There has always been this overwhelming thing following me everywhere, that prevented me from taking important everyday social risks. It has been following me around for as long as I can remember. Luckily, I have in recent years figured out that there is actually a name for this annoyance and there isn’t something terribly terribly wrong with me. This little bugger is called “social anxiety”. Social anxiety is defined as “Excessive fear of embarrassment in social situations that is extremely intrusive and can have debilitating effects on personal and professional relationships.” I personally think it was caused by the trauma inflicted by my sisters handing over my “love journal” to my elementary school “crush” and repeatedly being made fun of for who I liked, but that’s not really important.
So how do I get rid of my social anxiety? From the research I’ve done, I truly believe that the most effective (and therefore most terrifying and difficult) means of getting rid of my social anxiety is by forcing myself into social situations and repeating them as much as possible. I wish I knew I had social anxiety back in Elementary school, that would’ve made things a little bit easier, knowing that I’m not alone and this is a “thing”. In Elementary school and part of middle school, my Mom had the toughest time getting me to wear clothes that I viewed as “fancy” to celebratory occasions that required “fancy” clothing. As someone who still suffers from social anxiety (thankfully its slowly wearing off), the one thing you never ever ever want to do is attract unwanted attention. Fancy clothing, I believed, would essentially magnify my physical flaws and at some point during the day, everyone would just stop and awkwardly stare at me as if I did something wrong. Thankfully, this is and never has been the case for 18 years. When under the thumb of social anxiety, all you can think of is worst case scenario no matter how hard you try.
When I turned 14, my father helped me get a job as a bagger at Market Basket. For those of you who don’t know what Market Basket is, it’s basically a supermarket where assisting the customer is of the utmost importance. My father was wise enough to realize that when going for an interview, appearance and a strong first impression is everything. He convinced me to wear a fancy suit, which I was quite skeptical of. “Isn’t this overdoing it a bit much?”, I thought. Walking in for my interview was initially terrifying, I would be out dressing everyone there, and thus drawing large amounts of attention to myself. This would’ve been my first interview. I was never asked a single question. How is this possible, you ask? Upon seeing my attire, I got hired on the spot. Perhaps this was also partially due to the fact that my father had some connections as well but I was shocked. I learned a lot from this experience.
So, the Market Basket bagger uniform that I wore (there are accepted combinations but this was my preferred one) consisted of plain all black sneakers, black socks, khaki pants, a white button down dress shirt, a red bow tie, and a blue apron. Initially, it took me a while to get accustomed to wearing and keeping a uniform, never mind one I perceived as fancy. When I first started out, I was only working like 4 hours on Saturday and that’s it. Even though I was only working once a week, this helped my stop fearing fancy clothing greatly. How? Well the reason I or my brain rather was so fearful of wearing fancy clothes is because it conflated the action of wearing fancy clothes as not normal. I normally did not wear fancy clothing, this is true. However, having to put on fancy clothing once a week literally changed the way my brain perceived wearing fancy clothing. Now, it was no longer fancy, it became more casual. As I soon began taking on Sunday hours (time and a half) as well, my brain became comfortable with the idea that this was going to be a normal occurrence now. It took me a good 3 months to fully no longer fear wearing fancy clothing of any type in a public situation. I also learned how to take compliments by customers about my appearance and especially wearing a bow tie when everyone else stuck to the traditional long tie.
If you are struggling with the same thing I was, I suggest either getting a job that requires you wear a fancy uniform, or making yourself dress up fancy when you are going to pick up your groceries or something similar. Whatever you do, just be sure to make it a habit and stick to it, you’ll thank me later.