Option #2: Throw your Social Brain into the Arctic sea
This option is like
when you're afraid to get in that cold swimming pool when you're 3 and
your mom tries to coax you and finally your dad just throws you in and
you think you'll drown. Always a fun rite of passage when your dad tries
to kill you! And now you get to do the same thing to your Social Brain.
Your Social Brain
is afraid of humiliation. So humiliate it. On purpose. Throw it in the
pool. Sign up for something incredibly ridiculously humiliating - some
wildly unwise social activity that will expose you to ridicule, wish
you hadn't signed up for it, and then participate in it anyway.
Have you considered
trying out for a reality television series such as Survivor, The Bachelor,
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Joe Millionaire, Fear Factor, or something
equally likely to expose you to national ridicule? If not, give
it some serious consideration. Get out your camcorder and make a humiliating
tape of yourself doing something pathetic in order to gain a few fleeting
moments of notoriety in a desensitized world satured with images of
average idiots performing Very Unwise Stunts for almost no gain.
Think about this
for a second. Think about a show like Survivor which may have started
the trend in the US. Why do people sign up for something like this?
To humiliate themselves! They're not doing it for the money.
16 people, 1 million dollars, 1 winner and 15 people with nothing to
show for themselves but a bad sunburn and the memory of having eaten
a rat. There's a 6 or 7% chance you'll win, and we all know you won't.
You have a better chance becoming a millionaire playing the stock market,
opening a 401K, or actually paying attention to how you manage your
finances. If you want a low odds way of winning a million how much fucking
effort does it take to purchase a lottery ticket. Almost none! For that
matter, you could go to Las Vegas where miniskirted women will bring
you free drinks just for losing all your money. The rational
pursuit of money has nothing to do with the proliferation of ordinary
people attempting to expose themselves and look stupid on television.
People sign up for these things because their Love and Safety Brains
specifically want them to humiliate themselves in front of others.
Why does their
Love and Safety Brain urge them to do something so seemingly risky and
ridiculous? Because it wants to know - it wants to actually know
how much Love and Safety these people have actually got in the world.
People like to test their physical skills against mountains, people
want to test their social skills against Other People. They're scared.
One antidote for fear is action. So they act. They take a big risk.
They take the risk of getting booted out, freaking out, breaking down,
conniving and getting caught, being revealed, being shown, being betrayed,
being a betrayer. People actually fucking want to know what the parameters
of actual social danger in their lives are. They want to know will anyone
still love them after they act like a bitch in front of everyone in
the entire country. If they cry, if they act dumb, if they screw up
a test of skill, if they blow a gasket.
Your Love and Safety
Brain wants to know, it desperately wants to know if anyone will still
love and accept you once you've made an irrevocable fool of yourself.
It wants to know if having your Inner Reality leak out in public will
kill you. Your Social Brain is busy guarding you - Your Love and
Safety Brain want to know if this is necessary. You want to know
if all this strain is really necessary. So find out.
In reality, you'd
much prefer to be able to Just Be Yourself without worrying about nobody
liking you ever again. So take a fucking risk and find out what will
happen if you do something that will expose you.
Take a big risk.
It works for the Survivor people - the one thing they get out of acting
like doofuses is that they feel more secure in themselves and the range
of what they can do. They've reset their own boundaries based on actual
experience. Believe me, dancing in public is going to seem like small
potatoes after you have burst into tears from hunger and told all
your tribemates that you really really love them.
If you are worried
that you will never get on a national TV show where you can throw up
in public or scream like infant when confronted with the prospect of
eating a hissing cockroach, then try a local one. Try some godawful
cheesy local dating show. There's got to be something. What about
all the MTV shows? There are millions of them. Real World, Road
Rules, hell you can wait for spring break and try out for Hottest Stud
in some male bikini contest. If that doesn't fucking freak out your
Social Brain, I don't know what will. (Better hurry - the reality trend
could peter out at any time! Act fast - act now!)
If that doesn't
work, surely there is some embarrassing local theater troupe you can
sign up for. Some talent show where you will do your Elvis impersonation.
People do stupid things in public all the time in every city in America.
Find one and sign up for it. I'm serious about this. This is
a time-honored means of building social confidence and god fucking damn
if it doesn't work.
Random Tip:
I recently faced a similar problem, not the same one exactly, but cleverly
I signed up for a stand-up comedy class to combat it. Attempting
to do stand-up comedy in front of live humans is a very quick way to
humiliate yourself. It's not only quick - it's effective. You'll
be sweating bricks and wanting to throw up in no time. And by the time
it's over - a certain amount of fear will just have packed up its shit
and left the premises of your body. If you're going to subject it
to things that really frighten you - it's eventually just
going to just throw up its hands and say to itself, I can't get this
fucker to avoid anything dangerous - what am I hanging around
for?
I don't know what
aspect of your Inner Reality your Brains are most alarmed by. Maybe
they suspect you're not really a very nice person and are actually Very
Angry at all the social conditioning you've been subjected to. Maybe
they suspect you are Very Soulful, which strikes them as a good way
for you to get your soulful feelings hurt. Maybe they think you are
really Michael Bolton or Barry Manilow or even Billy Joel and not only
will you croon ballads if allowed to but you will simultaneously be
hopelessly passe. Maybe they are afraid you are Willfully Passionate
or A Big Ham and if they let you on stage, you'll immediately want to
don drag and do satirical yet largely unfunny sketches in which you
pretend to be the Queen of England. Maybe they are afraid you are Smarter
Than Everyone Else and therefore no one will be able to relate to your
advanced sense of humor if you laugh at what you think is funny. Maybe
they think you are Just a Big Puppy Dog desperate for affection and
approval and will be doomed and taken advantage of if the news ever
gets out. Or maybe they think you are Just Hopelessly Inhibited.
Doesn't matter.
If you get up in front of a group of people and try to do stand-up comedy
or whatever you've chosen as your own personal Very Bad Idea and people
can tell you're nervous and inhibited and you have to be up there in
front of them being nervous and inhibited...you win! Now your
Brains know that you can go the rest of your life being nervous and
inhibited and still people will not kill you for it! It's okay.
You'll survive. If you accidentally get up in front of people and have
a bad experience, you can be scarred and traumatized for life. But
if you purposefully get up in front of people knowing goddamn well it's
a terrible idea and you're probably going to die - you will experience
tremendous relief. And you'll have learned a little bit more about how
much actual Love and Safety there is out there for you.
So listen, I'm not
going to make you sign up for a dancing contest right off the bat. But
you do have to fucking take a dancing class where you will have to dance
in front of everyone by the end of the class. Dance, motherfucker,
dance. Or get up and try to make people laugh. You think your sense
of humor might possibly be just a tad well not quite safe to display
in a relaxed manner. Prove it! Take a fucking singing class or
join a goddamn band. Perform in a fucking musical - Oklahoma
for Chrissakes, wearing a cowboy outfit.
The sad thing -
or the good thing - depending on your point of view - is that you will
actually love this. You will love it so much you will never want to
quit. Either that or you won't and you'll be saying to yourself - Being
uninhibited is not all it's cracked up to be - I prefer being modest
and reserved. But the more likely scenario is that your Enjoying Yourself
Problems will go away. Because you'll enjoy the hell out of yourself.
You'll look at your friends as just so many losers who are slightly
below you in the enjoying yourself category now that you have discovered
that you actually have An Operatic Baritone and run around singing opera
all the time. Yeah sure, hanging at a club, big deal, nothing compared
to being on The Real World. You will vault out of your current
humdrum existence and soon be giving tango lessons to exotic beauties
of some vaguely Latin persuasion.
Or - very boring
Option #3
Option
#3 - Skip Actual Action and Soothe Yourself with Words
In this option you
are too chickenshit to sign up for something humiliating that you can't
get out of and you instead try to solve your problem by telling yourself
over and over - 'I have no reason to be inhibited. I am Loved and Safe.
Everyone accepts me. There is no reason I can't dance in front of people.
I am bathed in a glowy world of Love and Safety and no harm can come
to me.'
Boring!
But you can avail
yourself of this option. Tell yourself no harm can come to you and see
whether or not you believe it. Try telling yourself how relaxed and
confident you feel. After a certain amount of self-hypnosis, you might.
The truth is - people use all three of the options. All the time. And
all of them work. To a certain degree. As much as any option can work
in an unsafe social world. For that matter, being drunk 24/7 does too,
although, as you pointed out, it does come with very high costs. I think
you can tell which option I'm hoping you'll choose.
I'm looking forward
to seeing you humiliate yourself in some incredibly painful way on national
television some time soon! And I'll still love and accept you after
you do. I promise.
prettyfedup.com