How To Stop Living For Others (Social Anxiety)

"How To Stop Living for Others, when you have social anxiety"

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When you have social anxiety, your world revolves around how people perceive you. You run every word and action through a filter before you even say or do anything. You’re unable to be yourself around anyone because you obsess over being perfectly likeable.

You edit yourself out in conversations, not giving any opinions or expressing your likes or dislikes. All so that you will hopefully be “pleasing” to others.

But years of this filtering and editing makes you forget who you are. You begin to feel like a stranger in your own body. You also become exhausted trying to maintain some image that you can’t really pinpoint, but that you think other people want to see.

At least, that’s how it is for me. So here are 7 things I’ve been doing to stop living for others and get back comfortable being me. I’ve divided it into two sections:

Section 1 – Rediscover Yourself
Section 2 – Get Comfortable With Just “Being” (Stop Living For Others)

(If you enjoy self-reflecting, try out a Peace Of Mind Journal. Its a journal full of prompts and tips to calm and identify sources of anxiety! This is the one I use.)

Section 1 – Rediscover Yourself

Before you can stop living for others, you have to know you who you are. Otherwise you still won’t know how to act and be around people.

1. Separate Your Social Anxiety From Your Personality

Being socially anxious is not a personality trait.

It took me reading this blog post by HonestRox called The 4 Types Of Social Anxiety, to figure that out. The reality is that we only GET socially anxious. That’s because we’re subconsciously trying to keep people from seeing who we perceive ourselves to be (boring, stupid, quiet, etc). In my post, God Told Me I Had To Heal First, I mention that negative thoughts about ourselves come from what people have said about/to us. It destroys how we see ourselves and is often times the root of our social anxiety.

But underneath our social anxiety is who we really are: the loud, talkative, funny person who comes out when we’re by ourselves or with people who we feel totally comfortable with.

That is the person you need to start focusing on. You are not your social anxiety.

Learn who you are aside from your social anxiety

Write down the personality traits you display when you are by yourself or with family/close friends
Brainstorm and write down your likes and dislikes
Make it a habit to form an opinion about anything. Regardless of if you share it with others or not
Refer back to your list often to remind yourself of who you are outside of your anxiety

2. Allow Yourself To Feel Emotions

Have you ever felt like there was an expectation of how you should act when you feel certain emotions? But you feel like you cant live up to that expectation, so you just pretend not to feel that emotion at all?

I have. In fact it became a lifestyle for me. In situations where I supposed the expectation was that I should stand up for myself. I would instead gaslight myself into thinking I wasn’t angry. Like if someone cut in front of me in line – I knew I didn’t have it in me to speak up. So I’d tell myself, “Oh, I’m not annoyed. I’m not in a rush anyway. They can go ahead of me.“

In times when I was super excited. I knew I wouldn’t be able to squeal and jump around because the social anxiety made me so uncomfortable and awkward in my body. So, I would swallow my excitement and just smile and nod.

But overtime, doing things like that caused me to stop knowing when I was happy, angry, impatient, or whatever. I couldn’t tell how I felt about most situations. Or I would just immediately invalidate what I felt. It left me feeling so….blank.

Learn your emotions

Feel your emotion completely.
- Pay attention to what sensations you feel (face getting hot, chest getting tight)
- Sit with it to remember/relearn what it’s like to have that emotion
Confirm what you feel (“Yes, I am mad”). Don’t convince yourself you feel something else
Validate what you feel (“I’m allowed to feel this way because…”)
Be kind to yourself (if you’re angry, but can’t find the courage to stand up for yourself. Its okay! Baby steps 🙂)

3. Do/Say Things You Normally Think Twice About

When you think twice about doing or saying something. Immediately do it anyway.

Because it’s probably just your brain trying to filter you again. Your first instinct or reaction to something is your authentic self. Not the reaction that was mulled over, practiced, and overthought…. But of course, this is within reason. Don’t be letting your intrusive thoughts get you in trouble 👀.

Overtime you will begin to reconnect with the real you

Share that post that made you pause mid-share because you thought nobody else would find it funny
Send that text that made you pause because you thought saying it didn’t fit with the image you’ve been projecting your whole life
Say that joke even if you think nobody will get the reference

Section 2 – Get Comfortable With Just “Being” (Stop Living For Others)

After you rediscover who you are, you have to get comfortable BEING that person. No more filtering and editing your true self.

4. Trust Yourself

If you want to get comfortable being yourself, you have to trust yourself.

Would you be comfortable around someone if you didn’t trust them? Probably not.

Would you trust someone if they constantly made you promises but didn’t keep them? Would you trust someone that always has something negative to say about you? Again, probably not.

So look at how you treat yourself and stop overthinking your every move.

Be intentional about learning to trust yourself

Write down a list of things that make you trust someone, then be all of those things to yourself
If you obsessively quadruple check your work. Stop (you know it was right the first time you looked it over)
Start by making promises to yourself that you KNOW you can keep
Make an effort to keep any other promises you made to yourself (just like you break your back to keep promises to other people when you’re people pleasing)
If you are indecisive, MAKE a decision and just go with it!
Don’t let other people be the final decision-maker in your life. YOU make the final decision. Who cares if they get mad or disappointed? It’s your life!!
Stop googling every single thing (deep down you know you know what that word means and how to spell it)
Stop double checking simple math with a calculator (I know I’m not the only one 👀)

5. Take Your Time

Stop rushing around like a mad person!

Social anxiety will make you speed walk through grocery stores and malls. Frantically grabbing what you need and leaving…Well, okay. Maybe we don’t look like contestants on Guy’s Grocery Games. But we definitely move faster than someone who is relaxed in their surroundings.

Other times you may find yourself rushing, is out of fear of holding people up. I remember back when home phones were a thing, I would literally sprint to give my mom the phone. Just so I wouldn’t keep the person on the other line waiting. I’m so glad I’m done with that version of social anxiety.

Deliberately slow down

Purposefully walk slow wherever you go. Remind yourself to slow down whenever you are in public
Make people wait for you.
- Don’t rush to put on your clothes/shoes on when going to get bags out the car
- Don’t have things at the ready (dig through your purse/wallet a little before paying)
- Take your time putting groceries in bags at the self-check out. Especially if there’s a long line and no other machines open. You’re not the only one ringing up 😉.

6. Force People To Move Out Of Your Way

If you find yourself constantly walking in grass or into clothing racks just to get out of someone’s way. Stop it! Keeping walking straight and 9/10 they will move for YOU.

Even if you have to look down the whole time out of embarrassment. Keeping walking. Forcing people to move out of my way is honestly one of the most freeing things I’ve been doing to stop living for others.

7. Sneeze Out Loud

You are not disturbing anyone!

It also won’t bring attention to yourself. Even if it does, the person will just glance at you and go back to what they were doing.

If you have a habit of stifling your sneeze while in public. Start letting it out! That is a completely normal bodily function. Don’t feel bad for having it.

OVERVIEW

Putting these steps into action have helped me to stop “performing” everyday. I have a much better sense of self and I hope it will do the same for you!