225. Overcome your fear of being perceived

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

Speaker 1 (00:04):
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
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.

(00:26):
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
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

(00:49):
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.
We're constantly aware of those invisible judgments that others might
be making, what parts of us they might not like,

(01:09):
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
I want to talk about it because It's a fear
that is definitely not spoken about enough, despite being something

(01:33):
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,
We're lonely, maybe we're trying to fit in, and this
fear of being perceived feeds on these worries to make

(01:55):
us feel even more out of place and insecure. What
you may not know is that they're is a lot
more to be said about this than just the typical
explanation that we get of social anxiety or low self confidence.
Our fear of being perceived has its roots in early
experiences of social exclusion, bullying, even perfectionism, and how our

(02:16):
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,
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

(02:40):
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
that are backed by research and psychology that can help
you overcome your fear of being perceived, from mind games
with your mind games to decentering the opinions of others

(03:04):
through exposure, and also applying one of the greatest cognitive
tricks of all time to essentially stop your anxiety 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?

(03:29):
So much becomes possible. I just think it's something that
a lot of us can't even imagine, but I kind
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.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
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. So
without further a too, let's get into how you can
overcome your fear of being perceived. Our fear of being

(04:10):
perceived really comes down to this irrational anxiety around being
observed and scrutinized by others. It's kind of in the name, really,
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

(04:31):
phobia in it, we know that what's really happening below
the surface is anxiety. There is a dysregulated response to
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

(04:52):
fear of being perceived and social anxiety often go hand
in hand. But this is more than simple a social
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

(05:14):
danger but makes people really, really anxious. The thing is,
your fear of being perceived can be isolated to just
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

(05:35):
date or on dating apps, so you avoid those situations altogether.
That's a specific trigger for your phobia of being perceived.
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

(05:56):
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,
which is probably the most common, And then there is
the fear of being emotionally perceived, which has more to

(06:16):
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
and to know you, they probably wouldn't want to be
around you anymore. Physical like our fear of physical perception

(06:36):
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
kind of the emotional element comes in. It's not that
we kind of think that someone looking at us is

(06:56):
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. Come second, people make instantaneous
and snap calls around what they think someone is like
within seconds or minutes. And perception is not objective. There

(07:20):
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 being judged, and we fear the unknowns that are

(07:43):
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 out that we
may never know, and that unknown is so scary we

(08:04):
could tastriphize based on the worst case scenario rather than
what is most likely, which is that people pay a
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 not liking us based on limited information. We

(08:27):
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 fear of being perceived? Yeah, so it is the

(08:47):
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,
ingrid fear of social disapproval. We don't want others not
to like us. We don't want them to think that
there's something wrong with us. We don't want them to

(09:09):
walk away from meeting us or hanging 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 to
continue to validate ourselves. We don't want people not to

(09:31):
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 ex thinking that you're lame or unattractive, you know,
some asshole on the internet from school, whatever. When someone

(09:54):
makes a snight 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,
then what well for our anxious mind. If people don't

(10:19):
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
have going on there. You don't want to be left

(10:39):
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
ends up driving a wedge between us and other people anyways,

(11:04):
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,

(11:24):
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,

(11:46):
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

(12:06):
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 than your brain and you have
no lived experience to prove otherwise. Like in this example, right,

(12:31):
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

(12:51):
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

(13:15):
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

(13:36):
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

(13:59):
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 to go to this
party and talk to people, or even just like create
something cool and interesting and share it, and then this

(14:19):
fear 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 because a lot of opportunities do come with perception.

(14:45):
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.
I think simply put the desire to fit in and

(15:05):
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
own dreams. It's really interesting because, as one person put

(15:26):
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
social anxiety, terror, dread, shortness of breath, shaking, the urge

(15:52):
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
asked myself, and I'm sure you may have as well.
Why do some people have this fear and others don't?

(16:14):
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.
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

(16:39):
a friend who just seriously has no just doesn't have
that war, doesn't have that war between them and the world.
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

(17:04):
is really closely linked to of course, social anxiety and
anxiety in general, as most social and specific phobias are.
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

(17:28):
they're wired to absorb this information and the meaning that
they apply to it. Mainly, social anxiety and with its scopeophobia,
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

(17:52):
that are that are kind of seen through like a
fearful lens. That's the easiest way to put it. There
are a lot of neural mechanis that are simply different
between people with social anxiety and people scripophobia and people
without it, and those neural mechanisms are caused by both

(18:13):
genetics and our environment. But I think it's important that
we acknowledge 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
feel comes from, they really need to know, and I
hope that they do know that a lot of it

(18:35):
is not really within our choice. It's not something that
we have opted into. Actually, 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

(18:55):
makeup and that those same kind of cross activations between
different of their brains. That mean 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

(19:20):
doesn't care to a fault. But scopophobia can 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

(19:42):
shocking and very intense, and 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 at event
or a specific time in their lives when they were

(20:05):
really going through it, when they were really socially ostracized
or isolated. These 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,

(20:27):
and so we try 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

(20:49):
interesting people because they learned 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

(21:11):
follow you around online, 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,

(21:32):
and so even 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 than positive memories from around the same time.

(21:56):
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
judgments made you feel of course we can't. It's ingrained
in us. It's a permanent kind of fixture of our

(22:19):
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 confronting that we learn what we need to do

(22:41):
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

(23:01):
makes 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 activists
that people with physical disabilities are also more likely to

(23:24):
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 very

(23:47):
very loud. The final thing that we have to briefly
discuss here is actually perfectionist, which you may be surprised
to hear 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. Perfectionists set extremely high

(24:12):
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. The desire

(24:36):
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 you

(24:57):
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 notes that a fear of judgment or disapproval from
others is actually the primary contributing factor to people managing perfectionism,

(25:20):
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, all of those

(25:44):
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? And I know we

(26:06):
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? How
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 to us? Because

(26:29):
you know, if you wouldn't invite someone into your house,
why do we let them into our head? The burden
of this fear 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 be less seen.

(26:52):
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 from a confident, self assured,

(27:15):
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, stay with us. Our

(27:41):
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 thing that I do.
If they don't like me, my life is over. If

(28:01):
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 thought were threatening
or made you uncomfortable. But now they're just not useful anymore.

(28:25):
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 your anxiety is
so great at every time you think that someone is

(28:47):
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 and feels more likely because we're used to thinking
that it's true.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
But is it? You know?

Speaker 2 (29:06):
You might think well, based on past experience, as 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
not noticed you at all, never thought about you again,

(29:28):
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
actually means that we don't see the full spectrum of

(29:50):
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,
What a funny piece of false news. My brain is

(30:11):
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.
And as always, quite frankly, it's none of your business.

(30:33):
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

(30:55):
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 head is probably a really dark, insecure place, and

(31:16):
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 to

(31:36):
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 perceive,
think about this person, and I'm just going to imagine

(32:00):
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 see
that this person might be thinking the worst in you
and still going beyond not caring, being so defiant that

(32:23):
you still decide to give them love and you still
decide to give them empathy 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, not
inherently doesn't inherently know more than you, their opinion doesn't

(32:45):
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 work, I have another mental shift view
and it's called the yes and shift And no it's

(33:06):
not the Arianagrande song, but honestly it's kind of a
similar theme. The thing about anxious thoughts 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 so scary. This

(33:27):
is the example I always give. It's like if you
would 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 exposed to the possibilities

(33:51):
that could fill those gaps. Like being ostracized, being criticized.
Here's how we overcome that. We overcome that by feeling
in theas 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 cringing at you talking to

(34:11):
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, they don't like me, and

(34:36):
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 let your fear

(34:56):
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
shouldn't leave, so you kind of get where that ends
up taking you. It takes you into a place of
withdrawal and isolation, meaning you never face the fear. But
what we really need to do is condition our mind

(35:17):
to make peace with our fear of being perceived by
replacing the worst case scenario that we so quickly jumped
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

(35:37):
about to occur. Our final mental shift 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

(35:58):
use it for a fear of being perceived. 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

(36:21):
feel a little bit worried about, but you 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

(36:43):
be posting something you really want to post 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

(37:04):
a party who you don't know in introducing yourself, doing
a huge presentation at work. What we want to do
is start 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

(37:25):
that outfit where like the thing that you would 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

(37:49):
showing you that a rarely is the 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

(38:09):
perceived being the only thing that is motivating you. Finally,
and one bonus shift that has helped me immntally in
the past few years. They didn't really have a name for.
Let's call it the ideals 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

(38:30):
perceived that we haven't spoken about 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,

(38:52):
because it's all about making others happy. 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 with that

(39:16):
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

(39:38):
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

(40:00):
the life that is yours? And when you look at
those two columns of things that you feel you need
to change or who 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

(40:20):
left 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.

(40:43):
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

(41:04):
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 unnatural 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 think

(41:25):
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

(41:45):
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 learnt something.
I hope that you can take something away. I hope

(42:06):
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

(42:26):
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

(42:48):
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 soon.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
MHM.