This is a linkpost for https://chrislakin.blog/social-anxiety
Social Anxiety Isn’t About Being Liked
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This reminds me of that study at Google that found that the common predictor of the most successful groups who worked together on projects was a general sense of psychological safety among those in the group. In a group where people felt free to spoke their mind without potential severe social penalties, those in it came up with better ideas, and addressed issues more effectively.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11174399
This seems right to me!
Recognize this
✅
and you’ll be able to shift your focus to the real work: becoming comfortable with the worst-case scenarios your anxiety is protecting you from.
any advice? Thanks!
I find that just identifying the worst case scenario is sometimes enough to help significantly. A lot of the time the worst case scenario seems to be something which is either very unlikely to happen, or that I could deal with easily it if it did happen. So the first thing I'd recommend is to try and find out exactly what you're affraid of in any given situation.
Another thing I've noticed is that some feelings of anxiety seem to be based on intuition whereas others are based on fear, and that the feelings which result from intuition are usually worth to acting on whereas those which result from fear are typically not. For example, the urge to stand alone at the edge of a party and not speak to anyone would be an urge which is based on fear, whereas the feeling of awkwardness and isolation that results from actually standing alone at the edge of the party would be based on correct social intuition. Whenever I make some kind of social mistake I ask myself if I was acting on my intuition or my fear, and in almost every case so far it has been that I was acting on my fear not my intuition, usually my intuition was to do exactly the opposite.
There are six different posts on my blog about this.
(The trouble is I haven't often seen someone read one of these posts and follow it correctly— People come in with too many wrong misconceptions about psychology. Doing it right looks more like not doing bad things than doing right things, which unfortunately is a highly individualistic process because everyone has different memetic viruses.)
https://realityisdharma.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/focusing-eugene-t-gendlin.pdf
2nd part of the book
Or get a therapist if it's bad enough.
yeah usually people use focusing ifs etc. though i think there are significantly faster ways. (trying to write about this, writing about it has never worked unfortunately)
Agreed. There's a general sense of people being threats when you're socially anxious, versus being opportunities for connection when you're sociable.
Well, some people are threats. So maybe sometimes the important first step to fix your anxiety is to start avoiding those specific individuals (as opposed to generalizing the experience with them to everyone).
Yep. Plus fix insecurities stemming from actual issues that will come up in a normal interaction, which do "hurt" your sociometer.
Reminded me of Ozy’s post “The Life Goals of Dead People”, where guilt/anxiety/trauma makes you choose to live smaller and reduce variance
https://open.substack.com/pub/thingofthings/p/the-life-goals-of-dead-people?r=b9s5z&utm_medium=ios
1I like the general thrust of the post here but not sure I agree with some of the assumptions and conclusions that seem to follow from assumptions. I think you're correct that there as some real asymmetries that get lost when confusing avoiding dis-like with getting more liked. But I think that comes from disliked and liked not being different ends of a common spectrum. I suspect they are somewhat orthogonal to one another.
So the distribution you draw is imposed on a projection of the dislike vector and the like vector which can allow shifting from the insecure to the secure distribution producing no change in the like number in the tail, or arguably no change in the dislike number, with an increase in the like.
I don't see how liking and disliking orthogonal changes anything? Empirically, many of the actions that prevent people from disliking you also prevent people from liking you
Yes, I agree. But actions that make people dislike you less may have no impact on people liking you or may have a positive impact (increase you likeability). How does one go about choosing which element from the action set to put in your model to produce the results you present?
I suppose a better way to put my take here is that you're presenting a limited/narrow model but the rhetoric implies some type of general model. I think that is a bit dangerous to people trying to both understand their social anxiety and do something if they are looking to change it (which seems a bit implied by the use of anxiety rather than just saying introverted).
I think this framing is really insightful. It reminds me of prospect theory in behavioral econ - people tend to be more motivated to avoid losses than to achieve equivalent gains. Social anxiety might be the emotional manifestation of this asymmetry in the social domain. The distinction seems to also be supported by evol theory w/ how in ancestral environments, being actively disliked or rejected by the tribe could be fatal, whilst merely not being especially popular didn't have equal catastrophe.
I wonder if this also explains why exposure therapy works for social anxiety - it's not teaching you that people will like you more than you expect (though sometimes that happens), but rather demonstrating that the consequences of being disliked or making social mistakes are less catastrophic than your anxiety system predicted.
One question I have: could different types of social anxiety be differently motivated? Some people might genuinely be optimizing for approval rather than avoiding disapproval. This might explain why some socially anxious people become people-pleasers while others become avoidant. However, as someone who thinks self-curing a paralyzing social anxiety, is one of their greatest life achievements, I certainly am in the camp that argues in favor of the framing in this post :)
I wonder if this also explains why exposure therapy works for social anxiety
(I agree that it works sometimes, but lots of people bang their head with naive exposure. Exposure therapy, when actually facilitated by a seasoned expert, may work well— but lots of people hurt themselves with the naive version. And past a certain point there is definitely saturation because you actually can't exposure yourself to the true worst case scenarios)
could different types of social anxiety be differently motivated? Some people might genuinely be optimizing for approval rather than avoiding disapproval. This might explain why some socially anxious people become people-pleasers while others become avoidant.
eh perhap the "motivations" or "causes" are different, but I believe symptoms like this are all resolved the same way: by becoming secure
This post is definitely part of the answer to the puzzle of my social phobic spidey-sense. Mine first came on as a symptom of my Schizo-Affective Disorder. People always ask me what I'm scared of and what's the worst thing that could happen, I rarely consider either it just happens.
Nowadays it's a lot less strong than it was, I'm worst around my neighbors and their children. I have wondered if it could have something to do with chimp like DNA and to the sub-conscious it's like being around my pack but not known nor accepted. I'd feel a lot better about being in my driveway if I was liked/accepted by all around. I actively seem to indeed be avoiding being disliked by not going out there.
Although it might not be as simple as that as at Christmas I'm surrounded by friends and family who all like me, though when they all start talking over each other loudly about insignificant topics alarm bells ring loud until I'm back at home alone.
Another part of the answer that I suspect is that my sub-conscious doesn't like a "profoundly sick society". I don't see rationality in most things outside my house, modern life is beyond bizarre. Though if I were outdoors and everyone liked/accepted/cared about me, if there were no great chances of dislikes I guess I'd be a lot happier with the situation. Though if they start acting in crazed ways like the cacophony of nonsensical loud communication at Christmas I would still freak.
"Emotions *are* logical you're just bad at logic"
Yep!
I'm gonna quote you on this one from now on, so that all offense can be directed at you :p
Can you explain more what the “neutral” part of the scale covers, in operational terms? Because clinging onto neutral against the fear of plummeting into dislike isn’t going to get very far, at anything.
Well, what is an example of X having a “neutral “ attitude to Y, assuming they’re not strangers? What behaviours on the part of Y might lead to that evaluation by X, that Y might do to avoid the dreaded dislike?
It may vary with context. For example, at a party, never talking to anyone will be negatively noticed; at a large conference, no-one will notice.
I think what Chipmonk means by a neutral attitude is where X will not actively seek to harm Y due to the actions taken by Y. For instance, if Y has reason to believe that X may shame, fire, ruin the reputation of, prosecute or murder Y if Y does something X does not like, then Y will desperately try to avoid this outcome. This leads to anxiety, since doing nothing prevents catastrophic dislike and the negative outcomes associated with them.
Similarly, if Y cannot accurately predict what behaviors will result in a hostile response from X, they will withdraw and try to avoid making any significant social moves. As a result, Y will experience anxiety.
Curated and popular this week
There's this popular idea that socially anxious folks are just dying to be liked. It seems logical, right? Why else would someone be so anxious about how others see them?
And yet, being socially anxious tends to make you less likeable…they must be optimizing poorly, behaving irrationally, right?
Maybe not. What if social anxiety isn’t about getting people to like you? What if it's about stopping them from disliking you?
Consider what can happen when someone has social anxiety (or self-loathing, self-doubt, insecurity, lack of confidence, etc.):
If they were trying to get people to like them, becoming socially anxious would be an incredibly bad strategy.
So what if they're not concerned with being likeable?
What if what they actually want is to avoid being disliked?
What if the socially anxious were calibrating to avoid being DISliked?
Consider: if you shrink and never make any attention-getting moves, you are less likely to dangerously disappoint others, get into risky conflicts or be seen as a failure, embarrassment, or threat.
Like, yeah, it's wonderful to do awesome things and have people love you. But you know what’s better than being loved? People not hating you.
Social anxiety is a symptom of risk aversion
It’s not a pursuit of potential upside, but an attempt to avoid downsides.
Once you catch on to this pattern, you see it everywhere.
Two examples:
1) When you feel financially insecure, you’re not optimizing for windfall as much as you’re optimizing for not going bankrupt. You avoid risky bets with higher EV in favor of safer, more predictable options, even if they offer smaller returns. The goal is to keep you fed, not to make you rich.
2) Reversely, countersignalling is a demonstration of safety in close relationships. In Scott Alexander’s Friendship is Countersignalling, he describes an interaction he has with a friend:
The security of good friendship diffuses your anxiety about making a social faux pas and enables you to take more risks.
What does this mean for your growth?
If you believe your primary goal is to "be liked" and you keep finding yourself hiding in the shadows,you'll feel like a total failure. This hurts!
But all our feelings have their own kind of logic. Even when we do things that seem self-sabotaging, there's usually an incentive that makes sense in that specific context – even if it maybe not the best strategy overall. Locally optimal!
Consider: what if all these symptoms of social anxiety aren't failures of a system trying to be liked, but successes of a system trying to avoid being disliked?
What if you’ve been operating pretty rationally this whole time, but not for the outcome you thought you were optimizing for?
What if you’re not failing at being liked - you’re succeeding at avoiding being disliked?
Recognize this, and you’ll be able to shift your focus to the real work: becoming comfortable with the worst-case scenarios your anxiety is protecting you from.
The solution isn't trying harder to be liked. It's expanding your comfort with being disliked. More on increasing your tolerance of risk and failure in another post.