Too Self-Conscious?
How to reduce over-sensitivity in social situations
Someone on the Bioenergetics Support Group that I administrate asked me if I could create something, from the body-based perspective, about being “too self-conscious.”
At first, I was not really sure what they were after, as I’ve always taken it that being more self-conscious, as in more self-aware, was innately a good thing. But they explained that they felt overly self-conscious in social situations and that it caused them to want to flee or otherwise shut down and stay just on the periphery.
I understood and could relate. Travelling a lot over the last couple of years, I regularly find myself in meetups and other new social situations where I don’t know anybody. I can easily get worried, as I travel to the place where it’s going on, about what will happen and whether people will accept me. I feel my mind saying “Hey, maybe just don’t go” and thinking of excuses I can make.
I think the traditional approach from therapy and personal development has been to work on your self-talk, such that you don’t create too many negative scenarios before you arrive somewhere. An alternative from the same field is to boost your self-esteem with positive affirmations.
I think this kind of thing has its uses. But that there are also issues. To my way of thinking, working with your self-image is not a functional long-term strategy for achieving and maintaining social connections. I see, specifically, a couple of problems.
Firstly, it puts you on a kind of see-saw, where you need to keep yourself up most of the time. But, as we all know, eventually the see-saw will return to the other side, and what will we do then, when we actually most need social connection? If you need to feel good about yourself before you can meet the world, how do you take care of yourself when you are not in that state? Mostly, I think, it leaves people drinking alcohol, taking substances, or binge-watching - solo pursuits that merely numb us out.
Secondly, I personally find that meeting people who are only “up” is a little fake anyway. It’s not easy to have a meaningful conversation with someone who must always feel good about themselves at all times. I find it becomes kind of superficial.
Now, this does not mean that I think it’s good to collapse in a weeping mess on the floor within 30 seconds of meeting a new person. To me, that is going completely to the opposite extreme.
To my mind, ideally, we want to be in a kind of “comfortable neutral” space when we meet new people. That way we can flow with the conversation, not needing to overly control it, and not being overly concerned with what the other might think of us. That way, there’s a chance to really meet someone. Something deep can happen, if it wants to happen.
How to achieve such a space?
To me, this is the domain of body-based therapy, rather than its more cerebral cousin. What we are trying to create is more groundedness and more openness within us.
The groundedness allows us to stay present and to also take a position when we feel we want or need to. The openness allows us to accept and take in the other person without the need to create too many judgments about them. Judgments are our mind’s way of shutting down our exposure to another. They are a useful defence mechanism, because there are people that we inevitably don’t want to be close to. But we can soon find ourselves living in a kind of prison if we indulge in too many judgments.
You will not be able to achieve groundedness and openness solely through working with your mind. The kind of neutrality and presence that those states can characterise only comes when certain muscle groups in the body are themselves more open.
Openness is mediated in the area of the chest. When our chest is “open,” we can hold more emotion without our nervous system having to come in and take us “out of there.”
Groundedness is mediated by the belly area, pelvic area, legs and feet. When the muscles of these areas are not filled with holding, we feel a connection to the earth that helps us to stand our ground if we need to.
If you would like to try some exercises to help open up these areas, I’m linking some videos below, taken from my YouTube channel. Some of the videos are pretty ancient and I feel a bit embarrassed about them nowadays! But, anyway…
Opening the Chest area - By far the best exercise for this is the 3-step or 4-step Shoulder Opening Sequence. I don’t think that I have a follow-along workout for this one, but you should do it along to a 2-minute ding track and complete 3 reps, and then give yourself some relaxation time, at least 4 mins, where you just lie down, close your eyes and feel your body. This means that the whole experience will take 28 minutes.
Grounding - This involves more areas of the body and so there are heaps of exercises on my channel that can help. Here are some of the best ones:
Something to bear in mind with this work is that it is not like going to the pharmacy and getting a pill. You may find you need to go on a deep journey with these exercises, and keep going until you come through to the other side. But it is worth it.
If you realize there is nothing such as a separate self. Self esteem, self image problmes and anxiety disepear by them self.