What does "being yourself" even mean? Obviously not "acting the exact same way you act when alone", since this would be impossible/weird/rude/illegal but also not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.

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yetihehe 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That phrase is simply inaccurate. Your "self" needs to care less about opinions of others, and it should not be scared of making mistakes. "Be yourself" is typically parsed as "do not try to be someone other, do not try to be like movie actor".

> not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.

Yes, it is exactly that, but instead of focusing on "acting intuitively", focus on that "without overthinking". Overthinking is the problem to be solved. "thinking just enough" is the optimal target.

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quirkot 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"being yourself" means choosing to believe that the you that is true is competent and capable of growth while the awkwardness is a temporary barrier between that is not reflective of your true nature.

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finnthehuman 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You know the meme that goes: "Be yourself. No, not like that."

It is possible for someone to have a goal of changing themselves into a person who can fit in socially, and be effortlessly comfortable while doing so. After building the underlying skills, they know how to navigate social situations well enough to intuit how much honesty and revealing is appropriate for a given situation, and can roll back "fake it until you make it". They can accept surmountable social penalties for the comfort of less self-filtering and chance to have more meaningful connections.

"Be yourself" means to change yourself, and then stick the landing.

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duskdozer 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Be yourself (well, as long as you aren't like that, IYKYK)

	▲	jgbmlg an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Know thyself. The first step in being your better self. This pithy piece of advice has been repeatedly given throughout history no doubt predating its being chiseled onto the Temple of Apollo around 2500 years ago. Humanity probably has no better advice. Although "Never trust a fart" is a close second.

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justonceokay 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don’t mean like being “authentic” or whatever that means. In this conversation “being yourself” means literally you existing in that moment in your body.

I can’t tell you specifically what being “yourself“ means. But I can absolutely tell you that if you panic when you meet a stranger that you are not centered in your own experience. Your mind is elsewhere. You don’t know this new person, so all of the panic in the situation is panic that you brought with you from the past and is not relevant to the current scenario

For whatever reason your body believes that the stakes are very high. They might be, but even if they were, wouldn’t it be more adaptive to face the situation with the level head? Most people can do this 100% of the time and I bet that you could get there too

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nmcfarl 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t think most people can do this 100% of the time. I actually think if you can do this 100% of the time you’re probably a zen master.

I think most people over the age of 25 can do this maybe 80% of the time. And most of them can keep it under control enough that they only look a little dysfunctional, the other 20% of the time. (although I definitely know a few extroverts who don’t look dysfunctional, they look like the life of the party – but that’s them being dysfunctional and stressing out and trying to make everyone love them. That’s their 20%.)

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svnt 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Panic -> response distribution shrinks -> freeze/be angry/make social mistake, but hey it’s fast

You: wouldn’t it be more adaptive if you didn’t do this?

Millions of years of mammalian evolution, unevenly distributed in homo sapiens: No

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justonceokay 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You can blame million years of evolution for your bad life or you can change it right now living in the present moment. It’s fine if you don’t do it right now because later at a future present moment you can still make the choice to be happy. It might take some work but it will never be because of something that happened in the past. It will be something that you do right now. There are no exceptions or escape hatches

	▲	SkyeCA 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		These cliches are just annoying to read at this point, everyone has heard this stuff a million times and yet...millions still suffer. If I'm being honest it just comes across as yet another form of bullying when socially well adjusted people say stuff like this to people worse off than them.

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cindyllm an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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