The Mindful Path through Shyness: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Help Free You from Social Anxiety, Fear, and Avoidance by Flowers Steve

Author:Flowers, Steve [Flowers, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781608824625
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2009-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

Feelings of Inadequacy

When you listen to and perform for your internal critic, you’re likely to find that you can do your very best and try your hardest, but somehow never quite make it to “good enough.” It can be like a nightmare where you’re pursuing something you desperately need, and somehow it always remains out of reach. This is one of the traps of shyness. You may think that by doing better or being better you’ll no longer feel anxious about being around other people, but since you’re probably your own worst critic, this strategy doesn’t work.

I call this failed strategy the “never-good-enough trap,” and there’s a reason why it doesn’t work: You look at yourself with a critical eye, then go to work on yourself to appease or please the internal critic. The critic says, “Not good enough,” and the performer tries harder. This can go on for a long time before you realize that this internal judge is never going to be satisfied, even with the best of your performances. Like all subpersonalities, this part of yourself never wants to die. Being based on pointing out what’s wrong with you, it must sustain itself by always have something to comment on negatively, and it will never run out of material, because none of us will ever be perfect. It’s possible to spend your entire life in the never-good-enough trap.

Habitually giving your attention to the internal critic is like frequently looking into a makeup mirror that magnifies and illuminates every flaw in your face. You can come to believe that the pores on your nose really are hideously large. Mindfulness is the antidote. It’s nonjudgmental and allows you to see yourself from a wide-open awareness that isn’t bent on improvement. From this perspective, you can recognize when you’re giving attention to the critic and being shamed into what mindfulness teacher and author Tara Brach calls the trance of unworthiness (Brach 2004). This recognition is important and provides you the opportunity to practice what she and others refer to as radical acceptance and thereby dispel this painful trance with the openhearted attention of mindfulness and self-compassion. Radical acceptance involves accepting yourself and your flaws, and even accepting the nasty little critic that claims it’s just trying to help you.

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