Embracing acceptance is the antidote to anxiety. By cultivating presence, courage, and understanding, we liberate ourselves from the grip of social anxiety and embrace the beauty of authenticity.
For awhile now and especially over the past ten years, social anxiety seems to have been increasing in intensity and number of people affected. Many have speculated as to why this is happening. Hypotheses include: • Parenting (snowplow, hyper-protective, abusive, lacking empathy). • Technology (communication mediated through screens / software, reduced physical activity, reduced exposure to outdoors). • Social media (much overlap with “technology,” also, encourages comparisons, division). • Diet (sugar, seed oils, processed foods, anti-nutrients). • Culture (race vs race, gender vs gender, politics). • Drugging children (Ritalin, Adderall, and other experimental treatments). • Environmental toxins.
While I have strong opinions on the “hows” above, I’ll resist speaking on those topics here. In a later chapter, Parents and Teachers, we will talk about parenting. For now we will focus on how to remedy or even cure social anxiety.
Depending on your time frame, you can focus on some specific exercises in this chapter or move on to learn and practice all aspects of PEP to find a gradual improvement in traits and skills that will decrease your social anxiety. These traits and skills include and are not limited to acceptance, awareness, comfort, patience, courage, self-confidence, patience, and power.
The most simple solution: Study and practice all parts of this book, read it more than once, take notes, and buy many copies. Okay, maybe not that last part, although, it does make a great gift!
Seriously: Studying and practicing this system, which leads to integration, so the system is part of you and automatic, will automatically relieve most, if not all, of your social anxiety! For example, in the chapter on anger, there are exercises you can do that will train your brain to realize that, usually, people are not out to get you. In fact, they usually usually want connection, respect, or other human needs.
Because your “cure for social anxiety” relies on a combination of other parts of this book, this chapter will take only a short dive into a few of those parts, which are addressed in greater detail before and after this chapter. For example, the chapter on evaluation will help you increase your acceptance.
Being in the moment related to anxiety?
An emotion at the root of social anxiety is fear. Practicing PEP can increase your ease with being in the moment. How can that reduce social anxiety? If you are “in the now,” you can not be in the past or future, and thus can not fear. Another benefit of “being in the moment,” is that you will have and project more confidence. This will show up in how relaxed your body is, your posture, ease of movement, and confidence. All of this leads to more ease with having acceptance of yourself and others.
Acceptance related to anxiety?
First, let’s be clear that I’m talking about acceptance of self and others. The more a person accepts themselves, the easier it is to accept others.
“I did that terrible thing, so I deserve punishment.” First, remember our exploration of “deserve” back in the chapter on evaluation?
A statement combining evaluation and deserve thinking is typical in our present retributive justice system: “He did something wrong and deserves to be punished.”
But the real point here is “I did those terrible things!” Notice the evaluation there? It’s the word “terrible.” It’s the clue we are not being fair to ourselves. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I recommend re-reading the chapter on evaluation. It’s one of the core parts of this entire practice.
The more you practice this system, the more easily evaluatory statements will stand out and be obvious to you. You will find yourself progressing like so:
“I did that terrible thing!”
That leads to “I did that thing. I’m not happy about it.” or “I did that thing. I regret it.” or even “I did that thing. I’m not happy about it because I value integrity.”
See our empathy formula in the statements above? See how this practice of gradually shifting from evaluating yourself to noticing, accepting, and eventually letting go?
What do we want to accept about others? The same as what you want to accept about yourself! Their past, present, and potential future. Their feelings. Needs. Abilities. Thoughts. Behaviors. Actions.
Everything you learned above in regard to acceptance for yourself applies to – and makes it much easier to – accepting others. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again because it’s important:
Acceptance is not agreement
You can accept that someone did a thing to fulfill one or more of the human needs we all share and at the same time you can disagree with their way of getting the need(s) met. This is merely an acknowledgment of understanding motives. Why is this point important? It allows us to more easily [temporarily] let go of our perspective, objective truth seeking, and evaluations, so we can truly hear and understand the other person’s perspective.
“He did that terrible thing! He deserves punishment.”
Again, a reminder our exploration of “deserve” back in the chapter on evaluation?
A statement combining a moralistic judgment. or evaluation and deserve thinking is typical in our present retributive justice system: “He did something wrong and deserves to be punished.”
“He did that horrible thing!” Notice the evaluation there? It’s the word “horrible.” It’s the clue we are making an assumption that we know everything and are fit to judge.
Here is a progression from judgment. to acceptance:
“She did that horrible thing!”
Which leads to “She did that thing. I feel disgusted about it.” or “She did that thing. I feel disgusted because I value consideration and respect.”
Do you see the PEP empathy formula in the statements above? See how this practice of shifting in stages from evaluating others to noticing, accepting, and eventually letting go?
Tying it all together
How does increasing your self acceptance and acceptance of others cure your social anxiety?
I’m glad you asked! First, self acceptance. The more comfortable you feel with yourself in all the many ways we can evaluate, the less you will assume others have issues with you. You will feel more safe and free to be yourself in more situations with a wider variety of people. You are literally expanding your comfort zone.
Or just ignore all of this and travel a lot. Just kidding. Not kidding 100% because – brief side track – exposing yourself to other cultures can be a great way to increase your resilience!
Back to the point. Finally, in addition to how much self acceptance can decrease your social anxiety, if you want to supercharge your social comfort, practice acceptance of others. When you have no negative thoughts or feelings about other people or their motives, it “infects” your entire outlook. Your voice tone, words, body language, and even actions will show this! Others will find themselves more comfortable in your presence. You’ll be invited to more parties and become insanely famous! Okay maybe that last part is a potential exaggeration. Maybe not. It’s up to you! You have the power!
Review
The increasing prevalence of social anxiety in recent years is linked to various factors such as parenting, technology, social media, diet, culture, drugging children, and the environment.
Practicing all the parts of PEP, including acceptance, patience, courage, self-confidence, and awareness, can alleviate social anxiety.
Presence in the moment can reduce anxiety as it eliminates future fears, increasing confidence and leading to more self-acceptance.
Acceptance of oneself and others is essential in reducing social anxiety. Acceptance of past, present, and future, feelings, needs, abilities, thoughts, behaviors, and actions, both in oneself and others, can lead to a gradual shift from evaluative statements to acceptance, understanding, and eventually letting go of evaluation and the ability to levitate.
Acceptance does not equate to agreement, but acknowledging the understanding of motives enables one to hear and understand others’ perspectives without making assumptions or passing judgment.
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