How to Easily Overcome Social Anxiety - Prof. Jordan Peterson

look let's say you're socially anxious okay so what happens when you're socially anxious you go to a party your heart's beating why the party is a monster why because it's judging you and it's judging you it's putting you low down the dominance hierarchy because that's what a negative judgment is and that interferes with your sexual success and that means that you're being harshly evaluated by Nature itself right so you are confronted the the dragon of chaos when you go into the social situation and so what do you do you're like this right you hunch over

and that's low dominance I'm no threat it's like well that's not going to get you very far you know but that's a logical thing to do in in the in in the face of a tyrant so I'm no threat you know you look at the king and you're dead I'm no threat I'm hunched over and then what's happening internally how what are people thinking about me what are people thinking about me am I looking stupid am I looking foolish gez I'm awkward I hate being here man I'm sweating too much it's all internalized right it's

all self-focused the the the Eye isn't work the eye isn't working what do you tell people stop don't stop thinking about yourself because you can't it's like don't think of a white elephant white elephant white elephant white elephant you can't tell someone to stop thinking about something because they get caught in the loop what you do with socially anxious people is you say look at other people look look at them right why because if you look at them you can tell what they're thinking and then you unless you're unless you're terribly socialized and some people

are some people have no social skills and so the reason they can't go to a party is because they don't even know how to introduce themselves like they're just no one ever taught them how to behave and so they're really good candidates for behavior therapy because you walk them through the process of how you actually manifest the procedures that are associated with social acceptability but most people aren't like that they have the ability so if they're really introverted in high neuroticism they can usually talk quite well to someone oneon-one why because they look at them

well if I look at you it's another thing to do if you're ever speaking to a group of people never speak to the group of people they that doesn't exist you talk to individuals and then they reflect for you the entire group cuz they're all entrained so you look at one person they broadcast you everyone's thinking and you know how to talk to one person so it's easy so as soon as you focus on the person not you you push your attention outward use your eye you push your attention outward and you start watching well

then all your automatic mechanisms kick in and you stop being awkward because if we're talking and I'm looking here I don't know what you're going to do next and I'm going to put disjunctions into the like they're like uh bad chords in The Melody of our of our ation and the reason is I'm not paying attention so that's why the ey is the thing at the top of the pyramid it's like the thing that enables you to win the set of all possible dominance hierarchies is the ey pay attention pay attention that's the critical issue

that's why the Egyptians worshiped Horus that's why Horus was the thing that rescued Osiris from the from the depths it's the capacity to pay attention what do you pay attention to most what your right hemisphere signals as anomalous it it attracts your attention it's like this isn't going quite right I'm not looking at that wrong that's what you look at that's what you look at what's not going right because that's see that's the terrible monster that might eat you but it's also the place you get all the information so that's why it's useful to have

discussions with your enemies because they will tell you things you do not know and that's such a great thing because if you don't know them well you're not very smart are you you know there may be a time when you go somewhere that's the thing you need to know and maybe your enemy will tell you why you're such a fool you know and a bunch of other things that aren't true too but even one thing that's accurate it's like yeah thanks very much man maybe I'll do some work on that and I won't have to

carry that forward so and then that's part of the reason again why the terrible Predator it's always the terrible Predator that has the gold it's like it's the person who delivers the message you do not want to hear so it's rough it's rough but it doesn't matter life is rough