What's Going on With Your Social Anxiety？
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Summary
Do you have trouble feeling comfortable when socializing? Maybe sometimes you do fine, but other times you feel nervous, shy, and awkward? Or maybe socializing always feels like a struggle? Either way, you know how frustrating and even debilitating social anxiety can be? It can not only lead to avoiding potentially enriching experiences and a failure to make desired connections can sometimes be hard to understand. So what s going on when you socially misfire? Here to unpack that question is Thomas Smithyman, who is a clinical psychologist and the author of Dating Without Fear: Overcoming Social Anxiety and Connecting.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Do you have trouble feeling comfortable when socializing? Maybe sometimes you do fine,
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but other times you feel nervous, shy, and awkward. Or maybe socializing always feels
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like a struggle. Either way, you know how frustrating and even debilitating social
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anxiety can be. It can not only lead to avoiding potentially enriching experiences and a failure
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to make desired connections can sometimes be hard to understand. So what's going on when you
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socially misfire? Here to unpack that question is Thomas Smithyman, who is a clinical psychologist
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and the author of Dating Without Fear, Overcome Social Anxiety and Connect. Today on the show,
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we get into the dynamics of social anxiety in both romantic and platonic contexts.
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Thomas explains what defines social anxiety, how to exist on a spectrum from mild shyness to an
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outright disorder, and what causes it, from genetics to faulty thinking. We talk about
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the protection strategies people often use to avoid the pain of social judgment and why they
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actually backfire. We then get into what you can do to be more socially comfortable and confident,
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including a key to effective flirting, why you should try to make a mediocre first impression,
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and how to find your way into what Thomas calls the warm social world. After the show is over,
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check out our show notes at awim.is slash social anxiety. All right, Thomas Smithyman, welcome to the
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show. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. So you are a psychologist who specializes in helping
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individuals with social and dating anxiety. How do you end up in this niche? I mean, it's I think like a lot
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of psychologists, I ended up here because I was trying to figure myself out, right? Not uncommon at
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all in my field. Yeah, so it was a, you know, me search, like research is me search. Yeah, yeah,
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yeah, definitely. So I like when I was a kid, I was, I was at a like, like a nerd school. Basically,
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I took all the nerds in Sydney, Australia, and they put us all in one place. And I like personally
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didn't really interact with women. It was so far from my home. I didn't interact with
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girls my age or anything. Basically, the whole way through Australian high school, which is age,
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I guess, like seventh grade through 12th grade. And so then I showed up in the US. And I was
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basically like a 12 year old socially, like a, you know, knew how to interact with guys. But
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I discovered at that moment, oh, I'm pretty socially anxious when it comes to talking to girls. And
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I did not know what to do. And so I suffered a bunch. And then over time, like, I'm, I'm very,
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very curious and very scientifically minded. I don't want to understand what was going on.
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So I couldn't find much just from therapists. I couldn't, I couldn't get much from the internet
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that was of particular help to me. So I sort of went about trying to figure it out for myself
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by going into research because I like science versus like just some random person's opinion.
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So I went sort of collecting it and trying to put it together for myself. And yeah, over the course
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of many, many years, basically, it was a big obsession. It still is. I'm 20 something years
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into obsessing over this. But yeah, this, it became really my focus. And I developed a bunch of
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expertise and helped myself. I was my own guinea pig. And then I very quickly started helping a lot
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of other people because it drew me very quickly into studying psychology as a clinician.
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So you are a clinician, you don't just do research, you actually work with patients?
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Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a clinical psychologist. Yeah. So I've been treating
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people for, yeah, I guess, you know, 20-ish years. And I treat a lot of people with like
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Yeah, they are. Which I think is, it's partly because I think it's kind of rare to find psychologists
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that are relatively young men. And so I'm not excluding women. I do have plenty of women
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that come through. But yeah, guys, I see majority guys.
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Okay. So yeah, you talk about your history in the book when you got to the United States
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and you were, you know, in your 20s, trying to figure out how to interact with women because
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you didn't have that experience in high school. You fell in at this time, this is like when the
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pickup artist stuff was really big, correct? And you kind of got into that stuff?
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Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I was, I mean, that's what there was if you looked for information,
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right? And obviously it was very appealing, like the promise of it. It was like, really,
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hey, here's these people that have like figured it out. They're going to tell you the answers.
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This is how it works. Because really, that was my, I felt was my struggle. I didn't understand.
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I just didn't understand how it worked. I didn't have a model for it. And I was very aware of,
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I had a lot of anxiety in dating situations. I had some in other situations too. So I was
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interested in general, but I didn't, like, I didn't understand what was happening. I knew
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that there were times where I was, what I thought of as just my normal self and I had access to all
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of my, my normal traits and I had a great time socializing. And then there were times where I
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just suddenly did not have the ability to do it and I didn't know what was going on. So I was pulled
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in to like, hey, these guys are promising the answers. And yet when I actually explored it,
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it just kept not being a good fit for me as a person.
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Yeah. And we'll talk about this later on in our conversation. Sometimes if you follow this,
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the advice of like the pickup artists, guys, it can actually backfire and make your social anxiety
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even worse. We'll, we'll hit, talk about that here in a bit.
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But let's talk about social anxiety in general. What is it? What are the symptoms of social anxiety
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and how does it differ from just like regular general anxiety?
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I mean, so rather than, I guess, sort of doing a full DSM diagnosis download, the way I think
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about it is like diagnostically, really it's like fear of being scrutinized, judged, rejected,
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and basically the extent to which that interferes with your life.
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My way of looking at it is you have an underlying sense of in some way, on some level, I am flawed,
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I'm not good enough. And if I enter a situation, whatever those problems are, are going to be
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revealed. Other people are going to see them and then they are going to harshly judge me and it's
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going to cause all these problems. And therefore I either will feel a ton of distress about it,
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or I'm going to avoid doing important things in my life. So that's kind of the core of this.
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And then like, it's almost like there's a scale for this because these are very human experiences.
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Like humans, we, we have this, this is part of the struggle of being human is we worry that we're
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not good enough. People will find out and there'll be rejecting consequences. And so I kind of think of
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it as being on a scale, right? Where some people don't experience it very often. As you move up the
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scale, like take special circumstances. To some people, you know, they might consider themselves
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shy, but it's happening a little more often. You start to move up to having kind of more regular
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social anxiety. Maybe it's happening in just one situation or it's happening across quite a few.
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We get into disorder territory. It's really having an impact on your life. And then if it gets extreme
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enough, there's avoidant personality disorder, which is sort of the, the end of that spectrum.
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Okay. That makes sense. So it's a scale. It can go from just, I'm really feeling uncomfortable
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about meeting new people because I'm afraid of what they're going to say about me, but I can still
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power through it and kind of overcome that and I'll be fine. And then there's, it can increase where
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you, those feelings of like those feelings of fear and anxiety of reject social rejection,
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get to the point where you try to avoid the situation, any social situation completely. And that's when
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Yeah. Yeah. And basically the, the more either like, uh, if you're having enough to stress,
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Hey, you know, then it's problematic. Or if you are, what I see is kind of the bigger problem.
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I'm giving up on things that I care about. I'm avoiding things that I want to do that matter
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to me. I'm not connecting when I really want to be connecting.
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Diagnostically, do you make a distinction between shyness and social anxiety? Like when someone comes
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to you like, Oh, I've got social anxiety. Do you sometimes say, well, maybe you're just
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kind of shy and you don't actually have social anxiety?
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Yeah. You know, I, I don't differentiate it that way since it is a scale. Like if they're
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coming to see me, then I'm trying to figure out what is missing. Like what's the problem
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here? What are you not getting? And how do I get you there? Like a lot of times I'll find
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when people come in, like if, if we're thinking like really like clinical psychology by the book,
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someone might come in and be like, okay, you, you are above the cutoff for social anxiety
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disorder. And then after a bit of treatment, people will be down below the cutoff. And some
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people are like, okay, yeah, you know, I'm, I've moved myself down that scale. This is okay. But
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most of the time people are like, okay, well, I'm down below the cutoff, but like there's a lot more
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that I still want to do. And the amount that I'm having is getting in the way.
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Okay. Do we have any ideas as to what causes social, like someone to develop social anxiety,
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whether like that mild form or extreme form, is it nurture nature? What's going on there?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, it's going to be, it's going to be a combo. So I think part of it is,
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like I mentioned before, this is a human experience. So part of it is that the evolutionary
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background of, we are primed to be this way. There's certain things that as humans with our,
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our preexisting preloaded threat system is designed to protect us from things. And there are certain
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things that it is very ready to activate and try to protect us from, you know, like snakes,
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but also social injuries. So we are already primed to be worried about whether we are acceptable in
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the group, whether we are performing correctly, whether people approve of us. So we have that
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kind of background and then, you know, we all have that, right? But obviously there's individual
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differences. And so there are differences in like temperament. So some of us are born like,
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like myself, more like behaviorally inhibited, basically where our nervous system is more
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sensitive and we're going to be more reactive to stimuli. So that's one piece of it. But also like
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what happens over our time growing up, it tunes that, like it either turns our sensitivity up or it
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helps it to calm down. And then where I find it gets really interesting is in that like nurture
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piece and the experience piece. Like we're trying to figure out, like someone comes in for treatment,
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right? We want to have a model and we want it to be individualized because people will not agree
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on what situations are threatening. This basically will come out of, we'll look at the nurture piece.
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Like we'll look at what are you specifically afraid of happening? In what situation? What is it that
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you're afraid it is going to be discovered about you? Like what will you be giving away?
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And people are judging. And we'll be able to say, this didn't come from nowhere. If we look for it,
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we will generally, we'll be able to find, oh, this has been happening for a while. Where would this
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idea have come from? Because at some point, a part of us, part of our brain learned that a particular
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situation was threatening. And we learned at that time, here's how I'm going to cope. I'm going to
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come up with a survival method for this. So I do think like having that background is really useful
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for like for self-compassion to know, oh, there's not something wrong with me. Like we have tricky
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brains as Paul Gilbert says, we set up this way. And we've been through experiences that have trained
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us to be afraid of certain circumstances. Okay. That makes sense. So we might, you might be born
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with more sensitivity to social or status defeats of being socially rejected. And then your upbringing
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could fine tune that. Or even if you sort of are naturally an extrovert, you enjoy being around
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people. If you had an upbringing where you didn't have the opportunity to socialize, you might develop
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some social anxiety. Like in your case, you know, you grew up, you went to that all boys high school,
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didn't really interact with women. So when you finally had to, you obviously had some anxiety
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because you didn't have any practice with that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's definitely, you know,
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would have a piece, right? If we, you know, it depends, we can go way far back, like early
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childhood or we can look at definitely like the teen years, right? And the puberty. And then when people
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start to shift from seeing other people as being like on the same level to suddenly, you know,
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like I'm friends with that person, not that person. And then that sudden shift to like hierarchies
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that kick in once you're in the teen years and what you've learned, like all this historical stuff,
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like you are picking up these models, right? Of like, this is who I am. This is where I fall.
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This is how loved I am. This is what's wrong with me. This is what's good about me.
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This is how people are going to respond. This is what the world's like.
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And going back to, you know, personality, a lot of people talk about, well, I'm an introvert.
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I'm an extrovert. And I think with this idea of social anxiety, introversion, extroversion can be
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related to it, but I think it's possible. You can be an introvert, but not have social anxiety.
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I think that describes me. Like I'm an introvert. Introversion is just, you enjoy being by yourself
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for just smaller groups. Like being around lots of people just wears you out. That's how I feel
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whenever they go to a party and like, you know, press flash and hobnob. Afterwards, I'm like, oh man,
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that was, that was really tiring. But I like to, smaller groups, I'm fine. But I'm not like,
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I'm not shy. I have no problem introducing myself to people I don't know, going to places I don't know,
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public speaking, calling people on the phone that I don't know. Not, don't have a problem with that.
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Is it possible for you to be an extrovert, but also have social anxiety? So like you enjoy
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being around lots of people, like there's something in your temperament, but then you also
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like, it makes you anxious. Have you encountered patients like that?
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Oh yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Think, think of them as being like, it's, it's easier to think
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about them as being two separate factors. So yeah, you're, you're right. You can, you can be
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introverted and just want a smaller group of friends, but you're not experiencing a fear of being judged,
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a fear of being seen as deficient and having that get in the way. You just don't want that level of
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stimulation all the time. And yeah, you'll have, yeah, introverts, not socially anxious, not going
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to come in and try to get it treated because they're like, I'm doing fine. I just wanted a life that's
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set up in this particular way. What's interesting. Yeah. Is you do get obviously introverted, socially
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anxious people, but yeah, you're right. You get those extroverted, socially anxious folks. And
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that's actually where I see the most pain, right? Because you are somebody who wants a full social
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life. You want to be kind of the life of the party. You want to be around people all the time. You want
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to be thinking out loud, connecting with people. And yet you are being really inhibited by the fear of,
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you know, not being good enough. And you're shutting down, even though you want to be connecting
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desperately. Like those are the ones who suffer the most. And like, that probably was what I was
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like when I was younger and going through this. And I think, um, I've noticed this, that people do
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this because I think one of the downsides of what we say democratizing therapy speak or psychology speak
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is that people start self-diagnosing and there's people who they might have like social anxiety because
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they just don't have the practice of socializing, but they're like, well, I'm just an introvert.
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It's like, well, maybe, but maybe not. Maybe you would actually enjoy being very social,
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except you just don't know how. And so it gives you anxiety. And so to avoid the anxiety, you just
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don't go out and you're like, well, I'm an introvert.
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I mean, yeah, I'm, I'm with you on that. Honestly, the, the way I think about it, anybody that comes in
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to try to treat things, it requires a ton of courage and it requires you facing uncomfortable
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things. And like most people are not going to do it because it's really hard and it's scary.
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And for, for a lot of people, either it's like, I don't realize that's what's going on. Cause I
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have this narrative or it's easier to say, I don't like something rather than I'm scared of something.
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Yeah. That makes sense. And I think with social anxiety, the thing I'm, maybe I'm picking up on
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is it can be context specific. So you might have social anxiety in certain situations, but not
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others. So here's an example. Some people do fine in face-to-face conversations, but calling someone
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on the phone just terrifies them. So they just avoid calling people on the phone, like even calling
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the restaurant to make an order or something like that, even though they, you know, whenever I see
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people have that social anxiety of calling people on the phones, like there's, there's people at that
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place who are waiting for their job is to take your call. You don't need to worry about it. And then
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there's also, you know, people could be fine socially with friends, with colleagues, with coworkers,
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but when it comes to dating and thinking about relationships romantically, that's when the anxiety
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appears. Yeah. Totally the case. You know, I'll, I'll have these like funny conversations with
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people because like we each have our theories, right? Like our implicit ideas of this is how the
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world works. This is what's safe. This is what's not safe. And a lot of change in that is I just
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identifying it and then trying to challenge it. But I'll, you know, I'll talk to people and
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somebody will, you know, be adamant, put me in a group. It is safe. I can hide. No one's already
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paying attention to me. But if you put me one on one with somebody, that's where the real danger is
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because then the person's going to look at you and they're going to realize, you know, whatever your
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flaws are. And then I'll talk to the next person and they'll be like, Oh, you know, get me one on one.
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I can read what the person's thinking. I can adjust myself. It's fine. But put me in a group. I don't
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know what to do. I'm going to screw that up. And each one will be entirely convinced that
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one environment safe and the other one is very dangerous because we've each come to develop our
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own, um, yeah, particular triggers. And yeah. And so like for me dating, but if you have me talk to
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like a guy, great, going to go fine. Have me talk to my date's mother. You know, I was wonderful.
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I was the most charming guy you ever met, but it's yeah. The specific, each person is very
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specific. And like when, when you are trying to figure out how to help, it's why you kind of can't
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do just blanket broad things. A lot of times, like you want to have a sense of like, what is it,
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what situation triggers me and why, and what do I think it's bringing? What is it revealing
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about me? And what am I doing to trying to protect myself in those situations?
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Yeah, that makes sense. So I think I'm, if I remember correctly, all the pickup artists stuff,
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you know, it's like you got to increase your confidence in general and probably that's probably
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not that useful. Instead, you should focus on like, what, what is it about interacting with the
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opposite sex that makes me anxious? And then like figure that out. Cause I don't know if you can
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really just increase general confidence. I think confidence is very context specific. You can be
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confident in one situation, like we just talked about talking with the boys, but not so much with
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women and in certain, and women in certain situations, like you'd probably be fine talking to
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the bank teller and just have this great conversation and it's almost flirty. You don't
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realize that, but as soon as you have an interest, like a romantic interest, that's, that's when it
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becomes a problem. So you got to focus on that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So social anxiety, like general
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anxiety is based on faulty thinking. So when you have generalized anxiety, they just, you imagine
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these things in your head that probably aren't going to happen. And you use that fear to make excuses
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for yourself to just avoid life in the extreme cases. What's some of the faulty thinking patterns
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that people have about socializing in general that can cause social anxiety?
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There are, there are so many, like you could write a whole book on it, which I did. I mean,
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I could honestly go on and on for any kind of anxiety. Like this is the simple version, right? For any kind
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of anxiety you look for most likely you are some version of overestimating the likelihood that
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things would go badly and underestimating your ability to handle it. So that's kind of the,
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the broad version. But once you get deeper into social anxiety, there are like commonalities that
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come up all the time. And so like I talk in the book about this idea of the, that comes from Dave
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Moskovic, but this idea of an audience that people until proven otherwise are hyper focused on you
00:22:05.780
and the hyper focused on looking for flaws and things that are wrong with you. And when they see
00:22:10.980
them, they are going to be really critical, not kind, not thoughtful, not empathetic, not be able to put
00:22:18.380
it in context. And they're going to be judgmental about it. And if that happens, we will be unable
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to go on. It will just shut us down. Our lives will be ruined. So I think, I think that kind of
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collection is really important. Like I have a thing I get into great detail in the book about this
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thing I call the social anxiety equation, where I sort of point out, here's a whole series of
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cognitive biases that socially anxious people have that triggers all of the symptoms in, in the end to
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protect you. And it's kind of those pieces, right? Because in reality, we know from research and
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go about testing this all the time in, in treatment, but like, we know that the flaws that we feel like
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we have, they seem much bigger to us than they are to other people. And so we might like, we, we get
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anxious when we're going to enter a situation and we think some imperfection, some problem we have
00:23:13.880
will be revealed. But in reality, one, people are not super attentive. People don't notice things
00:23:21.120
particularly well. A lot of what we experience, we notice because it's maybe internal to us
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or they don't notice because they are focused on other things. If they do notice it, a lot of times
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they don't think these things are problems. Like they might even like them. I remember I, in college,
00:23:39.420
I talked to this, to this woman and like, she had like an interesting nose and I liked it and I gave
00:23:46.960
her a compliment on it. And she told me that it was the thing that she was most sensitive of. She saw
00:23:52.620
it as her biggest flaw. And I, in fact, had a different perspective. I liked it. And that comes
00:23:58.320
up again and again when I work with people. Their perceived flaws, there are some people who are into
00:24:02.980
those things. But even if they're not, people see things in context. Like we fixate on what we see
00:24:09.280
as a problem. But meanwhile, when someone meets us, they are seeing the entire person. Especially
00:24:14.460
if someone gets to know us. They get to know us as a full, complex human. And they see whatever
00:24:21.480
our downsides are in that context. And on top of that, people are way more empathetic than we give
00:24:27.780
them credit for. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:24:30.980
And now back to the show. Okay. So let's kind of recap there. People who have social anxiety,
00:24:39.980
one of the things that faulty thinking that they have is they think that whenever they're socializing
00:24:44.900
with somebody, the other person's just looking for the flaws. Like they're looking for you to mess up.
00:24:50.600
They're hyper-focused on that. But the research shows like actually when you're interacting with
00:24:55.680
someone, they're not paying that much attention to you. And I think we've talked about this on the
00:25:01.280
podcast before. It's like the spotlight effect, right? Where you think everyone's paying attention
00:25:05.400
to you, but actually no one's paying attention to you. And they've done experiments where they've
00:25:08.360
had people wear Barry Manilow t-shirts. And then they asked, you know, people, did you notice the guy
00:25:15.400
wearing the Barry Manilow t-shirt? And like, I don't remember the Barry Manilow t-shirt. So yeah,
00:25:19.600
people aren't, so that's one of the cognitive faulty thinking. People aren't really paying
00:25:23.880
too close attention to what you look like or your flaws. And then the other one faulty thing is that
00:25:32.180
people with social anxiety, they catastrophize about if they do have a social misstep,
00:25:38.200
what's that going to mean? And they typically think, well, someone's just going to hate me and
00:25:41.920
they're just going to make fun of me and they're just not going to have anything to do with me.
00:25:44.540
And what the research shows is like, actually, most people are pretty forgiving and empathetic
00:25:50.460
and they're probably not even paying attention. If you did have some sort of social faux pas,
00:25:55.080
it went over their head. But because people with social anxiety had that faulty thinking of
00:25:59.060
catastrophizing and thinking everyone's paying attention to them, to avoid the anxiety,
00:26:03.980
they just avoid social situations completely. Yeah. Yeah. Like all of the things that we
00:26:09.340
do to protect ourselves or avoid, those are the real problems, right? So this belief
00:26:14.400
of, yeah, people are really vicious, they are looking for these things, they're going to catch
00:26:17.580
them, they're going to judge me, they're probably mean, makes it feel really risky,
00:26:22.900
makes it feel really threatening. And so the natural response to risk and threat is to avoid those
00:26:29.100
things. Yeah. Or if you cannot avoid them, to try really hard to hide them. And I guess that's
00:26:35.700
actually one of the other, for social anxiety, one of the really big biases in thinking is that
00:26:42.760
you've got to perform, it's this idea of I've got to perform really, really well in order for people
00:26:48.480
to be accepting of me or like me. And the research from just, I've pulled it from all over the place
00:26:56.840
and it keeps coming back to, no, you don't. Like social performance is not really demanding.
00:27:02.440
It's generally simple and it's generally being warm, being curious and being basically authentic to the
00:27:11.340
self or faithful to the self. And people aren't demanding this like incredible level of
00:27:17.060
like verbal performance and wittiness and humor. People basically want you to do just
00:27:23.700
straightforward social skills. And if you do that, it goes really well a lot of the time,
00:27:28.780
especially like early on. Yeah. Um, that those protective behaviors you take part in
00:27:34.680
when you do have to interact, like someone's social anxiety, they have to like, okay, I gotta,
00:27:38.980
I gotta be social. I don't want to, but I have to. And like you said, they typically,
00:27:44.120
someone will fall back to just like tactics, techniques to get them through it. And this is
00:27:52.020
like where that pickup artist stuff comes in. That's what they offer there. Well, here's these
00:27:54.980
things you can do when you're interacting with a woman and you're feeling nervous. You can do this
00:27:59.700
so you know what to do, even though you feel nervous. Yeah. But what your research suggests and
00:28:06.020
what you've noticed with your clients is when you start performing, you actually become more aware
00:28:11.640
of your social interaction. And that's like, that's going to actually cause your anxiety to go up even
00:28:18.000
more because now you're just paying close attention. Like, oh my gosh, I said that wrong. I'm an idiot.
00:28:23.080
And then this person's probably thinking I'm an idiot. And so that performative aspect just increases
00:28:29.260
the, the self-awareness, which increases the social anxiety and it just becomes this death
00:28:35.140
spiral. That is, that is exactly it. Exactly it. Like it's, and you got to think too about the,
00:28:41.180
like what's the underlying message that we're kind of implying, right? When we are trying to perform
00:28:47.920
because the underlying message is you, as you are, is not okay. You are not good enough. Your instincts
00:28:55.300
are wrong. You are wrong. Therefore you need to perform and act in these ways in order to be
00:29:03.400
good enough and acceptable enough, which that is like on a deep level, that is really reinforcing
00:29:09.720
shame, right? Um, which is going to turn on the threat system and bring down self-confidence.
00:29:17.460
The more you raise that performance standard, I've got to perform this. I got to come across this way.
00:29:21.820
I got to make sure I do this and not that. The higher performance demands go, the more anxious
00:29:26.300
we get. And especially as we have this gap between here's how well I think I can perform. Like here's
00:29:34.580
who I can be. And here's who I'm supposed to be in order to be good enough. That gap is anxiety.
00:29:42.420
So we want to be really careful about not demanding that we perform like to this really high level,
00:29:49.480
especially that's beyond our natural process. Yeah. Cause all that stuff will make us more
00:29:53.980
anxious. And yeah, the more that we have to focus on ourselves to make sure that we're doing it
00:29:58.940
right, the more anxious we get, the more things we're trying to remember at once, more anxious we
00:30:03.300
get. In reality, the good news is we don't have to do all that. The social skills are simple and we can
00:30:12.140
just focus on the core of like be warm to people. We have a great response to that. People really like
00:30:17.600
that. Be curious about people. People really like that. And it makes us less anxious and be
00:30:23.960
slightly harder version. Like that self-fidelity, be faithful to the self, which can be a little more
00:30:31.040
intimidating, but is really well liked. And you also highlight research in your book about when you do
00:30:37.700
take part in protective behaviors during a social interaction. So that could be just going through
00:30:44.380
very rote performative things that you read on the internet or in some self-help book. People
00:30:50.420
actually pick up on that. They're like, well, something's off about this guy. And so your
00:30:54.300
attempts to protect yourself from social judgment is actually raising more awareness of your issues.
00:31:03.740
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's many downsides to protection. Like honestly, you could say
00:31:08.440
that the protection attempts themselves are the biggest problem out of this whole process because
00:31:15.700
pretty much any protection strategy we use raises anxiety, but it also makes us harder to connect to.
00:31:24.120
And yeah, oftentimes it comes across weird because it's not natural, but like all of this stuff,
00:31:31.420
like all of those protective behaviors, like it's protection, like it's armor. And just from the,
00:31:36.440
all the years of working with people on this, so much comes down to this. It comes down to like,
00:31:42.040
I am sitting, interacting with people. I'm hearing about belief-wise what's driving them,
00:31:47.180
but I'm also looking and hearing about how they're trying to survive those concerns. Like what are these
00:31:55.240
different strategies that they're doing to try to survive and still connect? And sometimes it's like
00:32:02.420
the connection is just not happening because there's so much protection. And other times it's
00:32:08.060
like you're present, but you're not, I'm not actually seeing you. No one's actually getting
00:32:14.300
you. Like you can't actually connect with someone unless you have access to them. And so this is like
00:32:20.520
in going out and kind of pushing boundaries and testing out these social theories. So much of it is
00:32:28.220
looking at like what, what protections are you using and why are you using those? And what are
00:32:33.700
you predicting would happen if you did not use those? So for example, most people that I've worked
00:32:40.880
with, they will either be a, I don't like asking questions person, or I don't like self-disclosing
00:32:48.820
person. But the act of expressing social curiosity, asking people about themselves, asking follow-ups,
00:32:56.640
being interested. That piece or self-disclosure, which is this is who I am. This is me. Those two
00:33:04.380
sides, curiosity and self-disclosure, those are the engine of connection. Like that's how we connect
00:33:11.780
to people. That's how we start up really shallow and we work our way down to really knowing and being
00:33:17.540
known. And so if you've got a, due to fear, you have a protection strategy that is cutting off
00:33:23.260
one or both of those, then you're literally cutting off the, any ability to connect.
00:33:30.120
So I mean, yeah, another protective behavior you talk about in the book, I think you mentioned is,
00:33:35.160
especially in dating guys will be like, I'm just gonna play hard to get.
00:33:38.380
Like, I'm gonna just pretend, I'm gonna act like I don't, I'm not actually interested in this girl.
00:33:43.680
So that if, if she does reject me, it's like, well, you know,
00:33:46.640
you can play it off. Like, well, I just, I wasn't really into you anyways.
00:33:49.860
Yeah. Like when it comes to dating anxiety, this is, this is the biggest one. Basically not
00:33:55.980
taking the risk of showing any interest. Yeah. And like I've, I've, there's probably many stories
00:34:01.840
in the book about this because you see it all the time. And it, I mean, that's exactly what it is.
00:34:07.040
It is vulnerable to show interest in somebody because you are opening yourself up to that
00:34:13.940
interest not being reciprocated, which it will not be a solid percentage of the time.
00:34:18.460
So that takes courage that is brave to do. And so because it's vulnerable and we don't like
00:34:24.740
feeling vulnerable. Yeah. The, the most common thing to do is to feel it, but try really hard
00:34:30.000
not to show it. And if you have a rule of like, Oh, I cannot show someone my interest. I've got to
00:34:37.760
seem cool and calm, disinterested. I'm going to wait for them to show it to me. Then the burden's all
00:34:43.840
on them, which is not very thoughtful to them, but also that's asking them to take a massive risk,
00:34:50.120
right? Like they're not going to take this massive, and some people will, but not many people are going
00:34:55.640
to take a massive risk of saying, Hey, this guy's really communicating. He doesn't like me, but I'm
00:35:00.240
going to try to show him how much I like him. Yeah. That's a hard ask.
00:35:04.800
Right. And it doesn't work. Like you said, like most of you, if someone thinks that you don't
00:35:09.340
like them, they're not going to like you. But the thing is though, I mean, everyone's experienced
00:35:13.540
this. As soon as you realize someone's interested in you, like, Oh, they like me or doesn't have to
00:35:18.960
be romantic. You just be like, Oh, that guy thinks I'm cool. All of a sudden you think, well, that guy's
00:35:23.640
cool. Or that I really like, I like this girl too, because she's interested in me. So, I mean,
00:35:30.060
the takeaway there is if you have social anxiety, whether it's like making friends or dating,
00:35:35.880
express, like show that you're interested because that will likely cause the other person to be
00:35:40.680
interested in you. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. This is reciprocation. Like we know from research,
00:35:47.300
warmth is reflected. If we put out warmth, we get warmth back for the vast majority of people.
00:35:52.960
If we put out being cold, we tend to get cold back from other people. And especially if we're
00:35:59.140
authentic, right? If we like a person in particular versus we just like everyone, people feel that.
00:36:06.720
And that makes you like even more likely to, to reflect it back. And like, if you think about it
00:36:12.760
too, the, like the model of flirtation, like flirtation is basically, I'm going to display, I have all of
00:36:20.460
these psychologically attractive aspects to me. And I am suggesting that maybe I'm interested in
00:36:29.580
investing those in you. Those two things together are flirtation. If we just have, I am so great,
00:36:37.360
look at all these cool things about me, but no indication that we're interested in investing in
00:36:44.260
a person, it's not flirtation. Like you're just existing. Yeah. When you talk about flirtation,
00:36:48.860
I thought this was interesting. Flirtation, we're getting more into the dating anxiety stuff here,
00:36:53.520
but flirtation, there's ambiguity in it. You're not going out and saying, Hey, I really like you.
00:37:00.260
Like you don't do that right off the bat. Instead, you're like, I've got these great qualities and
00:37:05.780
maybe I like you. So I, I, cause I think ambiguity is really underappreciated. Um, people really enjoy,
00:37:11.780
uh, the ambiguity in a, in a relationship because it's, it's interesting. It's intriguing. It's
00:37:17.900
exciting. Yeah. I think people's brains really, they're really engaged by uncertainty and they
00:37:23.200
want to figure out, does this person like me? Do they not like me? So you don't, you don't want to
00:37:28.560
play hard to get, but you, you want to make your signals mixed a little bit and that generates some
00:37:35.380
chemistry. Does that, am I explaining that? Okay. Yeah. No, you, I say the exact same thing as you.
00:37:40.480
So I think what's interesting about it too, is the reason that what you're saying feels right is
00:37:48.780
because that's organically exactly how things work. Like not just for dating, but for, but for all
00:37:56.020
relationships, right? When you first meet somebody, you know, you know very little about them. So you're
00:38:02.200
not going to be like super sold on that person because authentically you just know a sliver,
00:38:08.380
like it's thin slice, you know, there's a little bit of them. And you also probably know from
00:38:12.180
experience that the deeper traits of people don't come out until you've known them for a while.
00:38:19.160
So if it's friendship, you meet somebody, you know, you're not going to be like, Oh my God,
00:38:23.800
you're amazing. You're my best friend. You're going to have probably a initially polite and then maybe
00:38:29.680
more enjoyable of a conversation with them. And over time, as you get to know more about them,
00:38:35.120
maybe there's more of a, more of a friendship connection and you become more obvious that you
00:38:40.300
like the person. It's the same for dating. You meet a person at first, you don't know them.
00:38:46.100
This stage one of flirtation is you treat someone the same that you treat any other person.
00:38:51.680
You're basically polite to them and you do your basic social skills. You're not, Oh my God,
00:38:57.060
you're amazing. You just met them. You don't know that maybe they're not amazing. And over time,
00:39:01.480
you are gathering information. And as you gather information, that mixed message, which originally
00:39:07.580
was like just basically politeness becomes more and more overt as you become more and more like
00:39:18.560
That makes, that makes perfect sense. So you're, you're taking your time to reveal your intentions
00:39:24.040
or your, your actual feelings. That's what a natural social development looks like. Like you said,
00:39:29.400
you start off, you're going to kind of have these niceties you engage in politely, relying on
00:39:35.220
etiquette and manners and rules. But as you get to know this person, you start revealing a little
00:39:41.040
bit more, a little bit more. And really that's the best thing about a relationship is getting to know
00:39:47.420
somebody. Like that's my favorite part of a relationship is like getting to know the person.
00:39:51.180
Yeah. Which, which by the way, probably makes you a great person to socialize with because that's
00:39:56.400
people's favorite thing is slowly becoming known.
00:39:59.780
Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. Let's talk about what we can do to alleviate if you have social anxiety,
00:40:06.000
or even if you don't have social anxiety, you just maybe have shyness every now and then how
00:40:09.460
maybe you don't want to be as shy. Some things we can do to mitigate that or alleviate that one
00:40:16.300
piece of advice you give. Well, I think the one thing is just understanding these,
00:40:20.520
this faulty thinking that we often engage in if you have social anxiety, or even if you're just shy.
00:40:26.980
Again, reminder that people aren't really paying that much attention to your flaws.
00:40:30.820
Even if they do notice your flaws, they probably don't care. And then this idea that you have to
00:40:36.140
perform and socialize in a certain way for you to have a good social interaction, that will actually
00:40:42.200
just make you more anxious because you're just so focused on yourself. So one bit of advice,
00:40:48.120
and you've kind of alluded to this already, is instead of thinking about making a great first
00:40:52.800
impression. So let's say you're going to a party, a new gym, where you can meet some new friends,
00:40:59.460
maybe a potential romantic partner. Instead of thinking about how to make a great first impression,
00:41:04.760
you argue you should just make a mediocre first impression. So what does a mediocre
00:41:09.740
first impression and mediocre social interaction look like?
00:41:13.460
Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm being deliberately a little bit kind of tongue in cheek about it.
00:41:18.720
Yeah. But the, the idea is that the reason I mentioned that is because people,
00:41:22.040
whenever they are coming in and talking to me about this, they do tend to have these elevated
00:41:26.760
demands. I must perform this well. I must seem witty and I must seem this, and I must seem that
00:41:33.580
with all these rules and having those high demands, right? Makes us more anxious,
00:41:39.680
but it also very much makes us less likely to actually talk to people because it's hard to be
00:41:45.760
super witty and cool and intelligent and whatever else. So part of it is that it reduces our anxiety
00:41:54.100
if we can find a way to lower the demands and it makes us more likely to act and it's likable.
00:41:59.880
So my argument of what a, what a mediocre first impression means is you are going back to that
00:42:07.960
simplicity principle of social skills, which is be warm, be curious and be authentic to who you are.
00:42:16.100
And that is doable for us, right? So this means just those basic social skills of smile,
00:42:23.380
make some eye contact, ask whatever natural, like easy curiosity questions you have. I try to
00:42:30.900
understand the person a bit, try to get to know a little bit about who they are, what makes them
00:42:35.800
interesting? What might you like about them? Because that's really positive revalenced and then reveal
00:42:41.980
some about who you are. But you're not trying, I think the important thing is a lot of people I talk to
00:42:47.900
feel like when they first meet someone, whether it is social or dating or whatever, that you
00:42:53.360
are trying to like make some great leap in your relationship with that person when you first
00:42:59.160
meet them. That's really demanding. Like instead, my model is your goal is to take somebody from being
00:43:07.480
a stranger to being a non-stranger, not being a friend, not even being an acquaintance, just like
00:43:13.480
it's a person that you have interacted with on some level. So you're no longer absolute strangers.
00:43:20.480
What it means is like people really connect through repeated contact. That's just how we
00:43:25.160
sort of, we naturally form connections. So we're just trying to, you know, the next time you show up
00:43:30.340
in some social event, you've actually met some people. And hey, if you go beyond like a simple
00:43:38.140
introduction to have a bit of a conversation, great. So this is what kind of what I mean by like a
00:43:44.020
mediocre self-impression, like allow things to happen over time through repeated investment.
00:43:51.440
And then another bit of advice that you give is just to quit thinking about yourself so much,
00:43:56.020
because as we talked about, self-consciousness is what is getting in the way of you having a good
00:44:01.340
social interaction. So just put the focus on the other person, be interested in the other person,
00:44:06.240
ask them lots of questions. I think the trick is though, is you don't want the question asking to
00:44:11.740
become a protective behavior, right? Where you're not revealing things about yourself. There's none
00:44:17.500
of that give and take. But if you're feeling just really shy and, you know, just like really
00:44:22.060
self-conscious in a social interaction, just shifting the focus away from yourself by asking the person
00:44:27.360
lots of questions, that can be a great way to get over that initial hump.
00:44:32.060
Definitely. Definitely. And people generally, like we do want to over time have a, you know,
00:44:38.840
a 50-50-ish balance of how much is curiosity about the other person and how much is self-disclosure
00:44:45.040
about ourselves, because we have to self-disclose for them to connect to us. But both sides of that
00:44:50.740
are important. And they don't have to happen like one-to-one, like one question, one statement.
00:44:57.180
It can be like, at sometimes it's like, we have a chunk of time that's all about the other person.
00:45:02.480
And then that brings up, you know, if we are externalized, really interested in them,
00:45:06.880
really wanting to understand what are they feeling? Why are they feeling that? Why is
00:45:11.140
this important? We'll probably find at some point we have these light bulbs go off that it really
00:45:17.380
reminds us of like our own story or we see some similarity. Like, oh, I also have that. And that
00:45:24.460
will naturally lead us to self-disclose as well. Or the other person will often ask us questions too.
00:45:29.980
One of the treatments for just general anxiety is exposure therapy. This is where you actually,
00:45:37.520
you have to face your fear. So if you have a fear of spiders, you have to like look at a spider. You
00:45:43.000
might have to hold a tarantula. And the idea is by experiencing that fear response, but seeing that
00:45:49.800
you're actually not harmed, there's no danger, you can reduce your anxiety about that particular
00:45:55.240
thing. It could be heights, dogs, animal, whatever. How do you use exposure therapy in your work
00:46:01.640
treating people with social anxiety? Oh, it is fundamental. It is fundamental.
00:46:07.820
As much as we would love to sit around just talking about cognitions and changing thoughts and thinking
00:46:13.280
more realistically, honestly, all of that thought stuff is very, very important. But a lot of it is
00:46:21.600
important because it sets us up to do the right kind of exposures. So our emotional brain, it will
00:46:28.120
be a bit influenced by a shift in perspective, but it really learns through experience. So exposure is
00:46:35.700
really just getting new experiences that give us a different understanding of the situation. We're
00:46:42.540
trying to teach our anxious brain that socializing is safe. And so what that looks like is you were
00:46:51.320
trying to identify which situations am I avoiding? How am I trying to protect myself in different
00:46:57.000
social settings? Why am I doing those things? What am I afraid is going to happen? And then the
00:47:04.960
exposure, when I do it, I use the model of behavioral experiments, which I think makes sense where
00:47:12.060
we're experimenting with behavior to try to get new information. We're testing out the beliefs that are
00:47:18.740
making us anxious. And so in social things, that'll mean, right, oh, I am constantly hiding my hands
00:47:26.380
when I talk to people because they shake. And I think they're going to think I'm weak and reject me if
00:47:30.940
they see it. Well, then an exposure or a behavioral experiment would be, I'm going to go out and I'm going
00:47:37.460
to try talking to people with my hands out and see, do they notice? Do they care? Do they reject me? How bad is
00:47:43.660
it? So it's finding whatever we believe is wrong with us and whatever protections we think we have to do
00:47:50.760
and testing those out and then coming back and discovering, well, things actually went fine. Or if I struggled
00:47:57.900
a bit, it wasn't that bad. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And then you talk about in the
00:48:03.000
book, to get over your dating anxiety, you did just like you were brutal with it with yourself. Like you just
00:48:08.200
asked random women for dates and phone numbers and just get it. Your goal is to get rejected as
00:48:15.740
frequently as you can, which, you know, it works like that, that can work. But maybe if you don't
00:48:21.260
want to do that, I mean, you can gradually do some exposure therapy by, you know, if you have a general
00:48:27.360
fear of socializing, try practicing your social skills in everyday non-threatening situations. So like
00:48:34.500
talking to the store clerk when you're checking out, talking to the post office clerk, because like,
00:48:41.800
you know, you can have a social interaction. There's no threat going on there. You can kind of just have
00:48:46.020
like just some banter back and forth to practice that. And you say, oh, that actually wasn't that bad.
00:48:52.680
I can take this to the next level with another social engagement that gives me a little bit more
00:48:58.280
anxiety. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great way to do it. Yeah. Just if you can find, how can I be this
00:49:04.100
little bit more social than I normally would be? Yeah. Try to find where, where are those small
00:49:08.880
opportunities for like social snacks? I'll just talk to this person a little bit and say more,
00:49:14.320
like where you might normally say less than you have an idea of like, I'm going to practice saying
00:49:19.200
more the next time, or I'm going to focus on asking more questions this week. I'm going to try to like
00:49:24.660
ask a question to each person I come across. Finding any little opportunities to just do more
00:49:32.140
socializing, but also it's like with any of the protections, just really focusing on those.
00:49:38.040
Where can I be less protected? So how can I undo that as well? And then like on a, on a deeper level,
00:49:45.380
at the deepest level, right, is this belief of I'm not acceptable as I am. And so finding also,
00:49:51.480
rather than just strangers, like people that you do know, like the ones who seem the most
00:49:56.420
accepting, starting to show maybe the parts of yourself that you hide, not immediately and not
00:50:04.160
a ton and don't go super deep, but like starting to reveal maybe some of the things that you
00:50:09.340
struggle with, um, to someone who's safe because where you'd love to get to at the end of this whole
00:50:15.340
process is where there are people that know who you actually are and they accept and love you anyway.
00:50:22.540
That's what we're going for. Yeah. You talk about the goal with your, your treatment with
00:50:27.920
people you work with is to get to this, what you call the warm social world. Yeah. Where instead of
00:50:33.640
seeing the social world as a scary place, you actually, it's a place like, Oh, these people
00:50:38.780
are potential friends or potential romantic partners or a potential business partner. Yeah. Yeah. Like
00:50:44.020
that's, that's where we want to get to. Um, and I feel like most people, they probably know this
00:50:50.600
because I think everybody probably has times where they feel just like really socially comfortable
00:50:56.500
where they are around the right people or things have gone a certain way. And they're just like,
00:51:01.860
Oh, I just feel like just connected. And I'm talking easily to people. I met people that wasn't that
00:51:08.220
difficult. We've probably had that. Right. And there's times where it's the opposite. You might give
00:51:13.880
us the same situation, but we're really shut down. We feel really anxious. It's hard to connect.
00:51:18.900
And when we're in these different states, like the world looks completely different and it
00:51:24.640
essentially is because, you know, our perceptions shape the world that we live in and where we're
00:51:31.500
trying to get to, you know, the end of the whole process is we don't, we don't want to be in a
00:51:37.060
situation where our anxiety turns on, our threat system turns on, and we're fighting against it as
00:51:43.720
we socialize. Where we want to get to is where it just doesn't turn on. So we have our natural,
00:51:50.340
like social approach system is turned on. And that's a system where we like, yeah, we, we see
00:51:56.920
people seem like potential friends and allies. We're making sort of small comments to the people
00:52:01.400
that we come across in our day. We're connecting and it just, you know, socializing feels easy.
00:52:09.260
And then if you get rejected, you're like, well, not a big deal. That's not a problem.
00:52:13.960
They're not for me. Like I, you, you tell, you learn, you're like, oh, I don't like everybody.
00:52:18.240
That's okay. If they don't like me, that's fine too.
00:52:20.240
Yeah. Yeah. You don't need, and you've got, you know, you want to be at the point where you've got
00:52:24.380
enough people that already know you and like you where, you know, everything's not riding upon what
00:52:29.100
some particular person thinks or responds. You already feel good about yourself because you,
00:52:36.980
Yeah. That's a good point. A lot of guys who might be struggling with dating.
00:52:41.700
One thing you talk about in the book in the beginning, instead of being so hyper-focused on
00:52:45.700
meeting a romantic partner, like just focus on making friends. Like just be like, if you're
00:52:51.820
talking about a guy here, like, you know, same sex friends, other dude friends, because you,
00:52:56.440
first you learn some social skills in that process, but then you develop that social capital
00:53:00.960
so that when you go out and you start approaching women, if you get rejected, well, you have these
00:53:08.100
guys you can go back to who can help you out. Like, hey, you're all right. Get back out there.
00:53:12.620
So that's, that's some like dating advice there. I think you have in the book that was really useful.
00:53:15.800
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You know, it's, it, people don't, I think, appreciate a lot of times how,
00:53:20.700
just how much the friendship world and the dating world overlap. The same traits basically are
00:53:27.120
attractive in both settings. And what makes someone a great friend makes them a great dating partner.
00:53:32.580
And the skills, the social skills you need, they overlap a lot. So yeah, work on talking to
00:53:40.320
everybody, you know, talk to people that are less intimidating. If you're intimidated by
00:53:44.380
a certain sort of person, practice on people that are less intimidating at first. And yeah,
00:53:49.360
and the bigger you build up that community, you build your own warm social world too,
00:53:53.660
like that you live in, where you have your confidants and you have your friends. And that is,
00:53:59.560
that is such a big antidote to the anxiety as well.
00:54:03.580
Well, Thomas, it's been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book
00:54:07.620
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks. Been great for me too. You can find my book, Dating Without Fear,
00:54:12.060
Overcome Social Anxiety and Connect. It's on Amazon. There's an, the audio book on Audible's
00:54:17.560
my personal favorite, but there's a soft cover book and a Kindle. But I also have a YouTube channel,
00:54:24.320
just my name, Dr. Thomas Smithyman. And I'm trying to put things out there pretty regularly.
00:54:29.560
Really on all these social world and anxiety topics.
00:54:33.780
Fantastic. Well, Thomas Smithyman, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:54:39.420
My guest here is Dr. Thomas Smithyman. He's the author of the book,
00:54:42.040
Dating Without Fear, Overcome Social Anxiety and Connect. It's available on Amazon.com.
00:54:46.640
You can find more information about his work at his website, thomassmithyman.com.
00:54:50.200
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash social anxiety,
00:54:53.440
where you can find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.
00:54:59.560
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at
00:55:07.080
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00:55:10.640
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00:55:29.180
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