Lessons learned from "How to be yourself" by Ellen Hendriksen

This weeks blog post is going to be another book summary about a book I read a few months ago. I would say that this book changed my social life in various ways, so I want to share some key insights and my thoughts about this book in general.

"How to be yourself" by Ellen Hendriksen is targeted at people with social anxiety, but I think everyone can benefit from reading that book. We all have those moments, where we feel shy or even socially anxious. Those feelings often prevent us from being our true selfes and if taken to an extrem can severly hinder us from living our lifes like we want to.

Be yourself is often the advice we get from our parents and friends, when we ask them how we should act in a certain situation. But what does being yourself actually mean? Does it mean that socially anxious people or shy people should live with those mental barriers, because that is just how they behave? Probably not. Our true self is often hidden behind our fears, it only appears when we are arround people we feel comfortable with. Social anxiety is seeing ourselves in a distorted way and believing the distortion to be true.

Social anxiety is really hard to get rid off, because it is often triggered in the early years of our lifes. We take it for granted how we feel and act in certain situations and try to avoid these situations to. This avoidance it toxic and it keeps us from learning that things you feared at first are not even that scary and blocks the resulting confidence that comes with succeeding in those situations. But there are actually actions you can take to get rid of your safety barriers and feel more comfortable in those situations. I will share some of the most effective ones at the end of this article.

I would consider myself as a pretty introverted person and I always thought that being shy or even socially anxious is a part of being introverted. My opinion on that changed completely after reading this book and now I know which personality traits are actually part of being introverted and can be used to my advantage and which are not. "Introversion is born, while anxiety is made", "Introversion is your way, social anxiety is getting in your way". Think how your life would look like if you felt comfortable and confident. If it is different from the life you are having you are most likely socially anxious and if not you are just introverted. This thought experiment made me realize that I am actually socially anxious and not just introverted. But the good thing is that you can tackle your social anxiety without changing your introverted personality.

At the end of this article I want to share some real life action steps with you, which helped me to at least lessen my social anxiety and which can help you to tackle your shy moments and your social fears. Ask yourself whenever you think about a specific situation where your shyness or social anxiety is hindering you from doing something, like a phone call you do not want to make or a social gathering you fear going to: What is the worst thing that can happen ? Be specific about your answer and repeat the question why. Then ask yourself self those follow up questions: 1. How bad would that really be? 2. What are the odds? 3. How could you cope?. The answer to this questions will most likely take the fear out of this situations and will make you more confident to engage in them. But what do you do when you are right in a situation where you feel your shyness or social anxiety coming up ?Something that helped me, was turning my attention inside out. Get out of your head, stop worrying about your thoughts and feelings and focus on the world arround you. Pay close attention to the other persons face or count the trees around you. Whatever you want. This will tare you away from your anxious thoughts which are only in your head and will make you feel more comfortable right in the moment. But the biggest advice I can give you is just taking action. Because only by forcing ourselves in those uncomfortable situations, we actually become more confident, because we realize that they are not as scary as we pictured them in our head. Just do it, do not overthink everything and your confidence will catch up. Start with small things and then increase the level uncomfortableness.

I hope you found this article interesting and you found something that you can actually apply to your own life. I could only share some of the key insights of this book and I would recommend giving it a read. It is defnitly worth it.