Talk Yourself Out of Social Insecurities

Everyone has some social insecurity. Jitters. Self-consciousness. Cold feet. Apprehension.

“What does she think of me?”

“I bet he won’t call.”

“Do I look like a fool?”

Our anxious thoughts swirl out of control, threatening to carry us out to sea where we’ll drown in our own self-defeating behavior. The script goes something like this:

“She doesn’t like me at all,” you think, crossing your arms. “How are you?” she asks. You look at the street and respond with vague mumbles or list of gripes.  You feel defensive and you act a bit angry. In words and in action, your bad mood colors every part of the interaction.

When the conversation fizzles out because of your anxious, negative behavior,  you’re more convinced than ever that she doesn’t like you. “She hates me,” you conclude.

Sound familiar?

People have a powerful psychological need for belongingness. We want to be accepted by others and to experience camaraderie and closeness with friends and family. The need for social companionship isn’t just personal, it impacts our professional lives too. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, right?

It’s no surprise, then, that we wonder what others think of us. That we obsess about impressions, that we worry we’ll offend. Being outcast hurts.

If you want to let go of your insecurities, read on. A new study shows the path to inner peace may be paved with self-affirmations.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo examined the effects of self-affirmation on self-reported feelings of social anxiety. Each person in the experimental group wrote a letter of affirmation to him or herself. These letters focused on one of the individuals’ core values, the values most central to their identities. For instance, you might write about your belief in the value of compassion, explaining why compassion is important and how it has influenced your life. In doing so, you might recall and write down times when you gave or received great compassion, and how you felt as a result.

Positive thinking about oneself feels good. But it also has lasting benefits. People who wrote letters of self-affirmation showed improved social self-confidence even 2 months later.

The authors speculate self-affirmation decreases insecurity cyclically, by improving the quality of day-to-day social interactions. Simply put, if you feel good about yourself, you behave in an open, engaging way. Others interact positively with you, and those good experiences make you feel good about yourself all over again.

This research reminds us of that the power of positive self-talk goes way beyond feeling good. Write your own affirmation today and let the spiral of self-regard carry you upward.

Image credit: EYE © Domagoj Vidovic | Dreamstime.com