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> Everyone is the main character in their own story For those with anxiety, one of the best pieces of advice I ever received (that also took me years to intern
by btown 4y ago
> Everyone is the main character in their own story
For those with anxiety, one of the best pieces of advice I ever received (that also took me years to internalize!) was the corollary to this: nobody is thinking about you in a critical way, at the level that you are criticizing yourself, because they are their own main character. Which is incredibly freeing, because the anxious person’s assumption that one embarrassing moment will turn into them obsessing about your failure… is absolutely nonsensical, because the only person they are obsessing about is the main character to them, themself.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- psychomugs 4y agoYou’ll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do.
- user_7832 4y agoThanks a lot for your comment! This part in particular > the only person they are obsessing about is the main character to them, themself seems obvious in retrospect.
- mikrl 4y ago>nobody is thinking about you in a critical way, at the level that you are criticizing yourself I think there are shades of this, which is to say the level of judgement can vary. I feel that in a smaller city my social anxiety is not as strong as when I’m in a larger city. In larger cities, I feel much more evaluated and judged ie eyes on me looking at my clothes, checking me out, etc despite being a much more detached and impersonal environment than smaller cities where I just feel ignored. Maybe it’s just more people around putting me more on edge.
- heavyset_go 4y agoI find it's the opposite for me. I'm basically anonymous in big cities, whereas smaller cities and towns can be, uh, incestuous when you start getting to know people. They can also be visciously judgmental, but that goes for people anywhere.
- jononor 4y agoThey might not judge you more in a large city, or be any more interested in you per see - they might just be a little bit more eager to check if you might be dangerous. As in places with many encounters with many people, the risk is higher.
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoHave you ever come across someone who you thought was dressed or acted strange while riding public transports or walking in the streets? Found one of your fellow traveler extremely attractive? I would assume most of us would answer yes. Do you remember the face of these persons? I can tell you that I don't. Nobody really cares about strangers in big cities. They are part of the background. Sometimes you are struck by something then you move along. Even people who might actually be judging you will have forgotten you exist minutes later. That's the beauty of cities.
- sdwr 4y agoThis is the classic platitude. I don't buy it - I do judge other people like that.
- btown 4y agoIn aggregate, I have no doubt! But for a person suffering from social anxiety acute enough to affect their performance, the length of time that you are judging specifically them for a specific thing that they did is almost certainly orders of magnitude less than that person with anxiety fears - because, unless you've developed unheard-of levels of thought parallelism, you will almost certainly have moved on to judging someone else!