Contributed by Ginger T.
I am trying to overcome my fear of socializing with large groups of new people. When I was about 5, my parents had a party filled with people I didn’t know. I remember hiding behind my mother’s legs and clinging to her when they were introducing me. I don’t know what I was afraid of because, as I remember it, everyone was nice. But the fear was there anyway.
Later in life, I heard my dad tell a story about how, when he and my mom were first married, she would sit quietly, saying nothing around his friends. I imagine she had the same type of anxiety I have so maybe I learned this behavior from watching how she reacted around new people.
I decided to work on overcoming my fear and found this book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. It has helped me examine the source of my fear and how to move through it. It also told me something very important: everyone is afraid, maybe not of the same things, but everyone is afraid of something. When does this fear typically show itself? Whenever they are facing something new.
Fear comes from many places including rejection, success, failure, vulnerability, helplessness, disapproval, poor self-image. Where was my fear coming form? Could it be rejection or disapproval? Odd thing is, in my line of work, rejection is a major part of my job. I have to go through many people telling me “no” before someone finally says “yes.” But, in my work environment, I am okay with that. Perhaps because I am on my own turf. Then it occurred to me that maybe I overcame my fear of rejection in this area by applying the solution Susan Jeffers writes about in her book—I feel the fear and do it anyway!
At work, I have no choice. If I don’t approach people, I won’t make money and I’ll get fired. I guess my fear of being homeless (a very common fear) is stronger than my fear of rejection or disapproval. When I first started my job, I was scared but I got used to it and my confidence grew. In order to get over my fear of being around strangers, maybe the solution is to go out there and be scared.
Ms. Jeffers’ offers lots of tips in her book. Here are a couple of ideas from the book that are helping me better handle my fear of socializing.
- Observe your fear reactions. I began to notice throughout the day where my fear surfaced and made a note of it. I discovered that when random people talked to me, I kind of “froze up” and had nothing to say. By doing this I saw that my fear was based on feeling I have nothing to say. This was extremely revealing.
- Plan Ahead. By planning ahead, I could think about my next social event and how I might work through my fear. I visualized myself in the setting, feeling my anxiety and focusing on what I could add to the conversation. Then I slept on it which provided me with possible solutions to any problems I thought might occur.
When I added these ideas to what it was like for me in party settings, this is what I realized. When I am at party, everyone seems so lively as they talk about subjects I know nothing about such as pop culture, investing, traveling to exotic locales, and so on. When this happens, I feel I have nothing interesting to say which in turn makes me feel like I don’t fit in. However, there are topics that I am well-versed on that I can talk about.
So now, I am going to remind myself of this fact and look at how I can introduce topics I know about (appropriately of course!) to participate in conversations with strangers.
What fear have you overcome and how did you do it? We invite you to join the conversation and share your ideas in the box below.
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