How to Stop Being Afraid of Judgment
Life Insights
We devote far too much time and attention to what other people will think of us, how they will judge our actions, how we look in the eyes of society. We devote excessive attention to it. And energy. We may involuntarily remember awkward situations from the past from time to time and feel shame, as if we were reliving those situations all over again. And it seems to us that if we remember some ridiculous situation, even if it happened a year ago, then everyone who witnessed it remembers it too. Admit it, has it ever happened that you wake up in the middle of the night and remember some wild thing you did when you were a foolish child? Or a foolish adult… These fears and this shame create inner tension and affect our self-esteem. If we are meeting a person who witnessed our failure or shameful act, then as we go to that meeting, we already feel awkward and already label that person as someone who will judge us in some wrong way. We project onto that person our own perception of ourselves. Read that again carefully. We project onto a person OUR PERCEPTION of ourselves. But that is not that person’s attitude toward us. Nevertheless, this projection causes us a great deal of discomfort and prevents us from communicating in a relaxed way. In addition to unsuccessful past experiences, our head is spinning with a hundred thoughts about our current state — how we look, what smell comes from us, whether our hair is styled well, with what intonation we are speaking, what we are saying, whether we look stupid. After meeting a person whose opinion really matters to us (or several people), we may analyze how we looked during that meeting and how the person may have judged us. And we обязательно find some small negative detail to latch onto and begin criticizing ourselves for it. This happens especially often with people who are prone to self-criticism and have low self-esteem. Because there are many people who simply do not care how they looked, and even if they did something ridiculous, they either do not realize it or do not care. Such people can behave terribly and still consider themselves the coolest. But right now I am talking about those people who truly worry often about other people’s opinions, and for whom these fears and the certainty of their own imperfection genuinely interfere with life.
It is difficult to fight these fears, and often they arise on a subconscious level, when we cannot control them. But I want to calm you down a little so that you can relax, stop fixating on this topic, feel freer in communication with other people, and, accordingly, be able to express yourself more freely and more naturally.
