This video explores Jordan Peterson's insights on social anxiety. It emphasizes the tendency to hunch over as a defense mechanism and the resulting self-focused thoughts that intensify anxiety. Instead of trying to stop self-centered thinking, the post suggests observing others and their non-verbal cues to shift the focus away from oneself. By doing so, natural human instincts for reading people's emotions and thoughts are tapped into, reducing internalized negativity. The video concludes with practical tips: actively looking at others and maintaining confident posture, ultimately empowering readers to overcome social anxiety.
Jordan Peterson has a really good and simple take on social anxiety that I think you will find really helpful, even if you're not the biggest Jordan Peterson fan. Yeah. I see you. In the video of him, I found talking about social anxiety, he talks about somebody, you know, going to a party who is socially anxious and he says, you know, the party is the monster to them.
It's what's causing the social anxiety. So let's say you are going to a party, what does your body immediately do? So you are confronting the dragon of chaos when you go into the Social situation. And so what do you do? You're like this, right? You hunch over and that's low dominance. I'm no threat Did you pay attention to those last few words that he said?
I'm no threat That is what you were conveying when you hunch your body over like that It's a body posture designed to hopefully keep you under the radar Just like kind of when we were in school, right? When Teachers would have a question and they'd want to call on one of the students. If you were socially anxious while you were in school, you probably did what I did and kind of just tried to get under the radar and try not to be called on.
It's a defense mechanism. While you're in that position, what are you thinking about? What are people thinking about me? What are people thinking about me? Am I looking stupid? Am I looking foolish? Geez, I'm awkward. I hate being here. Man, I'm sweating too much. It's all... Internalized, right? It's all self focused.
It's all thinking about yourself, causing even more anxiety. So what should you do? Well, stop thinking about yourself. But, is that even possible? Short answer, no. And if you try to stop thinking about yourself, you're actually gonna cause yourself to think even more about yourself, causing even more anxiety.
If you've ever tried meditation, or if you can remember to the early days of when you started meditation, you can probably understand what I mean by this. A lot of times when people start meditation, they'll think, Okay, I just gotta stop thinking. And when you start thinking like that, you start just getting flooded with thoughts.
So it's not about just stop thinking, it's more of just observing your thoughts. What you do with socially anxious people is you say, Look at other people. Look at them. Right? Why? Because if you look at them, you can tell what they're thinking. Won't this make you feel more anxious? You think it would, but by looking at others, your thoughts start to go to them instead of internalizing negative thoughts onto you.
Why does this magically happen? Well, it's not magic. It's just human nature. You are wired to try and read people. When you're looking at someone, it's more than just... Observing a human being. You are analyzing their, their facial expressions, you know, their body language, trying to get a good feel for how they're feeling, what they're thinking, and you are doing this whether you realize it or not.
I'll prove it to you. Tell me in the comments what you're reading from each of these poses you see me in.
I assume you're able to read me pretty well. But when you're not looking at the other person, this is how the interaction goes. We're talking. And I'm looking here. I don't know what you're going to do next. And I'm going to put disjunctions into the, like, they're like, uh, bad chords in the melody of our, of our conversation.
And the reason is I'm not paying attention. So if you want to stop feeling socially anxious and awkward in social situations, you need to start putting these two tips into practice. First, look at people so you're not internalizing negative thoughts about yourself. And second, Have confident posture, even if you don't feel confident.
Don't hunch over. Make sure you're standing straight, shoulders back, chest up, head up, smile on. And remember, you got this, even if it doesn't feel like it yet.
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