The Psychology of your 20s - 225. Overcome your fear of being perceived

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Our fear of being perceived is more than just social anxiety, its a real phobia around being scrutinised, observed and primarily judged by others. It's also greatly limiting your potential and ability to be your true self. But there is a way through, there is a way to escape the constant fixation on what others are thinking about you. In today's episode, we discuss:  The origins and effects of scopophobia How our fear of being perceived is both a social and specific phobia Why do we worry about what other people think? Perfectionism and our fear of being perceived  The impact of early childhood experiences  Three mental shifts to overcome your fear of being perceived  Listen now for all that and more!  Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast  For business enquiries: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world.

Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO. percent on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On The Look Back at It Podcasts. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me.

I'm Sam Jay. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people.

Listen to look back at it on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that doesn't. does not mean that you need to.

Listen to learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Ellen, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian.

Michael Mancini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean is.

for our psychology. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our 20s. Worrying about what other people think about us can take up a lot of mental real estate. We kind of know that we shouldn't care. We know that we are loved, we know that no one is really watching us that closely. But for some of us, it's not really a choice. We are overwhelmed by this deep, persistent fear of being perceived. We're constantly aware of those invisible judgments that others might be making, what parts of us they might not like, who we might offend, if we say the wrong thing, who we make cringe. And it keeps us in this place

of self-denial, denial of our true selves, of our potential, of our ambitions, of our authenticity. And today, I want to talk about it because it's a fear that is definitely not spoken about enough, despite being something that a lot of us in our 20s and beyond manage on a daily basis. Being in this decade of life, it comes with a lot of insecurity for sure, you know. It's our first decade of adulthood. And when you're, you're not. normally lost, we're lonely, maybe we're trying to fit in, and this fear of being perceived feeds on these worries to make us feel even more out of place and insecure. What you may not know is that there is a lot more to be said about this than just the typical explanation that we get

of social anxiety or low self-confidence. Our fear of being perceived has its roots in early experiences of social exclusion, bullying, even perfectionism and how our brains process social and emotional information. Learning about this really helps us accept this reality that has kind of been thrust on us, right? And with that knowledge comes power, the power to kind of change the thought loop that keeps us fearful and withdrawn. And when you break down the irrational and fear-dependent thoughts that keep us trapped by other people's potential judgments, a huge weight is really lifted. And that's really what I want for you. We're also going to discuss three powerful mental shifts that I've used that are backed by research and psychology that can help you overcome your

fear of being perceived, from playing mind games with your mind games to decentering the opinions of others through exposure and also applying one of the greatest. cognitive tricks of all time to essentially stop your anxiety about other people's opinions before they even begin. There is so much to talk about. And I also want to explore what can happen when we do this. What is the reality of being free from our fear of being perceived? So much becomes possible. I just think it's something that a lot of us can't even imagine, but I kind of want to show you what that might look like. So there is a lot of to unpack in this episode and I know from hearing from all of you that this is not uncommon in the

slightest. So for all of you who are managing this, dealing with this episode is for you to get that clarity, to feel seen, to know the psychology and of course to overcome it. So without further ado, let's get into how you can overcome your fear of being perceived. Our fear of being perceived really comes down to this irrational anxiety around being observed and scrutinized by others. It's kind of in the name really. But this fear is also known as scopophobia. And that comes from the Greek word scope to be examined. And of course, phobia to fear.

Anytime something contains the word phobia in it, we know that what's really happening below the surface is anxiety. There is a dysregulated response to a persistent, irrational thought. or worry. You might say, you know, okay, scropophobia, yeah, it has its own name, but isn't this just social anxiety? And you would be totally right for thinking that the fear of being perceived and social anxiety often go hand in hand.

But this is more than simply a social phobia around wanting to avoid being seen by others. It's also a specific phobia. And specific phobias surround an extreme fear of a specific situation. that poses little to no danger, but makes people really, really anxious. The thing is, your fear of being perceived can be isolated to just a single environment. Like, you may have no trouble public speaking, hosting parties, even being seen by strangers on the street, but when it comes to dating, you are incredibly fearful of what people might think of you on your first date or on dating apps.

So you avoid those situations altogether. that's a specific trigger for your phobia of being perceived. Or you may be really confident in every other setting other than in the workplace or at the gym. That's why this fear can be very specific in nature. It's at this point that it's probably important to note that there are kind of two versions or two varieties to our fear of being perceived. There is the fear of being physically perceived, taking up space, being seen by others, which is probably the most common,

and then there is the fear of being emotionally perceived, which has more to do with being seen deeply and intimately by someone else on a more kind of feelings-based level. It's less common, but it's still a really difficult reality to believe that if anyone were to truly see you and your character and to know you, they probably wouldn't want to be around you anymore. Physical, like our fear of physical perception is more around people making assumptions.

oftentimes though they kind of go hand in hand because perception alone isn't scary right it's the judgment that comes next and that is where kind of the emotional element comes in it's not that we kind of think that someone looking at us is inherently dangerous that their eyes are going to like burn holes in our skin even if it might feel that way sometimes it's what we know comes second people make instantaneous and snap calls around what they think someone is like within seconds or minutes. And perception is not objective. There is not one clear way of seeing everything and everyone. It's objective.

So we can't control what they think about us, whether that is correct or not. And that is often what is really at the root of this experience. We don't actually fear the act of being perceived physically. we fear being judged and we fear the unknowns that are contained in those judgments. And here is where we kind of return to that distinction between fear and anxiety. Fear is for the present and anxiety is for the possibility. That's where all the fun is in for our anxiety, right? Our anxiety likes to try to figure things out that we may never know and that unknown is so scary.

We catastrophize based on the worst case scenario. rather than what is most likely, which is that people pay a lot more attention to themselves than anyone else. Most people are actually fairly kind with their judgments, and even if they aren't, we're still going to be okay. We can survive someone not liking us based on limited information. We can survive someone not liking us based on their own insecurities because it's not about us anymore. But let's kind of track back for a second because there is something crucial I've missed here that is what is it exactly about those invisible judgments that are so scary for people with a fear of being perceived? Yes, it is the fact that it is an unknown which our anxiety thrives on, but it also is a little bit more than that.

Social judgment holds a lot of power because of our innate ingrained fear of social disapproves. We don't want others not to like us. We don't want them to think that there's something wrong with us. We don't want them to walk away from meeting us or hanging out and go and say terrible things that might ruin our reputation or destroy certain relationships. This is really the case for a few reasons. Firstly, we kind of fear others' opinions out of a need to protect our self-esteem and to continue to validate ourselves.

We don't want people not to like us because, that might hurt our sense of self-worth. I think we all know what it's like to be confronted with an ugly truth about what someone else really thinks about us. If it's a former friend calling you cringe, an ex thinking that you're lame or unattractive, you know, some asshole on the internet or from school, whatever. When someone makes a snide comment about your looks about any feature of you, that really hurts.

and we want to avoid that hurt, and we want to avoid the damage that it does to our self-esteem. So we begin to fear those judgments as a way to avoid them. But let's dissect that even further. If someone doesn't like you, then what? Well, for our anxious mind, if people don't like us, they think we're unattractive, annoying, whatever your primary insecurity is around being perceived, we worry that as a secondary consequence of that, we will lose really valuable relationships or opportunities for connection.

That's a really primal instinct you have going on there. You don't want to be left out of the group. You want to avoid isolation and loneliness at all costs because our ancient brain knows that could harm us in the long run. Basically, this is our fear of rejection, kind of working in tandem with our desire for social acceptance and belonging. but actually that ends up driving a wedge between us and other people anyways because we end up, you know, letting this fear drive us to self-isolate,

drive us to not put ourselves out there, to not really connect with people, which means that although our fear of being perceived might in our brains be protecting us from being embarrassed, from being excluded, from being teased or mocked, and therefore protect our social relationships, actually it's having the counter effect. And it's meaning that we tend to close ourselves off from those opportunities anyways. It's like if you begin to expect that people won't like you or will immediately think the worst of you, why give them the power to even do that when you can stop that from happening in the first place by never showing up? You can't be perceived if you're not present.

And so we tend to reduce our anxiety and our fear by reducing exposure to the trigger, which is other people or situations where we think we might be uncomfortable. I think we know all too well that this avoidance typically backfires, as avoidance always does when it comes to phobic behavior or anxiety. The less exposure you have, the more power your fear has because it begins to make everything seem worse in your brain and you have no lived experience. experience to prove otherwise. Like in this example, right, you believe that if people could perceive you, they would say something mean or cruel or would think that you were embarrassing and that would result in them not liking you, bad-mouthing you, having a negative judgment. The outcome of that is super scary. You can't handle that possibility and so you never let it be the case. But in your efforts to reduce your anxiety, which is a totally natural thing to do because anxiety obviously

makes us uncomfortable, we actually never question or give ourselves the opportunity to disprove this irrational hypothetical. Worse than that, we never give ourselves the opportunity to prove to ourselves that we are capable of feeling judged and pushing forwards anyway. We never get to prove to ourselves that we are bigger than what someone may or may not think. We can experience our worst fear and we can survive it and we can not just survive but it can fuel us and it can make us bigger and better and in some ways it actually reduces the initial fear that we had. So what are the consequences of this? Well I've kind of seen it in myself to be honest. In the past I remember self-abandoning a lot denying my true self kind of the opportunity to be vibrant and present because

the fear was louder than my impulse to express myself and made me very very small and very very sad. At first I remember this very clearly like I'd be really excited to I don't know post a picture online or to express my opinion or to go to this party and talk to people or even just like create something cool and interesting and share it. And then this fear would infiltrate and make all those positive feelings and all that anticipation, it would wilt it. It would make it really, really small. And you push down the parts of you that you think are too much or that stick out a little bit too much. You avoid situations that you probably would have enjoyed and you deny yourself opportunities because a lot of opportunities do come with perception. The more successful you become.

the more passionate you become, more people begin to notice you. And of course, if you can't handle that perception, why ever put yourself in a position where you could be praised or you could be seen? I think simply put, the desire to fit in and the paralyzing fear of being disliked, it undermines our ability to pursue the lives we want to create. The hypothetical views of people we don't even care about, let alone know, take on more power than our own intentions and our own dreams. It's really interesting because as one person put it to me, it's kind of like you put a wall between you

and the world and you both resent that wall, but you also rely on it at the same time. At an extreme, our fear of being perceived can cause us to panic and experience heightened levels of social anxiety, terror, dread, shortness of breath, shaking the urge to go and hide. You know, and it's often in response to specific situations, like being introduced to new people, being in large group settings where you feel like the Yob won out, being the center of attention. So a question I've definitely asked myself, and I'm sure you may have as well, why does some people have this fear and others don't? there are people who are just not afraid in the slightest to exist as their fullest and truest selves

and we really admire them for that i'm sure we always have we all have someone in mind right now maybe it's like a pop culture figure like i don't know chapel rhone or like a performer or an idol of ours or even a friend who just seriously has no, just doesn't have that wall, doesn't have that wall between them and the world. So why exactly is it the case that we do? Where does this fear, where does this worry of being perceived truly come from? 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.

I'm Michael Easter and on my podcast 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more, to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.

Listen to 2%. That's TWO%. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out. on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam Jett. And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack.

I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you finishing that sentence. I don't think there's a more important year for black people.

Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hardway with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Trip Fontaine,

Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about

wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross. Because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth? Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust.

I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, learn the hard way. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search, learn the hard way and listen now.

In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistency in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.

I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Alespian and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Firstly, our fear of being perceived is really closely linked to a voice. course, social anxiety and anxiety in general, as most social and specific phobias are. What I really want people to know is that social anxiety is more than just shyness, it's more than just introversion, it's actually a complex difference in how our brains are reacting to our environment, including social interactions and specifically how they're wired to absorb this

information and the meaning that they apply to it. Mainly, social anxiety and with its scope of is attributed to a dysfunction in the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the areas of our brain that process emotion, meaning that there is a lot more activity in those specific regions, making us feel more attuned to small moments, small cues, that are kind of seen through like a fearful lens, that's the easiest way to put it. There are a lot of neural mechanisms that are simply different between people with social anxiety and people with scropophobia and people without it. And those neural mechanisms are caused by both genetics and our environment. But I think it's important that we acknowledge the neural and biological mechanisms controlling this fear at the very top of this.

Because especially when maybe we encounter someone who just doesn't quite understand where our feel comes from, They really need to know, and I hope that they do know, that a lot of it is not really within our choice. It's not something that we have opted into. Actually, it's the way that we are built. It's why we also kind of see people who care so little about others' opinions and they possess zero self-awareness because they don't have that same neural makeup and those same kind of cross-activations between different regions of their brains that mean when they see a social

situation, when they see the potential for being judged, their fear centres kind of light up, they're hyper-aware, there is none of that going on. And it's kind of like the opposite side of the coin here. Like it's equally as confronting to see someone who genuinely doesn't care to a fault. but scropophobia can also arise from something really upsetting or traumatic that has happened at some point in your life, especially during childhood, especially around bullying, exclusion, isolation, public humiliation. Those events and situations can be actually quite shocking and very intense and so they leave a lifelong imprint and they cause behavioral and emotional changes. actually in some 40 to 60% of cases of scropophobia, people are able to trace their fear back to a catalyst event or a specific time in their lives when they were really going through it when they were really socially ostracized or isolated.

These situations can make us increasingly hyper-aware, firstly of how others see us, because we're trying to anticipate a situation where our biggest fears could be realized again. We already know what this feels like we didn't like it. And so we try and avoid anything that reminds us of a previous time when we were judged, when we were bullied, when we were excluded. And I do want to highlight bullying as an example here because it's definitely one that resonates with me a lot as like a kid who was bullied. I know I always say that I think children like that,

end up becoming quite interesting people because they learn to not, I guess, not rely on the external validation of others, but it can also make us go the complete opposite way, where that external validation of others becomes all we can think about. If you went through childhood, knowing what it felt like to be teased constantly, to have those whispers kind of follow you around online in person, and then you tried your hardest to avoid that experience. by wearing the clothes that made you fit in, by staying out of the way, by appeasing your bullies, and still finding that you couldn't escape it, that pain is not something that you easily forget. And so even as you age, it doesn't go away.

Memories like that are interesting because from an evolutionary perspective, they're meant to help us, but they also contribute to trauma and PTSD. And in a paper published in 2011, researchers showed that harmful, painful memories typically actually have greater recall than positive memories from around the same time. So it's not like you can just forget and move on. That's like saying, oh, can you please forget what your best friend's name is? Can you forget what your first day of school was like? Can you forget your graduation?

Can you forget the many times that you didn't feel like you belong? Can you forget the way that people's judgments made you feel? Of course we can't. It's ingrained in us. It's a permanent kind of fixture of our past and in some ways of our identity. The behaviours surrounding our fear of being perceived, scrutinized, judged, are actually, based on this understanding, they become defensive based on previous experiences. The possibility of going through that situation once more is so confronting that we learn what we need to do to avoid it from happening. and often how we avoid it from happening is to just avoid social situations. We've kind of already talked about how that can sustain this fear of being perceived even longer. But, you know, if it's all you're trying to do to survive, if it makes you feel better in the moment,

sometimes it's hard not to do those things. It's hard not to, you know, both deeply crave social approval and also be, deeply terrified of it. I hope that explanation makes some sense. I also read a really fascinating article from disability rights activists that people with physical disabilities are also more likely to have a deep-rooted fear of being perceived because of again past experiences of being mocked, being pointed at, feeling those eyes on them in public, wherever they go,

that constant recognition that you're being watched or that people have these private thoughts about you. that would be so much to manage. It would just be exhausting and very, very loud. The final thing that we have to briefly discuss here is actually perfectionism, which you may be surprised to hear come up in this kind of episode, but what we know about the fear of being perceived and what we know about perfectionism actually confirms that they are related in some very intuitive ways.

perfectionist set extremely high standards for themselves and they are often preoccupied with avoiding mistakes either social in nature, maybe academic, whatever it is that they are primarily fixated on. But this also causes them to become quite obsessed by flaws or imperfections that they believe will be noticed and criticized by others. the desire to appear perfect can create a very intense anxiety about being in the spotlight. Even if being in the spotlight is just being around other people, feeling like their eyes are on you, feeling like you have their attention, feeling like they are going to find that thing that you already know is wrong with you. actually this really interesting article published in psychology today which I feel like by now you guys know is my favorite place for sources on this. Actually it was published earlier this year and it notes that a fear of judgment or disapproval from others is actually the primary contributing factor to people managing perfectionism and it's also one of the primary contributing factors to people with scopophobia.

So in terms of like if you were to make an organizational chart or I guess like a way of categorizing different things that we can be going through mentally different fears, different conditions, different whatever. Scropophobia and perfectionism and a fear of judgment, all of those three things sit very, very closely together. They're probably only delineated by like a few percentiles. Let's take a step back though because we've kind of been circling around this question for the entire episode, but why does it even

really matter? Why do people's opinions really matter? And I know we talked about social disapproval. I know we talked about belonging. I know we talked about perfectionism, about rejection. But truly, how life-changing is the opinion of someone we may never speak to again? How life-changing is that? What does that really have to do with us? How is that really going to hurt us? what is it about those judgments that feel so important to us? Because, you know, if you wouldn't invite someone into your house, why do we let them into our head? The burden of this fear is kind of thrust so heavily onto us,

whilst the people who, you know, are judging us, maybe not judging us, they kind of just get to go along their merry way. They never know what we're feeling, what we're changing, how we're hiding to be less seen, and it's costing you your life. and when I say your life, I mean it's costing you your freedom, your potential, it's costing you joy, relationships, opportunities, even if it's not something that you're consciously

choosing. So what we really need to discuss is how we can break through that wall that is keeping us separated from a confident, self-assured, liberated life where the opinions of others kind of glide off us. They don't take up as much mental real estate. And I really want to help you with that. So I'm going to give you three powerful exercises and mental shifts that you can try today to overcome your fear of being perceived. After this short break, stay with us. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter.

And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more, to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.

Listen to 2%. That's TWO% on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast.

I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know.

I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack, so I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now, so. Thank you for finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard Way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, We get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch.

Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth. Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Keir Gaines, as we have.

have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in Owens, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected.

They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Alespie and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to a love-trapped podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our fear of being perceived is built on a foundation of irrational thoughts, as most anxious patterns are. The irrational thoughts associated with our scopophobia sound like this.

Everyone is constantly judging me. People will remember every awkward thing that I do. If they don't like me, my life is over. If they don't think I'm funny, charming, good looking, they'll tell everyone and I'll lose all my friends. If these people at the party judge me, no one will speak to me anymore. These beliefs have probably helped you in the past

stay away from situations that you thought were threatening or made you uncomfortable. but now they're just not useful anymore. And you know that because you're listening to this episode. The easiest way to deal with anxious thoughts like these is not to try and suppress them, ignore them, or even overthink your way out of them. It's to play the game,

the game of hypothetical that your anxiety is so great at. Every time you think that someone is judging you, tell yourself that they are actually admiring you, because why can't that be the case? What makes either of those scenarios more likely than the other? The fear-based scenario feels more likely because we're used to thinking that it's true. But is it? You might think, well, based on past experiences it is,

but how many more times have people been able to perceive you and really loved your outfit or thought that you were really interesting or loved your smile and just not said anything? How many more times have people just not noticed you at all, never thought about you again, the same way that you have noticed people or not noticed people and never thought about them again? There is this idea in psychology that we pay more attention to the situations that already confirm bias for us. The bias in this situation is everyone is judging me.

But it actually means that we don't see the full spectrum of all the other times. that that hasn't been the case. It doesn't matter, you know, whether that person is judging you or not. If you get into the habit of playing mind games with your mind games, it can be as simple as hearing that thought pop up, visualizing it, and having a laugh at yourself. Like, that's so funny. What a funny piece of false news my brain is trying to tell me. I have no evidence to suggest that in this moment, that person is judging me more than they

are admiring me, more than they think that I am cool or funny or lovely. So that is our first mental shift, recognizing that you may think you know what's running through someone's head, but maybe you don't. And as always, quite frankly, it's none of your business. That's their problem. And what kind of a sad, frustrating life it would be if this person were to be judging you, not really knowing you, and if for their whole life all they do is just see the worse than someone. If that is what that person's reality is, how miserable would that?

that be? How just plain dark to see someone existing and to just have your mind immediately find something to scrutinize. What I'm trying to get at is that it says a lot more about them and they have a lot of bigger things to worry about than what you may or may not be doing because their their head is probably a really dark, insecure place and what a sad reality for them. I also find it useful if I'm still being met with the persistent thought that they're judging me, that they don't like me, to instead give that, to just kind of look at that hypothetical assessment and instead of being like I'm going to internalize their potential hatred of me, their potential disgust or embarrassment of me, I'm going to assume that that's what they're feeling and that's

fine and then I'm just going to flood them with unconditional love. In my mind, I'm going to look at this person, I'm going to perceive, think about this person, and I'm just going to imagine just shooting, like, just literally covering them in this big blanket of empathy and love from me. And it really does help you be like, I don't know, I guess in my mind I'm just like, it helps you see that this person might be thinking the worst on you and still going beyond not caring, being so defiant that you still like decide to give them love and you still decide to give them empathy what they're going through.

And that act of being the bigger person makes you realize that this person is not inherently better than you, not inherently, doesn't inherently know more than you. their opinion doesn't inherently mean more than yours because you're still here showing this great generous gift of loving them despite the fact that they could be really cruel to you in their mind. If that isn't working, I have another mental shift of you and it's called the yes and shift and no it's not the Ariana Grande song but honestly it's kind of a similar theme. The thing about anxious thoughts is that they feel quite real because they are like almost identical to a real fear but they're incomplete. They aren't fully

formed and that's what causes them to feel so scary. This is the example I always give. It's like if you were to walk into a house and it looks like a house from the outside but the kitchen and the bedroom had no walls, you'd feel really exposed in a house like that and the same goes for an anxious thought. When you walk into an anxious thought and it's not entirely complete or real, you feel exposed to the possibilities that could fill those gaps, like being ostracized, being criticized. Here's how we overcome that. We overcome that by filling in those gaps ourselves before we let our anxiety do it for us, using our yes and method. So say you're at a party and you think someone is smirking at you or your behavior or cringing at you, talking

to their friends about you. In your brain, everything is probably alive and alive and rushing and scary and freaky. And you're probably thinking they don't like me. Now, what I want you to do here is accept that, yeah, maybe they don't like you. And then I want you to add an and onto that sentence. They don't like me and I'll be okay anyways. They don't like me and I know my friends love me, so I'm not too fussed by that. They don't like me and I'll never, see them again, so it really, that's fine by me. Don't let your fear grab onto that emptiness, that unknown space, that uncertainty, and spiral. Because if you let your fear take over the end, it will sound something like, they don't like me, and that means that everyone at this party doesn't

like me, and that means that maybe I should leave. So you kind of get where that ends up taking you. It takes you into a place of withdrawal, and I solicit. meaning you never face the fear. But what we really need to do is condition our mind to make peace with our fear of being perceived by replacing the worst case scenario that we so quickly jump to with a reaffirming statement or conclusion that really builds us up, that de-centers the opinion of this other person, and that makes us feel confident in whatever circumstance is about to occur. our final mental shift that we're going to discuss, I've come to call the mastery shift.

And it's based on principles of exposure therapy that are very often used to desensitized people with phobia from their fears. And it's used for things like a fear of snakes, a fear of planes, fear of bees. And we can use it for a fear of being perceived. So this is what I want you to do. I want you to make a list of 10 things that your fear. fear of being perceived is preventing you from doing. And I want you to order that list from the thing that you are most afraid to do that you cannot even imagine doing in a million years to the

thing you feel a little bit worried about, but you could try to borrow with enough support, with enough affirmations, with a really good dose of confidence. So I'll give you some examples of what could be on that list. Starting really small, it could be recording. Um, like a short video of yourself, talking about a topic and watching it back. It could be posting something you really want to post on social media on a private account, wearing an outfit that's bright or more out there than usual on public transport, wearing something that you know that you're shy to wear, offering to give a small speech at a friend's birthday, planning an event where you're going to be the centre of attention like a birthday party, going up to a group at a party

who you don't know and introducing yourself, doing a huge presentation at work. What we want to do is start small. Start with those really small things. Like posting something on a private Instagram. Even if it's like for 24 hours, post a story, post a story to your close friends, just something really, really small. Wear that outfit, wear the thing that you would never wear. And once you can get through that situation without feeling true,

ghastly or anxious, you move on to the next. We want to build up your tolerance, basically, to being seen, maybe being heard, being watched, perhaps even being judged. By showing you that A, rarely is the worst case scenario going to be the one that happens. B, even if it is, repeat after me, you will be okay, you will be okay. And finally, it starts to show you the possibility of a life without the fear of being perceived being the only thing that is motivating you. Finally, and one bonus shift that has helped me immensely in the past few years that I don't really have a name for, let's call it the ideal self-shift, is really focused on tuning into what do you actually want. I think one of the consequences of the fear of being

perceived that we haven't spoken about is that we are always thinking about how to be less offensive to others, what they might expect from us, how to make us likable based on their tastes, their views, their ideas. It's, you know, hugely aligned with people placing, but it also disconnects us from what we need ourselves and who we want to be, because it's all about making others happy. De-prioritize the thoughts of others just for five minutes. What do you think about yourself? What do you think about yourself? And is that good enough for you? such that in five years time, you would be okay with still being this version of you. I really want you to sit with that for a second.

If no one else was around, who would you be? Would you like this version of you? How would you dress? How would you go about your daily life? What is your potential? And what's stopping you from being those things right now? Now I want you to think about what things you'd like to change and I want you to kind of decide

which of those things that you are hell-bent on changing or you think would make you happy are based on what you think other people expect from you and what you need to change for their approval and then I also want you to acknowledge what you want to change because you want to. What do you want to change for your life, the life that is yours?

and when you look at those two columns of things that you feel you need to change or who you need to be and you see the things that you feel you need to be for others and you see the things that you feel the need to be and you want to be for yourself anytime you find yourself focusing too much on that left-hand column I want you to shift back to the right concentrate all of your energy on that second column what I want for me the life I want for me the person I can become without this fear and keep it as a reminder for when you're worrying or obsessing over what someone does or doesn't think about you because you are the centre of all your experiences of your whole universe you are the one that matters here and I want

you to be fiercely devoted to being your truest self even if it feels selfish or like you're disappointing others this is a muscle healing from our fear of being perceived is a muscle, it's a skill, and it's one of the greatest skills we can learn because it will transform your life. Please hear me when I say this. It's hard. It feels unnatural when you have been in this fearful state for so long.

But just the sense of freedom that you're one day going to have makes it so worth it. I really don't think that you need to be this fearful for the rest of your life. Even if you feel like right now, this fear is protecting you or that it's useful or it's helpful, I think you kind of know that it's no longer the case because you're here and you're listening to this episode and you want to change your life. And I think that that is something that once you are committed to, once you

deprioritize the opinions of others, once you find the mental shift the mental game that works for you, it all becomes possible. So thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I do really hope that you enjoyed it. I hope that you learned something. I hope that you can take something away. I hope that you can get rid of your fear of being perceived. You can toss it out. That you can just look at other people as just other people doing their own thing the same way that you're doing your own thing. And really do the things, do the adventures, do the experiences that scare you and that have always scared you because of what others might think. And hopefully now you don't care. So if there is someone that you know who you think might need to,

to hear this episode. Please feel free to share it with them, share it online, share it on Instagram. You can also DM me if you have additional thoughts, feelings, I don't know, hypotheticals. You can DM me at That Psychology Podcast. We're also taking episode suggestions at the moment and make sure that you are following along on Spotify or Apple and give us a five-star review if you enjoyed this episode. Until next time, stay gentle, be kind to yourself and we will be talking very, very soon. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. I'm on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness,

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It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to Look Back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host Care Games.

This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to,

Listen to learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice in so much, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Mancini.

My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.