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Areas › Worry and anxiety › Being seen and judged
It shows up as putting off the assignment, the audition, the interview, the group chat where people say what they think. The useful move is not to argue yourself out of the fear but to get some experience of being evaluated in small survivable doses, so that judgement stops being one enormous unknown sitting in front of you.
In God's eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most mindful of Him (Quran 49:13). Your standing does not move with anyone's marking of your performance.
الحجرات
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقۡنَٰكُم مِّن ذَكَرࣲ وَأُنثَىٰ وَجَعَلۡنَٰكُمۡ شُعُوبࣰ ا وَقَبَآئِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوٓاْۚ إِنَّ أَكۡرَمَكُمۡ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ أَتۡقَىٰكُمۡۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرࣱ
People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should recognize one another. In God’s eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware
Qur’an 49:13read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A small randomised trial with twenty four students who had social anxiety disorder found that acceptance and commitment therapy improved emotion regulation, self compassion and the sense of being shamed in other people's eyes. Twenty four is very few, so this is a hint rather than a finding. It does point at shame as something that can be worked with directly rather than only around.
Khoramnia S, Bavafa A, Jaberghaderi N, Parvizifard A, Foroughi A, Ahmadi M, Amiri S. (2020). The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy for social anxiety disorder: a randomized clinical trial.. Trends in psychiatry and psychotherapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Fear stays huge while it is untested, and shrinks a little each time you find out what being judged actually feels like.
Build the ladder from what you do now, not from what you think you should be managing. If phone calls are currently impossible, the first rung sits somewhere below a phone call.
Social fear usually has a first address. School corridors, a year when appearance decided everything, a group that made a project of you. Knowing where it began does not undo it, but it stops it feeling like a fact about your character.
Sometimes a parent who seemed cold or impossible to please turns out to have been working with a different wiring altogether. Learning that can loosen something no amount of arguing with yourself would.