My Philosophy on Social Anxiety, Confidence, and Being Yourself

Here’s a breakdown of my general philosophy in case you don’t want to read all my blogs or listen to all my podcasts (totally understandable by the way).

These are some general themes we would explore if we worked together.

You’re Not Awkward. You’re Anxious.

Let’s start with the biggest misunderstanding about social anxiety:

Social anxiety is not a personality trait.
It’s not who you are. It’s not “just how you’ve always been.” It’s not proof you’re socially behind.

It’s simply anxiety. It doesn’t mean anything about who you are.

When anxiety hits, it changes how you think, perceive, and behave. It makes your mind scan for danger, risk, and disapproval. It narrows your ability to be spontaneous. It makes your body tense and your mind self-protect.

So of course you don’t feel natural. Of course you second-guess yourself. Of course you don’t feel like “you.”

Because you aren’t being you, the anxiety won’t allow it. This is good news though, this means there is nothing wrong with you. Nothing needs to be “fixed.”

The problem is that when anxiety is seen as a personal flaw, we feel shame.

And shame is our biggest battle.
Because shame turns a temporary state into an identity:

  • “I’m embarrassing.”

  • “I’m weird.”

  • “I’m not normal.”

  • “I’m not good enough.”

But the truth is: You’re not awkward. You’re just anxious.

This turns “I’m weird” into “this feels uncomfortable.” That’s easier to manage.

You no longer have to fix yourself, you just have to deal with the anxiety.

Why Self-Improvement Often Makes Social Anxiety Worse

A lot of people respond to social anxiety the same way they’d respond to being bad at math:
“I need to get better at this.”

So they start grinding:

  • conversation tips

  • scripts

  • charisma hacks

  • “how to never run out of things to say”

  • constant replaying and analyzing

Here’s the problem:

For someone with social anxiety, “improving social skills” often turns into obsession, and obsession increases anxiety.

Why? Because it keeps your attention locked onto yourself:

  • “Am I doing it right?”

  • “Was that weird?”

  • “How am I coming across?”

  • “What should I say next?”

This doesn’t build confidence. It builds self-monitoring.

And even deeper: it subtly reinforces a belief that your natural self is not trustworthy.

When you chase “better social skills” , the underlying message becomes:

“My real self isn’t enough. I need to manufacture a better version.”

That mindset destroys freedom. It keeps you performing, managing, and controlling… instead of expressing.

Confidence isn’t created by perfecting a social persona.
Confidence is created when you rebuild faith in your inner self. Your ability to speak, respond, and exist without constant editing. Ironically, the more you try to improve yourself socially, the less room there is for spontaneity, play, and authenticity.

Confidence isn’t something you add to yourself.
It’s what emerges when you stop trying to correct yourself in real time.

The Negativity Bias of Social Anxiety

You may believe you can’t be authentic, because that would be outright rejected by others.

However, when we have social anxiety, we forget we have a negativity bias.

Simply put, you mind pays more attention to the negative than the positive, because that is what is emotionally powerful, and that is what we tend to remember.

That’s why one awkward moment can feel louder than ten neutral ones.

And shame multiplies this bias.

When shame is present, you don’t just remember what happened, you assign meaning:

  • “That pause means I’m boring.”

  • “That look means they judged me.”

  • “That silence means I’m not normal.”

So your brain collects evidence… but it’s not collecting truth. It’s like a detective that has already made is mind up about who the perpetrator is. He is looking for the evidence to prove his point, and so is your brain.

But we have to remind ourselves that our image of ourselves is distorted and we need to take our assumptions with a grain of salt.

That being said, our goal isn’t to convince yourself that you’re perfect.
The goal is to stop treating your anxious brain as a reliable narrator., and open the door for another perspective.

Exposure Works… If You Do It Correctly (and With Compassion)

Yes, exposure works, it’s one of the most effective methods we have.

But exposure only helps if it’s done correctly.

Not by:

  • forcing yourself into overwhelming situations

  • expecting anxiety to disappear quickly

  • using exposure to “prove you’re normal”

  • shaming yourself after a hard moment

That approach backfires because it turns exposure into a performance and continues that negative narrative.

Correct exposure is:

  • gradual

  • reasonable

  • repeatable

  • rooted in self-respect

  • paired with compassionate self-talk

We have to understand that we are new to this. We are going to make mistakes and embarrass ourselves.

People with social anxiety tend to assume that other people don’t make “as many mistakes” as they do. This could not be further from the truth.

Everyone is out here embarrassing themselves, you just struggle to let it go.

We need to adjust our expectations and speak to ourselves with compassion.

Don’t expect to have hold a fascinating conversation every time you talk. It’s not always going to be smooth. There will be awkward moments; social situations are inherently awkward sometimes, it isn’t about you.

When you go home, it’s time to reflect with compassion and pride.

Instead “I’m an idiot that was so awkward,” we’re going to say “That felt awkward, but we spoke for 10 minutes. At the end of the day, I challenged myself.”

You Will Always Be Nervous: Stop Fighting It, Start Living With It

A huge breakthrough comes when you stop trying to stop your anxiety.

Because the truth is: you will be nervous… for a while.
Before dates, meetings, parties, speaking up, making friends; anxiety is part of being human.

The problem isn’t the feeling. The problem is your interpretation of it. You think it’s something to solve or run from. You think it means you are weak. It doesn’t

When you make your goal “don’t be nervous,” you turn nervousness into a threat.
And the more you try to suppress it, the more attention you give it.

This is where shame shows up again:

Nervousness doesn’t feel bad only because it’s uncomfortable.
It feels bad because it feels humiliating.

You’re not just afraid of anxiety, you’re afraid of what anxiety supposedly means:

  • “They’ll see I’m insecure.”

  • “They’ll think I’m weird.”

  • “They’ll know I don’t belong.”

So we shift the goal:

The goal is not to eliminate nervousness.
The goal is to stop treating nervousness like as evidence of your worth.

Bravery is not doing something without fear, it is doing something despite fear.

Avoidance and Safety Behaviors: The Real Fuel of Social Anxiety

Avoidance makes social anxiety worse. Period.

Not because you’re weak, but because avoidance teaches your nervous system this:

“That situation was dangerous, and I survived because I avoided it.”

The fear grows because you now believe avoidance is your only option.

And here’s what most people miss:

Avoidance isn’t only skipping events.
Avoidance also happens inside the conversation through safety behaviors.

Safety behaviors are things you do to reduce anxiety in the moment, but they keep anxiety alive long-term. Examples:

  • over-preparing what to say

  • rehearsing lines in your head

  • forcing a certain tone

  • hiding your opinion

  • people-pleasing

  • laughing too much

  • asking endless questions so you don’t have to reveal yourself

  • avoiding eye contact

  • speaking quietly

  • staying “neutral” so nobody can judge you

  • checking your phone

  • escaping quickly

  • drinking to feel normal

Safety behaviors seem helpful, but they send the message:

“The real me isn’t safe here.”

And then the mind concludes:

“If I don’t do my safety behaviors, I’ll be exposed.”

So you never learn the most important lesson:
that you can tolerate the discomfort of being seen.

You may not believe this yet, but through repetition and a chalnge in you inner narrative, you start to get more comfortable with that discomfort.

Self-Consciousness, Attentional Training, and Why You Freeze

Self-consciousness simply put is thinking about yourself too much.

It’s attention trapped inward:

  • monitoring your facial expression

  • judging your words

  • tracking how you’re coming across

  • trying to predict what they think

This inner focus creates a very common experience: freezing. Your mind goes blank and you don’t know what to say.

But here’s the truth:

Freezing doesn’t occur because you “don’t know what to say.”
It’s because you’re afraid to express yourself.

When someone brings up a topic, you likely will have an opinion or a thought about it. Even if that thought is “I don’t have an opinion on this topic.”

The problem is you are too afraid to say what comes to mind. So instead you search your brain for the “appropriate” thing to say, but you can’t find it.

You start to panic and then your mind goes blank.

The way I like to deal with this is through attentional training; which is simply practicing shifting attention away from the self and toward:

  • the other person (but not what they think about you)

  • the room

  • the sounds

  • curiosity

  • the actual topic

  • what you genuinely notice

This doesn’t mean dissociating or distracting.
It means relearning how to live outside of your own head.

You begin to self-monitor less. You also begin to notice what is around you. You form a non-judgmental relationship with your mind.

You become curious to how it responds to what is around you, instead of judging everything inside.

You start to learn to trust your brain as you let it give you thoughts and ideas, instead of trying to “find something to say.”

In this way you learn to come in contact with that “you” underneath the mask. Now all we have to do is express it.

This moves us to the final goal, self acceptance.

How to Like Yourself: Freedom Over Fitting In

A lot of people think the path to freedom is fitting in.

“If I could just be normal… I’d relax.”
“If I could just stop being weird… I’d be okay.”

But fitting in never creates freedom. If I believe I have to change myself just to be acceptable, how can I ever truly accept myself?

Here’s the deeper truth:

So much of who you are is out of your control. Your height, your looks, your skin color. But even things we think are in our control, are actually not:

Our interests, our preferences, our sense of humor.

Here’s a thought experiment: What is you least favorite type of music? Let’s say it’s Jazz. Could you, right now as you are reading this, choose to like Jazz? I don’t mean pretend to like Jazz, I don’t mean convince yourself you like it. I mean could you flip a switch in your mind right now and magically like Jazz?

Of course not. Because you don’t get to choose what your body and mind respond to. You don’t actually have a choice, you MUST LIKE YOURSELF.

If you allow yourself to be curious and open to your inner world and stop trying to fight what you respond to, maybe you can finally find peace in all the ways you had previously judged yourself for.

If you can accept what you like, what you find interesting, what you find funny… it becomes a lot easier to express yourself freely.

No more self-monitoring, no more asking if what you are about to says is “normal.” It’s YOU, and that’s all that matters.

Because at the end of the day a confident person doesn’t become confident by getting approval from other people. They become confident by being who they are, authentically, despite what others may think of them.