This is what I read about it, ""Shame is a soul eating emotion." - Carl Jung
Well, Carl Jung was one of the most important psychologists ever, and he was definitely right about this. Shame is soul eating. And at the core of many people's social anxiety is a particularly poisonous kind of shame called toxic shame. Unlike regular shame, which goes away after a little while, toxic shame makes us always feel unworthy of love or acceptance. Toxic shame makes us run away from intimacy, makes us sabotage our relationships, and makes us feel like a total failure. Toxic shame all about feeling that we are somehow fundamentally flawed and unacceptable at our core, and it is usually connected to being:
- not attractive enough: too ugly, short, fat, thin or otherwise physically "flawed",
- not capable enough: a loser, loner, failure, dummy,
Toxic shame is knowing 100% that other people would reject you, if only they could see "the real you." It's this expectation that people will reject "the real us" that makes us hide away, avoid speaking up and gives us the dreaded "blank mind" when we don't know what to say. All of us who have social anxiety know that we have a very hard time opening up to others. No surprise there! So even if we go to school or work every single day, those people might never get to know "the real us." I remember some of my elementary school teachers being shocked—SHOCKED!—that my written papers showed a lot of personality and intelligence. During classes they might not hear me say a word to anyone all week.
2. Reader Question:
"How do I go about telling my story once I get to know people? I am very similar to the way you described yourself when you had severe social anxiety. I've taken to hiding in the basement and playing video games for the last few years and have nothing to show for my life. I am a kissless virgin with no friends at age 24. If I am to make friends or have a girlfriend in the future, how do I explain being such a pathetic piece of shit for so much of my life? Even in the beginning stages of a relationship when people ask you about myself, and I don't have much to say or any stories to tell, and I can't go about making any unless I get some friends. What did you tell people about yourself in the beginning stages of forming a relationship when telling the truth would surely either turn them away or turn them on you, and when you did finally manage to get friends and girlfriends, were you ever able to come clean about your past?"
How to "come clean" about a past of social anxiety? Well, of course I talk about it openly with people. In fact, it would be difficult to hide considering I have a public website talking all about my past experiences in great detail. :)
So the first thing I want to point out is this reader called himself "a pathetic piece of s**t". This really shows the mindset of toxic shame. In our culture, we are often taught that being hard on ourselves will motivate us to improve our lives faster. The problem is that it doesn't!!
If constantly criticizing ourselves worked for overcoming social anxiety... then everyone reading this email would have been cured years ago! So the first step is unconditional self acceptance. This means we stop beating ourselves up over our all-too-human flaws, shortcoming and mistakes.
And then what? The strategy I recommend is "Progressive Disclosure". This means while you're talking to people, once in a while you take small "leaps of faith" and share a part of yourself that you feel is unacceptable or shameful.
For example, I was also a virgin into my 20s, and this was something I used to feel very embarrassed about. But following "progressive disclosure" I slowly began to share more of myself and my past with others. The key part of this is doing it progressively—so I didn't just blurt out "I'm a virgin guyz!!!" to my coworkers. But maybe if I was on a date, I would mention that "I don't have much relationship experience" and then change the subject.
After my heart stopped hammering, my mind saw that nothing bad happened and the person didn't reject me. And over time, by taking these small "leaps of faith" my internal shame went down and so did the anxiety. Slowly I could share more and deeper parts of myself. This is the foundation for building fulfilling, open and honest relationships. You see, there's a thing psychologists call "reality testing." This means TESTING your old beliefs (like "nobody will like a virgin or inexperienced guy") in the real world and then SEEING what happens. It's almost like being a scientist doing an experiment."
