This is Where Social Anxiety Comes From.

A lot of the reason we’re so socially anxious is not because of what we think…

It’s not because everyone is judging you. It’s not because everyone is better than you. It’s not because everyone is sizing you up in their minds…

It’s because you don’t feel safe in your own body.

Play with this idea for a minute with me…

When you were a child, you learned to “ping” off of your parents to get feedback from them that you were safe.

You looked to them and asked: “am I good enough?” And their response determined your answer.

What this did at such an early age was cause you to lose the sense of the boundary between you and the rest of the world.

The edges between you and others blurred. Where then, other people’s stuff became your stuff.

Where social anxiety comes from is from hyper-fixating on the perspective and opinion that others have of you.

Similarly to how you were with your parents.

And this is where the vicious cycle comes in: when you anxiously obsess over the opinions of other people, it makes you act more weird.

And this just reinforces the social anxiety loop.

In order to halt this pattern—or at least begin working towards it—you need to start by feeling safe in your own body.

You need to realize the only space you occupy—and therefore the only space you’re responsible for—stops at the edges of your body.

Everything else is out of your control, and not to be concerned with.

When you start feeling safe, grounded, and secure in your own frame, you stop getting mixed up in everybody else’s drama.

You stop thinking someone else’s opinion of you is your opinion of you.

You stop thinking someone else’s tension is your tension.

And this naturally has an immediate alleviating effect on our social anxiety.

Where, put simply, we stop giving a sh*t what other people think of us, and how well we’re “performing” for them.

And we start just being ourselves.

This is only possible though when you feel safe being yourself.

And that starts by feeling safe in your own body.