Everyone Around You is Screaming on the Inside: A Guide to Working With Social Anxiety

All the world’s a stage, but far too many of us have crippling stage fright.

Social anxiety is a bitch. I am grateful to say I have experienced it a lot more in my distant past than in my recent past. This is due in large part to a few frames and skills that helped me learn to ride and regulate it. Here are a few of my favorites:

Recognize that everyone is often screaming internally, especially when they are trying to talk to you.

This goes double for situations where people don't know each other well, which is a lot of the time if you are trying to get to know people well. Did your dad ever use the old line ‘It's just as afraid of you, as you are of it’ as you cautiously approached an animal? It's kind of like that.

In an ideal world, we would just casually waltz into social interactions with the same heart rate we pick our nose with, but this is not an ideal world. This is a world that gives only 25% of people the ability to properly digest cheese, and social interactions are often scary and confusing. It's better to align with the truth than to pretend it isn't.

So: attune to the person in front of you. This can mean tracking things like body language, heart rate, shakiness, skin flushing, facial expressions, tone of voice, and how you feel when you imagine putting yourself in their shoes/boobs/moods. Oftentimes, you will notice how terrified they are of fucking things up, or at least of feeling socially uncomfortable in some kind of way. You will also probably notice that they are screaming on the inside, and that they have a hole in their hearts, just like the one in yours. Well, that hole isn't just for filling. It's for docking into other people's heart holes so that the contents of your chest can mix with the contents of theirs.

Learn how to ride awkwardness and fear. Let them fill you with energy instead of making you squirm and scream on the inside.

Freezing up and being scared is not the show-stopper you think it is. Moving with and through these experiences in a way that the person you are speaking to can observe is actually one of the most effective ways you can put them at ease, by showing them you are both human and terrified like them and that the conversational connection is stronger than fear and awkwardness. This gives them a sense of permission and freedom and leads to better connections and conversations.

Recently, I made a cringe compilation for my meditation teacher. I did this because he asked me to. He asked me to because watching cringe videos on YouTube has been some of the most challenging, exciting, and meaningful meditation experiments I've ever experienced.

It goes like this.

As you watch this video, pay very close attention to what happens in your body. There's this powerful sensation, like a monster clawing its way upward-that when most people clamp down, constrict, cringe- and this is where you do the exact opposite of that. Surrender completely to the feeling, let it live and grow whenever it wants to in your body.

As you do this, pay attention to space- the space around you in your room, the space between your atoms, the space that contains all known and unknown objects and concepts in the universe, and allow your awareness to expand and settle in and as that space. You will have this intense sensation moving up and through you, and it happens in space, it itself has, and is, space, and if there is resistance to this activity, that's in space too.

This will not be easy the first time, but as you practice, you will find that ‘cringe’ isn't actually the primary experience itself, it's a response to an initial surge of arousing sensation that you don't actually need to fight. It's like a geyser of energy, and as you get good at geyser riding you will learn that while geysers are intense, they're morally and functionally neutral. You can do whatever you want with that energy. It doesn't need to crumple you up or make you hide inside yourself and wait till things are over.

You can also use this infinite supply of energy to play infinite games.

Play infinite games

‘Life is play’ is a powerful, helpful, and even enlightening frame. But whether we are playful is not the only important bit: what kind of game we are playing can make or break a social interaction. James Carse presents a helpful binary: we are either playing finite or infinite games. A finite game has a clear beginning and end, agreed-upon rules, and identifiable winners and losers. These games are played for the purpose of winning. Knife fights, Kickball, and King of the Hill are finite games.

Infinite games have no definitive beginnings or ends. The rules are flexible and may change during the course of the game. The purpose of an infinite game is not to win: the purpose of an infinite game is to keep playing. Love, Learning, and Language are infinite games.

Truly enjoyable conversations are infinite games, too. This is something you can ensure by doing things like asking open-ended questions with genuine curiosity, finding areas of mutual interest, and playing with humor. Ensure from the get-go that playing with ideas, language, and stories is cool with you, and invite people to engage with that game. People far prefer this kind of thing to finite games like comparing job titles or describing their degree of closeness to the host at a party.

This brings us to one of the most powerful social infinite games ever made: Circling.

Speak the Unspeakable

This one is a bit more advanced and requires some skill, but it's a skill very much worth gradually acquiring. Look around the room. Is there an elephant in it? If so, point at the elephant. Describe what it feels like to you, and ask about how it feels to others. Have you noticed you or the person you are speaking to is nervous, as we discussed earlier? Then talk about it. It feels like breaking a social script because it is, but that is not always a bad thing. Many people find it deeply refreshing and freeing.

It opens up an entirely new set of opportunities for connection when you signal that discomfort, or attraction, or boredom or- whatever it is- is now literally fair game. Speaking directly from your experience, both positive and negative, and inviting others to do the same, is a powerful infinite game. It helps you attune to others, that helps others attune to you, that can help you notice your fear, the fear of others, and how they present an opportunity for connection.

I scream. You scream. We all scream.

Let's play.