Social anxiety comes from the confused belief that I need people to like, love, include, understand, connect with or approve of me.
And THAT all comes from the confused notion that other people are, well…other people, and not just my state of mind, projected.
I am already connected, I am already understood, I am already loved, unless I believe otherwise. There is no situation in which I am not understood, included, approved of, liked or loved, unless I’m believing a stressful thought that says so. And that thought is never true.
How do I know? Because it hurts to believe it and when I question the thought, I find that what is hurting me is the belief in the thought itself - not an actual lack of understanding, inclusion, approval, or love, but a thought of it, a thought that can only be proved with more thoughts.
Connection is what I am. It’s my default setting with the world. If I think and do nothing I am connected. I have to take steps to DIS-connect. Without the thought, “disconnected,” there is no way to be disconnected. And so I see that I am connected. Always. And that realization is within ME. No one can deprive me of it or take it from me.
Noticing this is the end of social anxiety.
I do not need people to connect with me. That’s already happening. My job is to refrain from breaking our connection in my own mind. To just be aware of, and allow and bask in the benevolent reality of it all.
People may say or do things I don’t agree with, they may appear confused about what I say and do. They may turn and walk away from me in the middle of a sentence. They may point and laugh and call me names. They may direct their anger at me. They may yell that I’m not welcome, push me out of the building and slam the door.
I can understand and connect with all of it. I’ve been there. Every separating behavior I witness is just my experience of separation. Whenever I’m experiencing separation, I am the separator. And when I’m not, I’m not. And when I recognize that we are all one thing, that “they” are nothing more than my state of mind, experienced, I can see that there is no problem but the problem I make of anything.
This is hard for me to understand when I’m in the throes of believing my thoughts of separation.
There’s nothing to do but love what is. Not like, prefer or seek to sustain everything that happens, but to meet it with love. For no other reason than that I love to love.
Because the experience of meeting the world with love (the experience of the ACT itself) gives me everything I’ve ever really wanted from another person.