Social Anxiety is a devastating condition. Social Anxiety interferes with social connection due to an intense and or persistent fear of social situations, often driven by the fear of being judged poorly, humiliated, betrayed or rejected by others. Social Anxiety is primarily a trait born from biological conditions, and exacerbated by circumstances. The mindset that results from this leads to fearing social judgement. Humble Theory, created by Joshua Davidson Therapy, is a mindset method to counter the Social Anxiety fears.

Revision: Social Anxiety Basics

Anxiety is how we describe the feeling of an extra preparedness state we adopt when we are uncertain of the future and have some reason to believe the consequences could be bad (for us or others). This natural feeling is useful in increasing our reaction time, mental preparedness and stamina in the face of disaster. This is situational anxiety and it is supposed to be brief. If the feeling is ongoing without an ongoing cause, it can be harmful to us. When we feel anxiety in the absence of reasonable cause, we call this an Anxiety Disorder. General Anxiety Disorder, Anxiety and Anxiety Disorder are interchangeable terms. Anxiety Disorders are mostly due to biological causes, which may be exacerbated by circumstance drivers (such as sudden change, toxic social environments etc), and a few are solely due to those (rare, usually short term) aka Trauma.

Humans are social animals, so we biologically feel the need to be part of a group. Humans are imperfect creatures who do not survive well on our own in the wild and rely on other quality people to round out our ability for better survival. In modern society, while the risk of wild survival is rare, we need other people to maintain good mental health. That is, we have a biological need to be with people.

The difference between Social Anxiety and General Anxiety is that Social Anxiety is specific to people and what you think people’s opinion about you is, while General Anxiety is ongoing anxiety in the absence of others and your thoughts about their opinion. Like General Anxiety Disorders, It is still fundamentally driven by biological conditions, frequently exacerbated by circumstance, and rarely solely driven by experience aka Trauma.

Part of working well in groups is supporting the group itself, following the groups norms and ways of being. When an individual works contrary to the group, the members of the group will judge that individual’s actions as “wrong” and often use the emotion (emoted internal feeling) of disgust to indicate to you that you’ve done the wrong thing. In response, we feel shame at the judgement, and guilt for our mistake. This feeling prompts us to correct that error and learn better in the hopes that our new strategy, action etc is now judged “right”. To help facilitate this, our body temporarily increases the amount of adrenaline to provide energy support for trying again and to get it right. The feeling of “bad” we feel should be proportional to the amount of “wrong” we did, and that wrongness is a psychological driver for us to learn a new way to do things and avoid the old way.

Biological Condition Drives Social Anxiety Mindset

There are two fundamental neurological biological drivers for Social Anxiety.

The most common is mis-reports from your Amygdala, the part of your Limbic System of your brain that determines if you are Safe or Not Safe (most common in Autism and ADHD); and exhaustion, where you have run low on energy for some reason, and your body is trying to compensate by producing additional Adrenaline.

When we don’t feel safe, we look for the source of danger around us, and upon not finding that, we next look for the danger in the people around us, and if we don’t find that, we assume the problem is ourselves, best explained by us being a monster and or worthless. To drive up adrenaline, we need to implement thought patterns that lead us to believe that people around us are a danger and negative self talk, which often pushes us to feel like we are a monster and or have no worth.

Understanding Humble Theory

As covered above, both major avenues of biological conditions that trigger Social Anxiety lead to negative self worth and distrust of others. This leads to some fundamental errors in our beliefs that lead to our problematic behaviours such as negative self talk. To break the loop, we employ Humbleness.

By embracing the practice of being Humble, we recognise that we are human and make errors, just like everyone else.

Insights from Rejection Sensitivity and Experiencing Abusive

Most people experiencing Social Anxiety experience Rejection Sensitivity (sometimes called rejection sensitivity dysphoria), a strong reaction to perceived or actual rejection. RS can often be triggered by fearing having done something that another person consider wrong and may act upon, or by mistaking feedback as judgement and rejection. One of the most common problems that people come to see me for is being surrounded by Toxic People (abusive people, perpetrators of domestic violence, NPD). Unfortunately, most people experiencing Social Anxiety and Rejection Sensitivity find it difficult to tell who is genuinely trying to help and who is a problematic person who needs to be handled using Toxic People management skills.

Often, toxic people use mistakes or the claims of mistakes to manipulate and coerce people, which can exacerbate, or sometimes even cause, Social Anxiety. The targeted harm relies on undermining the person’s ability to make sound judgements about their own abilities, decisions and knowledge. Often the toxic person uses mistakes or claims of a mistake to justify their harmful behaviours. They are lying. They are hurting you because they want or need to, then to excuse their bad behaviour, they try to find a fault in you to falsely justify why it wasn’t their fault, it was yours.

The fear of judgement from everyone is strengthened because you can’t tell who is going to hurt you and excuse it on a mistake, leading you to be over sensitive to making mistakes, fearing judgement and having to be more perfect than human.

Rejection Sensitivity is an umbrella term for a host of feelings beyond just Rejection Sensitivity:

• Rejection sensitivity
  • An over strong reaction to perceived or actual rejection.
• Imposter Syndrome
  • A persistent inability to believe that your success is deserved, and or has been legitimately achieved as a result of your efforts or skills and the fear that you will get caught by someone at any minute.
• Fear of Betrayal
  • Fear that people whom you trust and are vulnerable to will betray you sooner or later.
• Fear of Abandonment
  • Fear that people will leave you behind, especially when you need help.
• FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
  • The feeling you have when you think other’s are having fun or an experience, and you are falling behind them.
• Fear of Failure
  • The worry about how people will react when you inevitably make mistakes
  • The fear that you are responsible for the consequences these mistakes will have to you or others.
• Fear of Being Alone
  • Fear that you won’t have friends or anyone you can trust.
  • Fear that you will never have anyone be kind to you again.
• Conflict avoidance
  • Fear of conflict that leads to avoiding people, anything that resembles conflict and can trigger People Pleasing Behaviours.
• People Pleasing Behaviours
  • The Faun part of the emergency system, Freeze, Faun, Flight and Fight.
  • People Pleasing tries to pre-empt the danger someone may pose to you if they are upset or angry by making them very happy with you at all times.
• PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance)
  • The automatic “no” you say when asked to do anything, which you often regret later.

The Social Anxiety Mindset

While each of the above Rejection Sensitivity family are distinct feelings and experiences, they revolve around this basic concepts

“People’s opinions will focus on the mistakes I make, and that is going to cause problems.”

These fundamental fears lead to two common erroneous conclusions:

• To avoid judgement, you must be perfect all of the time.
• If you can’t be perfect, don’t be seen.
  • Solved by:
    • Hide your mistakes (lying, cheating, distortions of reality)
    • Avoid committing to anything (social isolation, task avoidance)
    • Attack the people who found your mistake (aggression, distortion of reality)

The Humble Theory Solution

Humble has a few definitions. We are not using the “humble origins” version of lower class and poverty. We are referring to the aspect “having or showing a modest estimate of one’s value or importance; not arrogant and not self-important”. This does not mean worthless or unimportant.

By embracing Being Humble, we allow that we can make mistakes, and that this is okay. In fact, it is expected that we will make errors. All that mistakes mean is that we are human, and there is nothing wrong with being human. Humans don’t have all knowledge. Humans are not good at every skill. Even specialists make mistakes in their area of expertise – and that is fine. Making mistakes lets us know that there are things we can learn, and in learning, we become greater. It is how we learn.

Embracing Being Humble means that we welcome correction. When someone points out a mistake that we make, we don’t have to feel ashamed or embarrassed that we have made that mistake. Instead, we appreciate that what we did was not correct and we can thank the person who points it out to us for telling us, hopefully saving us time in going on with an unfixed error and having to discover and correct it later. What a potential time saver! In some instances, we can let the person know that we have intentionally left that mistake there for now for a reason, but that we appreciate them pointing it out.

There are three major categories that we filter someone into who gives us a correction.

• Those who are biasing towards helpful.
• Those who have made an error in what they thought was a mistake.
• Those who are biasing towards ill intent.

I use the word “biasing” here to try to steer away from a false dichotomy all or nothing view of people’s behaviour.

While it is possible for helpful people to be mischievous in their assistance, via the Principle of Charity, we will focus on their best likely intent which is being helpful. It is nice when people are being helpful. It can save lots of time and effort. We may be able to use a suggestion from them to fix the error if we aren’t sure how to, or they may help us to find a solution if they don’t know either. This is part of the Social Contract of society – working together towards a common benefit.

Sometimes, the person who is pointing out the mistake is actually mistaken themselves. If we know that to be the case, we can politely correct them as they have done for us. Reasonable, rational people welcome being corrected when they make mistakes. If we are not confident, we can take a moment to find out if that is the case – in these modern times with the internet at our fingertips, we can often look up the right information on our smart phones. I have also verified facts afterwards in private when I was unable to live fact check, either because it was more complicated than a simple internet search, or it was not appropriate to do so at the time. Importantly, rational people don’t mind a rational discussion about what is factually and evidentially known to be correct, or investigate solutions when there is no clear answer.

The last category to consider is those who have ill intent.

Being Humble helps spot Toxic People

Toxic People focus more on trying to make you feel bad and them being “right” than on them being helpful or them being “correct“. Let us break that down a bit more.

• A Toxic Person will try to convince you that you are wrong and mistaken despite the known verifiable facts and evidence, gas lighting you into doubting yourself. They will resist facts, evidence, logic and reason in preference for their unverified or disproven ideas and their emotions.
  • They want to be seen as “right” rather than become correct.
• A Toxic Person will focus more on trying to make you feel bad (ashamed, guilty, scared, angry or some other strong un-happy feeling), than helping you to non-emotionally understand your actual error (if any) and respect the time and energy it takes to correct it.
  • Even if they are technically right about the mistake, but especially when they are wrong.
  • Making you feel strongly in a negative way destabilises your cognitive ability, allowing them to push you
    • to do things you don’t want to do, or
    • making them feel good (NPD)

Once you have recognised that this is the kind of person you are dealing with, it is time to change tactics. We know that this is who we are dealing with, because by using the Humble approach, we gave ample space and opportunity for someone who is pointing out a mistake to be helpful. If they can explain why you made a mistake using facts, evidence, logic and or reason, and their focus is on informing and supporting you, then it will become rapidly self-evident, so long as we are in the calm state of mind to see. When they avoid facts, evidence, logic and reason to focus on gas lighting you (pushing you to questioning your own sanity, intelligence or wisdom / convincing you that a lie is true) and pushing your emotions – then you can be confident that you have successfully spotted that they are indeed toxic. Nice people don’t do these things when given a welcome opportunity to explain why they think something is a mistake.

We have an extensive section on how to deal with abusive and toxic people:

• Managing Conflict
• The Traffic Light System
• Testing for Toxic

The point being here, while using Humble Theory, especially on a background of The Traffic Light System, it is fairly easy to tell the difference between people who are being helpful, versus those who are acting with toxic behaviours. That reduces your fear of abuse from toxic people, who excuse their behaviour on the lie that it is about you making mistakes.

Conclusion

By embracing Being Humble and using the Humble Theory approach, we directly undermine the basis for most of our negative self talk and Rejection Sensitivity. In using Humble Theory, we can more quickly identify people who are genuinely trying to help versus who is probably toxic & unhelpful. Once you know who is actually toxic / abusive, you can deal with them as exceptions and not expect them to be the rule.

At the base of Social Anxiety and Rejection Sensitivity is almost always a biological condition which needs its own treatment. Humble Theory is focusing on managing the cognitive errors that such conditions and toxic people cause.