:16):
the power to kind of change the thought loop that
keeps us fearful and withdrawn. And when you break down
the irrational and fear dependent thoughts that keep us trapped
by other people's potential judgments, a huge weight is really lifted,
and that's really what I want for you. We're also
going to discuss three powerful mental shifts that I've used
(04:40):
that are backed by research and psychology that can help
you overcome your fear of being perceived, from playing mind
games with your mind games to decentering the opinions of
others through exposure, and also applying one of the greatest
cognitive tricks of all time to essentially stop your anxiety
(05:01):
about other people's opinions before they even begin. There is
so much to talk about, and I also want to
explore what can happen when we do this. What is
the reality of being free from our fear of being perceived?
So much becomes possible. I just think it's something that
a lot of us can't even imagine, but I kind
(05:22):
of want to show you what that might look like.
So there is a lot to unpack in this episode,
and I know from hearing from all of you that
this is not uncommon in the slightest. So for all
of you who are managing this, dealing with this, this
episode is for you to get that clarity, to feel seen,
to know the psychology, and of course to overcome it.
(05:46):
So without further ado, let's get into how you can
overcome your fear of being perceived. Our fear of being
perceived really comes down to this irrational anxiety around being
observed and scrutinized by others. It's kind of in the name, really,
(06:07):
but this fear is also known as scopophobia, and that
comes from the Greek word scope to be examined, and
of course phobia to fear anytime something contains the word
phobia in it, we know that what's really happening below
the surface is anxiety. There is a dysregulated response to
(06:28):
a persistent, irrational thought or worry. You might say, you know, okay, scopophobia, Yeah,
it has its own name, But isn't this just social anxiety?
And you would be totally right for thinking that. The
fear of being perceived and social anxiety often go hand
in hand. But this is more than simply a social
(06:48):
phobia around wanting to avoid being seen by others. It's
also a specific phobia, and specific phobias surround an extreme
fear of a specific situation that poses little to no
danger but makes people really, really anxious. The thing is,
your fear of being perceived can be isolated to just
(07:09):
a single environment, like you may have no trouble public speaking,
hosting parties, even being seen by strangers on the street,
but when it comes to dating, you are incredibly fearful
of what people might think of you on your first
date or on dating apps, so you avoid those situations altogether.
That's a specific trigger for your phobia of being perceived.
(07:32):
Or you may be really confident in every other setting
other than in the workplace or at the gym. That's
why this fear can be very specific in nature. It's
at this point that it's probably important to note that
there are kind of two versions or two varieties to
our fear of being perceived. There is the fear of
being physically perceived taking up space being seen by others,
(07:57):
which is probably the most common. And then there is
the fear of being emotionally perceived, which has more to
do with being seen deeply and intimately by someone else
on a more kind of feeling space level. It's less common,
but it's still a really difficult reality to believe that
if anyone were to truly see you and your character
(08:18):
and to know you, they probably wouldn't want to be
around you anymore. Physical like, our fear of physical perception
is more around people making assumptions. Oftentimes, though they kind
of go hand in hand, because perception alone isn't scary, right,
It's the judgment that comes next, and that is where
(08:38):
kind of the emotional element comes in. It's not that
we kind of think that someone looking at us is
inherently dangerous, that their eyes are going to like burn
holes in our skin, even if it might feel that way.
Sometimes it's what we know comes second. People make instantaneous
and snap calls around they think someone is like within
(09:03):
seconds or minutes, and perception is not objective. There is
not one clear way of seeing everything and everyone. It's objective,
so we can't control what they think about us, whether
that is correct or not, and that is often what
is really at the root of this experience. We don't
actually fear the act of being perceived physically. We fear
(09:27):
being judged, and we fear the unknowns that are contained
in those judgments. And here is where we kind of
return to that distinction between fear and anxiety. Fear is
for the present and anxiety is for the possibility. That's
where all the fun is in for our anxiety, right
Our anxiety likes to try to figure things out that
(09:48):
we may never know, and that unknown is so scary.
We catastrophize based on the worst case scenario rather than
what is most likely, which is that people pay lot
more attention to themselves than anyone else. Most people are
actually fairly kind with their judgments, and even if they aren't,
we're still going to be okay. We can survive someone
(10:11):
not liking us based on limited information. We can survive
someone not liking us based on their own insecurities because
it's not about us anymore. But let's kind of track
back for a second, because there is something crucial I've
missed here. That is, what is it exactly about those
invisible judgments that are so scary for people with the
(10:33):
fear of being perceived? Yes, so it is the fact
that it is an unknown which our anxiety thrives on.
But it also is a little bit more than that.
Social judgment holds a lot of power because of our innate,
ingrained fear of social disapproval. We don't want others not
to like us. We don't want them to think that
(10:54):
there's something wrong with us. We don't want them to
walk away from meeting us or hanging out out and
go and say terrible things that might ruin our reputation
or destroy certain relationships. This is really the case for
a few reasons. Firstly, we kind of fear other's opinions
out of a need to protect our self esteem and
(11:14):
to continue to validate ourselves. We don't want people not
to like us because that might hurt our sense of
self worth. I think we all know what it's like
to be confronted with an ugly truth about what someone
else really thinks about us. If it's a former friend
calling you cringe an x, thinking that you're lame or unattractive,
(11:37):
you know, some aurshole on the internet, from school, whatever.
When someone makes a snig comment about your looks, about
any feature of you, that really hurts. And we want
to avoid that hurt and we want to avoid the
damage that it does to our self esteem, So we
begin to fear those judgments as a way to avoid them.
But let's dissect that even further. If someone doesn't like you,
(12:01):
then what well for our anxious mind. If people don't
like us, they think we're unattractive, annoying, whatever. Your primary
insecurity is around being perceived, we worry that as a
secondary consequence of that, we will lose really valuable relationships
or opportunities for connection. That's a really primal instinct you
(12:26):
have going on there. You don't want to be left
out of the group. You want to avoid isolation and
loneliness at all costs, because our ancient brain knows that
could harm us in the long run. Basically, this is
our fear of rejection kind of working in tandem with
our desire for social acceptance and belonging. But actually that
(12:47):
ends up driving a wedge between us and other people anyways,
because we end up, you know, letting this fear drive
us to self isolate, drive us to not put ourselves
out there, to not really connect with people, Which means
that although our fear of being perceived might in our
brains be protecting us from being embarrassed, from being excluded,
(13:12):
from being teased or mocked, and therefore protect our social relationships,
actually it's having the counter effect, and it's meaning that
we tend to close ourselves off from those opportunities anyways.
It's like, if you begin to expect that people won't
like you or will immediately think the worst of you,
(13:33):
why give them the power to even do that when
you can stop that from happening in the first place
by never showing up. You can't be perceived if you're
not present. And so we tend to reduce our anxiety
and our fear by reducing exposure to the trigger, which
is other people or situations where we think we might
(13:54):
be uncomfortable. I think we know all too well that
this avoidance typically backfires, as avoidance always does when it
comes to phobic behavior or anxiety. The less exposure you have,
the more power your fear has, because it begins to
make everything seem worse in your brain and you have
no lived experience to prove otherwise. Like in this example, right,
(14:19):
you believe that if people could perceive you, they would
say something mean or cruel, or would think that you
were embarrassing, and that would result in them not liking you,
bowd mouthing you, having a negative judgment. The outcome of
that is super scary. You can't handle that possibility, and
so you never let it be the case. But in
(14:39):
your efforts to reduce your anxiety, which is a totally
natural thing to do, because anxiety obviously makes us uncomfortable,
we actually never question or give ourselves the opportunity to
disprove this irrational hypothetical. Worse than that, we never give
ourselves the opportunity to prove to ourselves that we are
(15:03):
capable of feeling judged and pushing forwards anyway. We never
get to prove to ourselves that we are bigger than
what someone may or may not think. We can experience
our worst fear and we can survive it, and we
cannot just survive, but it can fuel us, and it
can make us bigger and better, and in some ways
(15:24):
it actually reduces the initial fear that we had. So
what are the consequences of this? Well, I've kind of
seen it in myself, to be honest, in the past,
I remember self abandoning a lot, denying my true self
kind of the opportunity to be vibrant and present, because
the fear was louder than my impulse to express myself
(15:46):
and made me very very small and very very sad.
At first. I remember this very clearly, like I'd be
really excited to i don't know, post a picture online,
or to express my opinion, or go to this party
and talk to people, or even just like create something
cool and interesting and share it, and then this fear
(16:07):
would infiltrate and make all those positive feelings and all
that anticipation it would wilt it. It would make it
really really small, and you push down the parts of
you that you think are too much or that stick
out a little bit too much. You avoid situations that
you probably would have enjoyed, and you deny yourself opportunities
(16:28):
because a lot of opportunities do come with perception. The
more successful you become. The more passionate you become, more
people begin to notice you. And of course, if you
can't handle that perception, whyever put yourself in a position
where you could be praised or you could be seen.
(16:49):
I think simply put the desire to fit in and
the paralyzing fear of being disliked. It undermines our ability
to pursue the lives who want to create. The hypothetical
views of people you don't even care about, let alone know,
take on more power than our own intentions and our
(17:10):
own dreams. It's really interesting because, as one person put
it to me, it's kind of like you put a
wall between you and the world, and you both resent
that wall, but you also rely on it at the
same time. At an extreme, our fear of being perceived
can cause us to panic and experienced heightened levels of
(17:33):
social anxiety, terror, dread, shortness of breath, shaking, the urge
to go and hide, you know. And it's often in
response to specific situations like being introduced to people, being
in large group settings where you feel like you're one out,
being the center of attention. So a question I've definitely
(17:54):
asked myself, and I'm sure you may have as well.
Why do some people have this fear and others don't?
There are people who are just not afraid in the
slightest to exist as their fullest and truer selves, and
we really admire them for that. I'm sure we always have.
(18:15):
We all have someone in mind right now. Maybe it's
like a pop culture figure like a Chapel Row, or
like a performer or an idol of ours, or even
a friend who just seriously has no just doesn't have
that war, doesn't have that war between them and the world.
(18:36):
So why exactly is it the case that we do?
Where does this fear, Where does this worry of being
perceived truly come from? Firstly, our fear of being perceived
is really closely linked to, of course, social anxiety and
anxiety in general, as most social and specific phobias are.
(19:00):
What I really want people to know is that social
anxiety is more than just shyness, It's more than just introversion.
It's actually a complex difference in how our brains are
reacting to our environment, including social interactions, and specifically how
they're wired to absorb this information and the meaning that
they apply to it. Mainly, social anxiety and with its
(19:22):
Scopophobia is attributed to a dysfunction in the hippocampus, the amygdala,
and the areas of our brain that process emotion, meaning
that there is a lot more activity in those specific regions,
making us feel more attuned to small moments, small cues
that that are kind of seen through like a fearful lens.
(19:44):
That's the easiest way to put it. There are a
lot of neural mechanisms that are simply different between people
with social anxiety and people with scripophobia and people without it,
and those neural mechanisms are caused by both genetics and
our environment. But I think it's important that we acknowledge
(20:06):
the neural and biological mechanisms controlling this fear at the
very top of this, because especially when maybe we encounter
someone who just doesn't quite understand where our fear comes from,
they really need to know, and I hope that they
do know that a lot of it is not really
within our choice. It's not something that we have opted into. Actually,
(20:29):
it's the way that we are built. It's why we
also kind of see people who care so little about others'
opinions and they possess zero self awareness because they don't
have that same neural makeup and that those same kind
of cross activations between different regions of their brains. That mean,
(20:49):
when they see a social situation, when they see the
potential for being judged, their fear centers kind of light up.
They are hyper aware there is none of that going on.
And it's kind of like the opposite side of the
coin here, like it's equally as confronting to see someone
who genuinely doesn't care to a fault. But scopophobia can
(21:13):
also arise from something really upsetting or traumatic that has
happened at some point in your life, especially during childhood,
especially around bullying, exclusion, isolation, public humiliation. Those events and
situations can be actually quite shocking and very intense, and
(21:33):
so they leave a lifelong imprint and they cause behavioral
and emotional changes. Actually, in some forty to sixty percent
of cases of scopophobia, people are able to trace their
fear back to a catalyst event or a specific time
in their lives when they were really going through it,
(21:54):
when they were really socially ostracized or isolated. Situations can
make us increasingly hyper aware, firstly of how others see us,
because we're trying to anticipate a situation where our biggest
fears could be realized. Again, we already know what this
feels like. We didn't like it, and so we try
(22:16):
and avoid anything that reminds us of a previous time
when we were judged, when we were bullied, when we
were excluded. And I do want to highlight bullying as
an example here because it's definitely one that resonates with
me a lot, as like a kid who was bullied.
I know, I always say that I think children like
that actually end up becoming quite interesting people because they
(22:38):
learn to not I guess, not rely on the external
validation of others. But it can also make us go
the complete opposite way, where that external validation of others
becomes all we can think about. If you went through
childhood knowing what it felt like to be teased constantly,
to have those whispers kind of follow you around on
(23:00):
in person, and then you tried your hardest to avoid
that experience by wearing the clothes that made you fit in,
by staying out of the way, by appeasing your bullies,
and still finding that you couldn't escape it. That pain
is not something that you easily forget, and so even
(23:20):
as you age, it doesn't go away. Memories like that
are interesting because from an evolutionary perspective, they're meant to
help us, but they also contribute to trauma and PTSD,
and in a paper published in twenty eleven, research has
showed that harmful painful memories typically actually have greater recall
(23:41):
than positive memories from around the same time. So it's
not like you can just forget and move on. That's
like saying, oh, can you please forget what your best
friend's name is? Can you forget what your first day
of school was like? Can you forget your graduation? Can
you forget the many times that you didn't feel like
you belong? Can you forget the way that people's judge
made you feel? Of course we can't. It's ingrained in us.
(24:04):
It's a permanent kind of fixture of our past and
in some ways, of our identity. The behaviors surrounding our
fear of being perceived, scrutinized, judged are actually based on
this understanding. They become defensive based on previous experiences. The
possibility of going through that situation once more is so
(24:26):
confronting that we learn what we need to do to
avoid it from happening, and often how we avoid it
from happening is to just avoid social situations. We've kind
of already talked about how that can sustain this fear
of being perceived even longer. But you know, if it's
all you're trying to do to survive, if it makes
(24:49):
you feel better in the moment, sometimes it's hard not
to do those things. It's hard not to you know,
both deeply crave social approval and also be deeply terrified
of it. I hope that explanation makes some sense. I
also read a really fascinating article from disability rights activist
that people with physical disabilities are also more likely to
(25:11):
have a deep rooted fear of being perceived because of
again past experiences of being mocked, being pointed at, feeling
those eyes on them in public wherever they go, that
constant recognition that you're being watched or that people have
these private thoughts about you. I just that would be
so much to manage. It would just be exhausting and
(25:35):
very very loud. The final thing that we have to
briefly discuss here is actually perfectionism, which you may be
surprised to hear it come up in this kind of episode.
But what we know about the fear of being perceived
and what we know about perfectionism actually confirms that they
are related in some very intuitive ways. Perfectionist set extremely
(26:00):
high standards for themselves, and they are often preoccupied with
avoiding mistakes, either social in nature, maybe academic, whatever it
is that they are primarily fixated on. But this also
causes them to become quite obsessed by flaws or imperfections
that they believe will be noticed and criticized by others.
(26:23):
The desire to appear perfect can create a very intense
anxiety about being in the spotlight, even if being in
the spotlight is just being around other people, feeling like
their eyes are on you, feeling like you have their attention,
feeling like they are going to find that thing that
(26:45):
you already know is wrong with you. Actually, this really
interesting article published in Psychology Today, which I feel like
by now you guys know, is my favorite place for
sources on this. Actually it was published earlier this year,
and it he notes that a fear of judgment or
disapproval from others is actually the primary contributing factor to
(27:06):
people managing perfectionism and it's also one of the primary
contributing factors to people with scopophobia. So in terms of,
like if you were to make an organizational chart or
I guess, like a way of categorizing different things that
we can be going through mentally, different fears, different conditions,
different whatever. Scopophobia and perfectionism and a fear of judgment,
(27:31):
all of those three things sit very very closely together.
They're probably only delineated by like a few percentiles. Let's
take a step back, though, because we've kind of been
circling around this question for the entire episode. But why
does it even really matter? Why do people's opinions really matter?
(27:53):
And I know we talked about social disapproval, I know,
we talked about belonging. I know we talked about perfectionism,
about rejection, But truly, how life changing is the opinion
of someone we may never speak to again. How life
changing is that? What does that really have to do
with us? How is that really going to hurt us?
What is it about those judgments that feel so important
(28:15):
to us? Because you know, if you wouldn't invite someone
into your house, why do we let them into our head?
The burden of this sphere is kind of thrust so
heavily onto us. Whilst the people who you know are
judging us, maybe not judging us, they kind of just
get to go along their merry way. They never know
what we're feeling, what we're changing, how we're hiding to
(28:38):
be less seen. And it's costing you your life. And
when I say your life, I mean it's costing you
your freedom, your potential, it's costing you joy, relationships, opportunities,
even if it's not something that you're consciously choosing. So
what we really need to discuss is how we can
break through that wall that is keeping us separated. I'm
(29:00):
a confident, self assured, liberated life where the opinions of
others kind of glide off us. They don't take up
as much mental real estate. And I really want to
help you with that. So I'm going to give you
three powerful exercises and mental shifts that you can try
today to overcome your fear of being perceived. After this shortbreak,
(29:22):
stay with us. Our fear of being perceived is built
on a foundation of irrational thoughts. As most anxious patterns are.
The irrational thoughts associated with our scopophobia sound like this,
Everyone is constantly judging me. People will remember every awkward
(29:45):
thing that I do. If they don't like me, my
life is over. If they don't think I'm funny, charming,
good looking, they'll tell everyone and I'll lose all my friends.
If these people at the party judge me, no one
will speak to me anymore. These beliefs have probably helped
you in the past stay away from situations that you
(30:06):
thought were threatening or made you uncomfortable. But now they're
just not useful anymore. And you know that because you're
listening to this episode. The easiest way to deal with
anxious thoughts like these is not to try and suppress them,
ignore them, or even overthink your way out of them.
It's to play the game, the game of hypothetical that
(30:30):
your anxiety is so great at every time you think
that someone is judging you tell yourself that they are
actually admiring you, because why can't that be the case?
What makes either of those scenarios more likely than the other.
The fear based scenario feels more likely because we're used
(30:50):
to thinking that it's true. But is it? You know?
You might think, well, based on past experiences, it is,
But how many more times have people been able to
perceive you and really loved your outfit or thought that
you were really interesting, or loved your smile and just
not said anything. How many more times have people just
(31:11):
not noticed you at all, never thought about you again,
the same way that you have noticed people or not
noticed people and never thought about them again. There is
this idea in psychology that we pay more attention to
the situations that already confirm bias. For us, the bias
and this situation is everyone is judging me, but it
(31:34):
actually means that we don't see the full spectrum of
all the other times, and that hasn't been the case.
It doesn't matter you know whether that person is judging
you or not. If you get into the habit of
playing mind games. With your mind games, it can be
as simple as hearing that thought pop up, visualizing it
and having a laugh at yourself, like that's so funny,
(31:56):
What a funny piece of false news. My brain is
trying to tell me. I have no evidence to suggest
that in this moment that person is judging me more
than they are admiring me, more than they think that
I am cool or funny or lovely. So that is
our first mental shift recognizing that you may think you
know what's running through someone's head, but maybe you don't.
(32:17):
And as always, quite frankly, it's none of your business.
That's their problem. And what kind of a sad, frustrating
life it would be if this person were to be
judging you, not really knowing you, and if for their
whole life all they do is just see the worst
in someone, If that is what that person's reality is,
how miserable would that be? How just plain dark to
(32:42):
see someone existing and to just have your mind immediately
find something to scrutinize. What I'm trying to get at
is that it says a lot more about them, and
they have a lot of bigger things to worry about
than what you may or may not be doing, because
their their head is probably a really dark, insecure place,
(33:03):
and what a sad reality for them. I also find
it useful, if I'm still being met with the persistent
thought that they're judging me, that they don't like me,
to instead give that to just kind of look at
that hypothetical assessment and instead of being like, I'm going
(33:23):
to internalize their potential hatred of me, their potential disgust
or embarrassment of me. I'm going to assume that that's
what they're feeling and that's fine, and then I'm just
going to flood them with unconditional love. In my mind,
I'm going to look at this person, I'm going to
(33:43):
perceive think about this person, and I'm just going to
imagine just shooting, like just literally covering them in this
big blanket of empathy and love from me. And it
really does help you be like, I don't know, I
guess in my mind, I'm just like, it helps you
(34:03):
see that this person might be thinking the worst in
you and still going beyond not caring, being so defiant,
that you still decide to give them love, and you
still decide to give them empathy for what they're going through.
And that act of being the bigger person makes you
realize that this person is not inherently better than you,
(34:27):
not inherently doesn't inherently know more than you, their opinion
doesn't inherently mean more than yours because you're still here
showing this great generous gift of loving them, despite the
fact that they could be really cruel to you in
their mind. If that isn't working, I have another mental
(34:49):
shift of view, and it's called the yes and shift,
and no it's not the Arianagrande song, but honestly, it's
kind of a similar theme. The thing about anxious thought
is that they feel quite real because they are like
almost identical to a real fear, but they're incomplete, they
aren't fully formed, and that's what causes them to feel
(35:13):
so scary. This is the example I always give. It's
like if you were to walk into a house and
it looks like a house from the outside, but the
kitchen and the bedroom had no walls. You'd feel really
exposed in a house like that. And the same goes
for an anxious thought. When you walk into an anxious
thought and it's not entirely complete or real, you feel
(35:36):
exposed to the possibilities that could fill those gaps, like
being ostracized, being criticized. Here's how we overcome that. We
overcome that by filling in those gaps ourselves before we
let our anxiety do it for us, using our yes
and method. So, say you're at a party and you
think someone is smirking at you or your behavior, or
(35:57):
cringing at you talking to their friends about you. In
your brain, everything is probably a light and alive and
rushing and scary and freaky, and you're probably thinking, they
don't like me. Now, what I want you to do
here is except that, yeah, maybe they don't like you.
And then I want you to add an end onto
that sentence, they don't like me, and I'll be okay anyways.
(36:21):
They don't like me, and I know my friends love me,
so I'm not too fussed by that they don't like me,
and I'll never see them again, so really that's fine
by me. Don't let your fear grab onto that emptiness,
that unknown space, that uncertainty, and spiral, because if you
(36:43):
let your fear take over the end, it will sound
something like they don't like me, and that means that
everyone at this party doesn't like me, and that means
that maybe I should leave. So you kind of get
where that ends up taking you. It takes you into
a place of withdrawal and isolation. Mean you never face
the fear. But what we really need to do is
condition our mind to make peace with our fear of
(37:06):
being perceived by replacing the worst case scenario that we
so quickly jump to with a reaffirming statement or conclusion
that really builds us up that decenters the opinion of
this other person, and that makes us feel confident in
whatever circumstance is about to occur. Our final mental shift
(37:28):
that we're going to discuss, I've come to call the
mastery shift, and it's based on principles of exposure therapy
that are very often used to desensitize people with phobia
from their fears, and it's used for things like a
fear of snakes, a fear of planes, fear of bees,
and we can use it for a fear of being perceived.
(37:49):
So this is what I want you to do. I
want you to make a list of ten things that
your fear of being perceived is preventing you from doing.
And I want you to order that list from the
thing that you are most afraid to do, that you
cannot even imagine doing in a million years, to the
thing you feel a little bit worried about but you
(38:13):
could try tomorrow with enough support, with enough affirmations, with
a really good dose of confidence. So I'll give you
some examples of what could be on that list, Starting
really small. It could be recording like a short video
of yourself talking about a topic and watching it back.
It could be posting something you really want to post
(38:33):
on social media on a private account, Wearing an outfit
that's bright or more out there than usual on public transport,
wearing something that you know that you're shy to wear,
Offering to give a small speech at a friend's birthday,
planning an event where you're going to be the center
of attention, like a birthday party, going up to a
group at a party who you don't know, and introducing yourself,
(38:55):
doing a huge presentation at work. What we want to
do is to small start with those really small things,
like posting something on a private Instagram, even if it's
like for twenty four hours, post a story, post a
story to your close friends, just something really really small.
Wear that outfit where like the thing that you would
(39:15):
never wear, and once you can get through that situation
without feeling truly ghastly or anxious, you move on to
the next. We want to build up your tolerance basically
to being seen, maybe being heard, being watched, perhaps even
being judged. By showing you that a rarely is the
(39:39):
worst case scenario going to be the one that happens
b even if it is repeat after me, you will
be okay. You will be okay, And finally, it starts
to show you the possibility of a life without the
fear of being perceived being the only thing that is
(39:59):
motivating you. Finally, in one bonus shift that has helped
me immenseally in the past few years. They didn't really
have a name for let's call it the ideal self
to shift is really focused on tuning into what do
you actually want? I think one of the consequences of
a fear of being perceived that we haven't spoken about
(40:20):
is that we are always thinking about how to be
less offensive to others, what they might expect from us,
how to make us likable based on their tastes, their views,
their ideals. It's hugely aligned with people pleasing, but it
also disconnects us from what we need ourselves and who
we want to be because it's all about making others happy.
(40:42):
Deprioritize the thoughts of others, just for five minutes. What
do you think about yourself? What do you think about yourself?
And is that good enough for you such that in
five years time you would be okay with still being
this version of you. I really want you to sit
(41:04):
with that for a second. If no one else was around,
who would you be, would you like this version of you?
How would you dress? How would you go about your
daily life? What is your potential? And what's stopping you
from being those things? Right now now, I want you
to think about what things you'd like to change, and
(41:25):
I want you to kind of decide which of those
things that you are hell bent on changing or you
think would make you happy are based on what you
think other people expect from you and what you need
to change for their approval. And then I also want
you to acknowledge what you want to change because you
want to What do you want to change for your life?
(41:48):
The life that is yours? And when you look at
those two columns of things that you feel you need
to change or you need to be, and you see
the things that you feel you need to be for others,
and you see the things that you feel the need
to be and you want to be for yourself. Any
time you find yourself focusing too much on that left
(42:08):
hand column, I want you to shift back to the
right concentrate all of your energy on that second column.
What I want for me, the life I want for me,
the person I can become with that this fear and
keep it as a reminder for when you're worrying or
obsessing over what someone does or doesn't think about you.
(42:30):
Because you are the center of all your experiences, of
your whole universe. You're the one that matters here, and
I want you to be fiercely devoted to being your
truest self, even if it feels selfish or like you're
disappointing others. This is a muscle. Healing from our fear
of being perceived is a muscle. It's a skill, and
(42:52):
it's one of the greatest skills we can learn because
it will transform your life. Please hear me when I
say this. It's hard, it feels on natural when you
have been in this fearful state for so long, but
just the sense of freedom that you're one day going
to have makes it so worth it. I really don't
(43:12):
think that you need to be this fearful for the
rest of your life, even if you feel like right
now this fear is protecting you, or that it's useful
or it's helpful. I think you kind of know that
it's no longer the case because you're here and you're
listening to this episode and you want to change your life,
and I think that that is something that once you
(43:32):
are committed to, once you deprioritize the opinions of others,
once you find the mental shift, the mental game that
works for you, it all becomes possible. So thank you
so much for listening to today's episode. I do really
hope that you enjoyed it. I hope that you learned something.
I hope that you can take something away. I hope
(43:53):
that you can get rid of your fear of being perceived,
you can toss it out, that you can just look
at other people as just other people doing their own
thing the same way that you're doing your own thing,
and really do the things, do the adventures, do the
experiences that scare you and that have always scared you
because of what others might think, and hopefully now you
(44:14):
don't care. So if there is someone that you know
who you think might need to hear this episode, please
feel free to share it with them, Share it online,
share it on Instagram. You can also DM me if
you have additional thoughts, feelings, I don't know, hypotheticals, you
can DM me at that psychology podcast. We're also taking
episode suggestions at the moment, and make sure that you
(44:36):
are following along on Spotify or Apple and give us
a five star review if you enjoyed this episode. Until
next time, stay gentle, be kind to yourself, and we
will be talking very very soon.
Hello, everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here
back for another episode. Today's episode, though you may have
already noticed, is a rerun, So over the next two weeks,
I am putting out some of my best episodes from
(00:21):
the last four years of almost NonStop podcasting as I
just take some time away to launch my debut book,
Person in Progress, A Roadmap to the Psychology of Your Twenties.
Do not fret. I will be back on the twenty
ninth of April, but I just wanted to give my
book a little bit of extra love these next two
weeks because it's a big deal and I'm not going
to talk about it too much. I'm sure you're just
(00:43):
here to listen to the podcast and probably sick of
me talking about it, but I just want to say
thank you. I want to say a huge thank you
for allowing me to write this book and put it
out in the world. This is only possible because of
you all. Because of you, guys, the listeners. Literally, that's it.
That's the only reason I'm able to do this. And
(01:03):
I've wanted to be an author since I was five.
Twenty years later, you guys made that happen for me,
So just thank you, Thank you so much. I would
obviously love it if you could pre order it, buy it,
gift it to a friend, but you've already done so much,
and I just feel honored to have had this opportunity.
(01:24):
Most of all, I'm just really pumped for you guys
to read it. I hope that you learn something. I'm
sure if you love the podcast, you will love Person
in Progress as well. But it's a really exciting time
and the main feeling I have right now is one
of gratitude. So thank you so much. Without further ado,
I hope you enjoy this rerun of one of my
(01:45):
favorite all time episodes.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here back for another episode. As we of
course break down the psychology of our twenties. Worrying about
(02:28):
what other people think about us can take up a
lot of mental real estate. We kind of know that
we shouldn't care. We know that we are loved, We
know that no one is really watching us that closely.
But for some of us, it's not really a choice.
We are overwhelmed by this deep, persistent fear of being perceived.
(02:48):
We're constantly aware of those invisible judgments that others might
be making, what parts of us they might not like,
Who we might offend if we say the wrong thing,
who we make cringe, And it keeps us in this
place of self denial, denial of our true selves, of
our potential, of our ambitions, of our authenticity. And today
(03:13):
I want to talk about it because it's a fear
that is definitely not spoken about enough, despite being something
that a lot of us in our twenties and beyond
manage on a daily basis. Being in this decade of life,
it comes with a lot of insecurity. For sure. You know,
it's our first decade of adulthood and we're normally lost,
(03:35):
we're lonely. Maybe we're trying to fit in, and this
fear of being perceived feeds on these worries to make
us feel even more out of place and insecure. What
you may not know is that there is a lot
more to be said about this than just the typical
explanation that we get of social anxiety or low self confidence.
(03:55):
Our fear of being perceived has its roots in early
experiences of social exclusion, bullying, even perfectionism, and how our
brains process social and emotional information. Learning about this really
helps us accept this reality that has kind of been
thrust on us right and with that knowledge comes power,
(04:16):
the power to kind of change the thought loop that
keeps us fearful and withdrawn. And when you break down
the irrational and fear dependent thoughts that keep us trapped
by other people's potential judgments, a huge weight is really lifted,
and that's really what I want for you. We're also
going to discuss three powerful mental shifts that I've used
(04:40):
that are backed by research and psychology that can help
you overcome your fear of being perceived, from playing mind
games with your mind games to decentering the opinions of
others through exposure, and also applying one of the greatest
cognitive tricks of all time to essentially stop your anxiety
(05:01):
about other people's opinions before they even begin. There is
so much to talk about, and I also want to
explore what can happen when we do this. What is
the reality of being free from our fear of being perceived?
So much becomes possible. I just think it's something that
a lot of us can't even imagine, but I kind
(05:22):
of want to show you what that might look like.
So there is a lot to unpack in this episode,
and I know from hearing from all of you that
this is not uncommon in the slightest. So for all
of you who are managing this, dealing with this, this
episode is for you to get that clarity, to feel seen,
to know the psychology, and of course to overcome it.
(05:46):
So without further ado, let's get into how you can
overcome your fear of being perceived. Our fear of being
perceived really comes down to this irrational anxiety around being
observed and scrutinized by others. It's kind of in the name, really,
(06:07):
but this fear is also known as scopophobia, and that
comes from the Greek word scope to be examined, and
of course phobia to fear anytime something contains the word
phobia in it, we know that what's really happening below
the surface is anxiety. There is a dysregulated response to
(06:28):
a persistent, irrational thought or worry. You might say, you know, okay, scopophobia, Yeah,
it has its own name, But isn't this just social anxiety?
And you would be totally right for thinking that. The
fear of being perceived and social anxiety often go hand
in hand. But this is more than simply a social
(06:48):
phobia around wanting to avoid being seen by others. It's
also a specific phobia, and specific phobias surround an extreme
fear of a specific situation that poses little to no
danger but makes people really, really anxious. The thing is,
your fear of being perceived can be isolated to just
(07:09):
a single environment, like you may have no trouble public speaking,
hosting parties, even being seen by strangers on the street,
but when it comes to dating, you are incredibly fearful
of what people might think of you on your first
date or on dating apps, so you avoid those situations altogether.
That's a specific trigger for your phobia of being perceived.
(07:32):
Or you may be really confident in every other setting
other than in the workplace or at the gym. That's
why this fear can be very specific in nature. It's
at this point that it's probably important to note that
there are kind of two versions or two varieties to
our fear of being perceived. There is the fear of
being physically perceived taking up space being seen by others,
(07:57):
which is probably the most common. And then there is
the fear of being emotionally perceived, which has more to
do with being seen deeply and intimately by someone else
on a more kind of feeling space level. It's less common,
but it's still a really difficult reality to believe that
if anyone were to truly see you and your character
(08:18):
and to know you, they probably wouldn't want to be
around you anymore. Physical like, our fear of physical perception
is more around people making assumptions. Oftentimes, though they kind
of go hand in hand, because perception alone isn't scary, right,
It's the judgment that comes next, and that is where
(08:38):
kind of the emotional element comes in. It's not that
we kind of think that someone looking at us is
inherently dangerous, that their eyes are going to like burn
holes in our skin, even if it might feel that way.
Sometimes it's what we know comes second. People make instantaneous
and snap calls around they think someone is like within
(09:03):
seconds or minutes, and perception is not objective. There is
not one clear way of seeing everything and everyone. It's objective,
so we can't control what they think about us, whether
that is correct or not, and that is often what
is really at the root of this experience. We don't
actually fear the act of being perceived physically. We fear
(09:27):
being judged, and we fear the unknowns that are contained
in those judgments. And here is where we kind of
return to that distinction between fear and anxiety. Fear is
for the present and anxiety is for the possibility. That's
where all the fun is in for our anxiety, right
Our anxiety likes to try to figure things out that
(09:48):
we may never know, and that unknown is so scary.
We catastrophize based on the worst case scenario rather than
what is most likely, which is that people pay lot
more attention to themselves than anyone else. Most people are
actually fairly kind with their judgments, and even if they aren't,
we're still going to be okay. We can survive someone
(10:11):
not liking us based on limited information. We can survive
someone not liking us based on their own insecurities because
it's not about us anymore. But let's kind of track
back for a second, because there is something crucial I've
missed here. That is, what is it exactly about those
invisible judgments that are so scary for people with the
(10:33):
fear of being perceived? Yes, so it is the fact
that it is an unknown which our anxiety thrives on.
But it also is a little bit more than that.
Social judgment holds a lot of power because of our innate,
ingrained fear of social disapproval. We don't want others not
to like us. We don't want them to think that
(10:54):
there's something wrong with us. We don't want them to
walk away from meeting us or hanging out out and
go and say terrible things that might ruin our reputation
or destroy certain relationships. This is really the case for
a few reasons. Firstly, we kind of fear other's opinions
out of a need to protect our self esteem and
(11:14):
to continue to validate ourselves. We don't want people not
to like us because that might hurt our sense of
self worth. I think we all know what it's like
to be confronted with an ugly truth about what someone
else really thinks about us. If it's a former friend
calling you cringe an x, thinking that you're lame or unattractive,
(11:37):
you know, some aurshole on the internet, from school, whatever.
When someone makes a snig comment about your looks, about
any feature of you, that really hurts. And we want
to avoid that hurt and we want to avoid the
damage that it does to our self esteem, So we
begin to fear those judgments as a way to avoid them.
But let's dissect that even further. If someone doesn't like you,
(12:01):
then what well for our anxious mind. If people don't
like us, they think we're unattractive, annoying, whatever. Your primary
insecurity is around being perceived, we worry that as a
secondary consequence of that, we will lose really valuable relationships
or opportunities for connection. That's a really primal instinct you
(12:26):
have going on there. You don't want to be left
out of the group. You want to avoid isolation and
loneliness at all costs, because our ancient brain knows that
could harm us in the long run. Basically, this is
our fear of rejection kind of working in tandem with
our desire for social acceptance and belonging. But actually that
(12:47):
ends up driving a wedge between us and other people anyways,
because we end up, you know, letting this fear drive
us to self isolate, drive us to not put ourselves
out there, to not really connect with people, Which means
that although our fear of being perceived might in our
brains be protecting us from being embarrassed, from being excluded,
(13:12):
from being teased or mocked, and therefore protect our social relationships,
actually it's having the counter effect, and it's meaning that
we tend to close ourselves off from those opportunities anyways.
It's like, if you begin to expect that people won't
like you or will immediately think the worst of you,
(13:33):
why give them the power to even do that when
you can stop that from happening in the first place
by never showing up. You can't be perceived if you're
not present. And so we tend to reduce our anxiety
and our fear by reducing exposure to the trigger, which
is other people or situations where we think we might
(13:54):
be uncomfortable. I think we know all too well that
this avoidance typically backfires, as avoidance always does when it
comes to phobic behavior or anxiety. The less exposure you have,
the more power your fear has, because it begins to
make everything seem worse in your brain and you have
no lived experience to prove otherwise. Like in this example, right,
(14:19):
you believe that if people could perceive you, they would
say something mean or cruel, or would think that you
were embarrassing, and that would result in them not liking you,
bowd mouthing you, having a negative judgment. The outcome of
that is super scary. You can't handle that possibility, and
so you never let it be the case. But in
(14:39):
your efforts to reduce your anxiety, which is a totally
natural thing to do, because anxiety obviously makes us uncomfortable,
we actually never question or give ourselves the opportunity to
disprove this irrational hypothetical. Worse than that, we never give
ourselves the opportunity to prove to ourselves that we are
(15:03):
capable of feeling judged and pushing forwards anyway. We never
get to prove to ourselves that we are bigger than
what someone may or may not think. We can experience
our worst fear and we can survive it, and we
cannot just survive, but it can fuel us, and it
can make us bigger and better, and in some ways
(15:24):
it actually reduces the initial fear that we had. So
what are the consequences of this? Well, I've kind of
seen it in myself, to be honest, in the past,
I remember self abandoning a lot, denying my true self
kind of the opportunity to be vibrant and present, because
the fear was louder than my impulse to express myself
(15:46):
and made me very very small and very very sad.
At first. I remember this very clearly, like I'd be
really excited to i don't know, post a picture online,
or to express my opinion, or go to this party
and talk to people, or even just like create something
cool and interesting and share it, and then this fear
(16:07):
would infiltrate and make all those positive feelings and all
that anticipation it would wilt it. It would make it
really really small, and you push down the parts of
you that you think are too much or that stick
out a little bit too much. You avoid situations that
you probably would have enjoyed, and you deny yourself opportunities
(16:28):
because a lot of opportunities do come with perception. The
more successful you become. The more passionate you become, more
people begin to notice you. And of course, if you
can't handle that perception, whyever put yourself in a position
where you could be praised or you could be seen.
(16:49):
I think simply put the desire to fit in and
the paralyzing fear of being disliked. It undermines our ability
to pursue the lives who want to create. The hypothetical
views of people you don't even care about, let alone know,
take on more power than our own intentions and our
(17:10):
own dreams. It's really interesting because, as one person put
it to me, it's kind of like you put a
wall between you and the world, and you both resent
that wall, but you also rely on it at the
same time. At an extreme, our fear of being perceived
can cause us to panic and experienced heightened levels of
(17:33):
social anxiety, terror, dread, shortness of breath, shaking, the urge
to go and hide, you know. And it's often in
response to specific situations like being introduced to people, being
in large group settings where you feel like you're one out,
being the center of attention. So a question I've definitely
(17:54):
asked myself, and I'm sure you may have as well.
Why do some people have this fear and others don't?
There are people who are just not afraid in the
slightest to exist as their fullest and truer selves, and
we really admire them for that. I'm sure we always have.
(18:15):
We all have someone in mind right now. Maybe it's
like a pop culture figure like a Chapel Row, or
like a performer or an idol of ours, or even
a friend who just seriously has no just doesn't have
that war, doesn't have that war between them and the world.
(18:36):
So why exactly is it the case that we do?
Where does this fear, Where does this worry of being
perceived truly come from? Firstly, our fear of being perceived
is really closely linked to, of course, social anxiety and
anxiety in general, as most social and specific phobias are.
(19:00):
What I really want people to know is that social
anxiety is more than just shyness, It's more than just introversion.
It's actually a complex difference in how our brains are
reacting to our environment, including social interactions, and specifically how
they're wired to absorb this information and the meaning that
they apply to it. Mainly, social anxiety and with its
(19:22):
Scopophobia is attributed to a dysfunction in the hippocampus, the amygdala,
and the areas of our brain that process emotion, meaning
that there is a lot more activity in those specific regions,
making us feel more attuned to small moments, small cues
that that are kind of seen through like a fearful lens.
(19:44):
That's the easiest way to put it. There are a
lot of neural mechanisms that are simply different between people
with social anxiety and people with scripophobia and people without it,
and those neural mechanisms are caused by both genetics and
our environment. But I think it's important that we acknowledge
(20:06):
the neural and biological mechanisms controlling this fear at the
very top of this, because especially when maybe we encounter
someone who just doesn't quite understand where our fear comes from,
they really need to know, and I hope that they
do know that a lot of it is not really
within our choice. It's not something that we have opted into. Actually,
(20:29):
it's the way that we are built. It's why we
also kind of see people who care so little about others'
opinions and they possess zero self awareness because they don't
have that same neural makeup and that those same kind
of cross activations between different regions of their brains. That mean,
(20:49):
when they see a social situation, when they see the
potential for being judged, their fear centers kind of light up.
They are hyper aware there is none of that going on.
And it's kind of like the opposite side of the
coin here, like it's equally as confronting to see someone
who genuinely doesn't care to a fault. But scopophobia can
(21:13):
also arise from something really upsetting or traumatic that has
happened at some point in your life, especially during childhood,
especially around bullying, exclusion, isolation, public humiliation. Those events and
situations can be actually quite shocking and very intense, and
(21:33):
so they leave a lifelong imprint and they cause behavioral
and emotional changes. Actually, in some forty to sixty percent
of cases of scopophobia, people are able to trace their
fear back to a catalyst event or a specific time
in their lives when they were really going through it,
(21:54):
when they were really socially ostracized or isolated. Situations can
make us increasingly hyper aware, firstly of how others see us,
because we're trying to anticipate a situation where our biggest
fears could be realized. Again, we already know what this
feels like. We didn't like it, and so we try
(22:16):
and avoid anything that reminds us of a previous time
when we were judged, when we were bullied, when we
were excluded. And I do want to highlight bullying as
an example here because it's definitely one that resonates with
me a lot, as like a kid who was bullied.
I know, I always say that I think children like
that actually end up becoming quite interesting people because they
(22:38):
learn to not I guess, not rely on the external
validation of others. But it can also make us go
the complete opposite way, where that external validation of others
becomes all we can think about. If you went through
childhood knowing what it felt like to be teased constantly,
to have those whispers kind of follow you around on
(23:00):
in person, and then you tried your hardest to avoid
that experience by wearing the clothes that made you fit in,
by staying out of the way, by appeasing your bullies,
and still finding that you couldn't escape it. That pain
is not something that you easily forget, and so even
(23:20):
as you age, it doesn't go away. Memories like that
are interesting because from an evolutionary perspective, they're meant to
help us, but they also contribute to trauma and PTSD,
and in a paper published in twenty eleven, research has
showed that harmful painful memories typically actually have greater recall
(23:41):
than positive memories from around the same time. So it's
not like you can just forget and move on. That's
like saying, oh, can you please forget what your best
friend's name is? Can you forget what your first day
of school was like? Can you forget your graduation? Can
you forget the many times that you didn't feel like
you belong? Can you forget the way that people's judge
made you feel? Of course we can't. It's ingrained in us.
(24:04):
It's a permanent kind of fixture of our past and
in some ways, of our identity. The behaviors surrounding our
fear of being perceived, scrutinized, judged are actually based on
this understanding. They become defensive based on previous experiences. The
possibility of going through that situation once more is so
(24:26):
confronting that we learn what we need to do to
avoid it from happening, and often how we avoid it
from happening is to just avoid social situations. We've kind
of already talked about how that can sustain this fear
of being perceived even longer. But you know, if it's
all you're trying to do to survive, if it makes
(24:49):
you feel better in the moment, sometimes it's hard not
to do those things. It's hard not to you know,
both deeply crave social approval and also be deeply terrified
of it. I hope that explanation makes some sense. I
also read a really fascinating article from disability rights activist
that people with physical disabilities are also more likely to
(25:11):
have a deep rooted fear of being perceived because of
again past experiences of being mocked, being pointed at, feeling
those eyes on them in public wherever they go, that
constant recognition that you're being watched or that people have
these private thoughts about you. I just that would be
so much to manage. It would just be exhausting and
(25:35):
very very loud. The final thing that we have to
briefly discuss here is actually perfectionism, which you may be
surprised to hear it come up in this kind of episode.
But what we know about the fear of being perceived
and what we know about perfectionism actually confirms that they
are related in some very intuitive ways. Perfectionist set extremely
(26:00):
high standards for themselves, and they are often preoccupied with
avoiding mistakes, either social in nature, maybe academic, whatever it
is that they are primarily fixated on. But this also
causes them to become quite obsessed by flaws or imperfections
that they believe will be noticed and criticized by others.
(26:23):
The desire to appear perfect can create a very intense
anxiety about being in the spotlight, even if being in
the spotlight is just being around other people, feeling like
their eyes are on you, feeling like you have their attention,
feeling like they are going to find that thing that
(26:45):
you already know is wrong with you. Actually, this really
interesting article published in Psychology Today, which I feel like
by now you guys know, is my favorite place for
sources on this. Actually it was published earlier this year,
and it he notes that a fear of judgment or
disapproval from others is actually the primary contributing factor to
(27:06):
people managing perfectionism and it's also one of the primary
contributing factors to people with scopophobia. So in terms of,
like if you were to make an organizational chart or
I guess, like a way of categorizing different things that
we can be going through mentally, different fears, different conditions,
different whatever. Scopophobia and perfectionism and a fear of judgment,
(27:31):
all of those three things sit very very closely together.
They're probably only delineated by like a few percentiles. Let's
take a step back, though, because we've kind of been
circling around this question for the entire episode. But why
does it even really matter? Why do people's opinions really matter?
(27:53):
And I know we talked about social disapproval, I know,
we talked about belonging. I know we talked about perfectionism,
about rejection, But truly, how life changing is the opinion
of someone we may never speak to again. How life
changing is that? What does that really have to do
with us? How is that really going to hurt us?
What is it about those judgments that feel so important
(28:15):
to us? Because you know, if you wouldn't invite someone
into your house, why do we let them into our head?
The burden of this sphere is kind of thrust so
heavily onto us. Whilst the people who you know are
judging us, maybe not judging us, they kind of just
get to go along their merry way. They never know
what we're feeling, what we're changing, how we're hiding to
(28:38):
be less seen. And it's costing you your life. And
when I say your life, I mean it's costing you
your freedom, your potential, it's costing you joy, relationships, opportunities,
even if it's not something that you're consciously choosing. So
what we really need to discuss is how we can
break through that wall that is keeping us separated. I'm
(29:00):
a confident, self assured, liberated life where the opinions of
others kind of glide off us. They don't take up
as much mental real estate. And I really want to
help you with that. So I'm going to give you
three powerful exercises and mental shifts that you can try
today to overcome your fear of being perceived. After this shortbreak,
(29:22):
stay with us. Our fear of being perceived is built
on a foundation of irrational thoughts. As most anxious patterns are.
The irrational thoughts associated with our scopophobia sound like this,
Everyone is constantly judging me. People will remember every awkward
(29:45):
thing that I do. If they don't like me, my
life is over. If they don't think I'm funny, charming,
good looking, they'll tell everyone and I'll lose all my friends.
If these people at the party judge me, no one
will speak to me anymore. These beliefs have probably helped
you in the past stay away from situations that you
(30:06):
thought were threatening or made you uncomfortable. But now they're
just not useful anymore. And you know that because you're
listening to this episode. The easiest way to deal with
anxious thoughts like these is not to try and suppress them,
ignore them, or even overthink your way out of them.
It's to play the game, the game of hypothetical that
(30:30):
your anxiety is so great at every time you think
that someone is judging you tell yourself that they are
actually admiring you, because why can't that be the case?
What makes either of those scenarios more likely than the other.
The fear based scenario feels more likely because we're used
(30:50):
to thinking that it's true. But is it? You know?
You might think, well, based on past experiences, it is,
But how many more times have people been able to
perceive you and really loved your outfit or thought that
you were really interesting, or loved your smile and just
not said anything. How many more times have people just
(31:11):
not noticed you at all, never thought about you again,
the same way that you have noticed people or not
noticed people and never thought about them again. There is
this idea in psychology that we pay more attention to
the situations that already confirm bias. For us, the bias
and this situation is everyone is judging me, but it
(31:34):
actually means that we don't see the full spectrum of
all the other times, and that hasn't been the case.
It doesn't matter you know whether that person is judging
you or not. If you get into the habit of
playing mind games. With your mind games, it can be
as simple as hearing that thought pop up, visualizing it
and having a laugh at yourself, like that's so funny,
(31:56):
What a funny piece of false news. My brain is
trying to tell me. I have no evidence to suggest
that in this moment that person is judging me more
than they are admiring me, more than they think that
I am cool or funny or lovely. So that is
our first mental shift recognizing that you may think you
know what's running through someone's head, but maybe you don't.
(32:17):
And as always, quite frankly, it's none of your business.
That's their problem. And what kind of a sad, frustrating
life it would be if this person were to be
judging you, not really knowing you, and if for their
whole life all they do is just see the worst
in someone, If that is what that person's reality is,
how miserable would that be? How just plain dark to
(32:42):
see someone existing and to just have your mind immediately
find something to scrutinize. What I'm trying to get at
is that it says a lot more about them, and
they have a lot of bigger things to worry about
than what you may or may not be doing, because
their their head is probably a really dark, insecure place,
(33:03):
and what a sad reality for them. I also find
it useful, if I'm still being met with the persistent
thought that they're judging me, that they don't like me,
to instead give that to just kind of look at
that hypothetical assessment and instead of being like, I'm going
(33:23):
to internalize their potential hatred of me, their potential disgust
or embarrassment of me. I'm going to assume that that's
what they're feeling and that's fine, and then I'm just
going to flood them with unconditional love. In my mind,
I'm going to look at this person, I'm going to
(33:43):
perceive think about this person, and I'm just going to
imagine just shooting, like just literally covering them in this
big blanket of empathy and love from me. And it
really does help you be like, I don't know, I
guess in my mind, I'm just like, it helps you
(34:03):
see that this person might be thinking the worst in
you and still going beyond not caring, being so defiant,
that you still decide to give them love, and you
still decide to give them empathy for what they're going through.
And that act of being the bigger person makes you
realize that this person is not inherently better than you,
(34:27):
not inherently doesn't inherently know more than you, their opinion
doesn't inherently mean more than yours because you're still here
showing this great generous gift of loving them, despite the
fact that they could be really cruel to you in
their mind. If that isn't working, I have another mental
(34:49):
shift of view, and it's called the yes and shift,
and no it's not the Arianagrande song, but honestly, it's
kind of a similar theme. The thing about anxious thought
is that they feel quite real because they are like
almost identical to a real fear, but they're incomplete, they
aren't fully formed, and that's what causes them to feel
(35:13):
so scary. This is the example I always give. It's
like if you were to walk into a house and
it looks like a house from the outside, but the
kitchen and the bedroom had no walls. You'd feel really
exposed in a house like that. And the same goes
for an anxious thought. When you walk into an anxious
thought and it's not entirely complete or real, you feel
(35:36):
exposed to the possibilities that could fill those gaps, like
being ostracized, being criticized. Here's how we overcome that. We
overcome that by filling in those gaps ourselves before we
let our anxiety do it for us, using our yes
and method. So, say you're at a party and you
think someone is smirking at you or your behavior, or
(35:57):
cringing at you talking to their friends about you. In
your brain, everything is probably a light and alive and
rushing and scary and freaky, and you're probably thinking, they
don't like me. Now, what I want you to do
here is except that, yeah, maybe they don't like you.
And then I want you to add an end onto
that sentence, they don't like me, and I'll be okay anyways.
(36:21):
They don't like me, and I know my friends love me,
so I'm not too fussed by that they don't like me,
and I'll never see them again, so really that's fine
by me. Don't let your fear grab onto that emptiness,
that unknown space, that uncertainty, and spiral, because if you
(36:43):
let your fear take over the end, it will sound
something like they don't like me, and that means that
everyone at this party doesn't like me, and that means
that maybe I should leave. So you kind of get
where that ends up taking you. It takes you into
a place of withdrawal and isolation. Mean you never face
the fear. But what we really need to do is
condition our mind to make peace with our fear of
(37:06):
being perceived by replacing the worst case scenario that we
so quickly jump to with a reaffirming statement or conclusion
that really builds us up that decenters the opinion of
this other person, and that makes us feel confident in
whatever circumstance is about to occur. Our final mental shift
(37:28):
that we're going to discuss, I've come to call the
mastery shift, and it's based on principles of exposure therapy
that are very often used to desensitize people with phobia
from their fears, and it's used for things like a
fear of snakes, a fear of planes, fear of bees,
and we can use it for a fear of being perceived.
(37:49):
So this is what I want you to do. I
want you to make a list of ten things that
your fear of being perceived is preventing you from doing.
And I want you to order that list from the
thing that you are most afraid to do, that you
cannot even imagine doing in a million years, to the
thing you feel a little bit worried about but you
(38:13):
could try tomorrow with enough support, with enough affirmations, with
a really good dose of confidence. So I'll give you
some examples of what could be on that list, Starting
really small. It could be recording like a short video
of yourself talking about a topic and watching it back.
It could be posting something you really want to post
(38:33):
on social media on a private account, Wearing an outfit
that's bright or more out there than usual on public transport,
wearing something that you know that you're shy to wear,
Offering to give a small speech at a friend's birthday,
planning an event where you're going to be the center
of attention, like a birthday party, going up to a
group at a party who you don't know, and introducing yourself,
(38:55):
doing a huge presentation at work. What we want to
do is to small start with those really small things,
like posting something on a private Instagram, even if it's
like for twenty four hours, post a story, post a
story to your close friends, just something really really small.
Wear that outfit where like the thing that you would
(39:15):
never wear, and once you can get through that situation
without feeling truly ghastly or anxious, you move on to
the next. We want to build up your tolerance basically
to being seen, maybe being heard, being watched, perhaps even
being judged. By showing you that a rarely is the
(39:39):
worst case scenario going to be the one that happens
b even if it is repeat after me, you will
be okay. You will be okay, And finally, it starts
to show you the possibility of a life without the
fear of being perceived being the only thing that is
(39:59):
motivating you. Finally, in one bonus shift that has helped
me immenseally in the past few years. They didn't really
have a name for let's call it the ideal self
to shift is really focused on tuning into what do
you actually want? I think one of the consequences of
a fear of being perceived that we haven't spoken about
(40:20):
is that we are always thinking about how to be
less offensive to others, what they might expect from us,
how to make us likable based on their tastes, their views,
their ideals. It's hugely aligned with people pleasing, but it
also disconnects us from what we need ourselves and who
we want to be because it's all about making others happy.
(40:42):
Deprioritize the thoughts of others, just for five minutes. What
do you think about yourself? What do you think about yourself?
And is that good enough for you such that in
five years time you would be okay with still being
this version of you. I really want you to sit
(41:04):
with that for a second. If no one else was around,
who would you be, would you like this version of you?
How would you dress? How would you go about your
daily life? What is your potential? And what's stopping you
from being those things? Right now now, I want you
to think about what things you'd like to change, and
(41:25):
I want you to kind of decide which of those
things that you are hell bent on changing or you
think would make you happy are based on what you
think other people expect from you and what you need
to change for their approval. And then I also want
you to acknowledge what you want to change because you
want to What do you want to change for your life?
(41:48):
The life that is yours? And when you look at
those two columns of things that you feel you need
to change or you need to be, and you see
the things that you feel you need to be for others,
and you see the things that you feel the need
to be and you want to be for yourself. Any
time you find yourself focusing too much on that left
(42:08):
hand column, I want you to shift back to the
right concentrate all of your energy on that second column.
What I want for me, the life I want for me,
the person I can become with that this fear and
keep it as a reminder for when you're worrying or
obsessing over what someone does or doesn't think about you.
(42:30):
Because you are the center of all your experiences, of
your whole universe. You're the one that matters here, and
I want you to be fiercely devoted to being your
truest self, even if it feels selfish or like you're
disappointing others. This is a muscle. Healing from our fear
of being perceived is a muscle. It's a skill, and
(42:52):
it's one of the greatest skills we can learn because
it will transform your life. Please hear me when I
say this. It's hard, it feels on natural when you
have been in this fearful state for so long, but
just the sense of freedom that you're one day going
to have makes it so worth it. I really don't
(43:12):
think that you need to be this fearful for the
rest of your life, even if you feel like right
now this fear is protecting you, or that it's useful
or it's helpful. I think you kind of know that
it's no longer the case because you're here and you're
listening to this episode and you want to change your life,
and I think that that is something that once you
(43:32):
are committed to, once you deprioritize the opinions of others,
once you find the mental shift, the mental game that
works for you, it all becomes possible. So thank you
so much for listening to today's episode. I do really
hope that you enjoyed it. I hope that you learned something.
I hope that you can take something away. I hope
(43:53):
that you can get rid of your fear of being perceived,
you can toss it out, that you can just look
at other people as just other people doing their own
thing the same way that you're doing your own thing,
and really do the things, do the adventures, do the
experiences that scare you and that have always scared you
because of what others might think, and hopefully now you
(44:14):
don't care. So if there is someone that you know
who you think might need to hear this episode, please
feel free to share it with them, Share it online,
share it on Instagram. You can also DM me if
you have additional thoughts, feelings, I don't know, hypotheticals, you
can DM me at that psychology podcast. We're also taking
episode suggestions at the moment, and make sure that you
(44:36):
are following along on Spotify or Apple and give us
a five star review if you enjoyed this episode. Until
next time, stay gentle, be kind to yourself, and we
will be talking very very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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