Researcher and clinical psychologist James Coan stated, "The more isolated you are from society, the more likely it is that anything will cause your death at any time, regardless of where you live, or what culture you belong to, and that is the truth."
Avoiding repeating the same past mistakes is a natural way to reinforce good behavior and positive social behavior. However, we give it more attention than it needs, and the risk of isolation is a negative social evaluation, which puts us under psychological stress that increases our cortisol levels.
Researchers try to create social pressure on animals in several ways, such as making a fight between them, and then making the submissive animal live in a cage next to the dominant animal that beats it. A dominance test is conducted to determine the animal that does not give up. For example, they put two mice on both ends of a tube and then watch them to see which of them will clear the way for the other.
Animals that have suffered social defeat may show a stress response when they see another animal that is somewhat similar to their opponent. Their brains respond by analyzing the situation that this unknown being in front of it resembles an object it encounters, and the emotional and behavioral sequence begins.
Rita Valentino, a neurobiologist specializing in the effects of social stress at the University of Pennsylvania, says: "The stress response isn't necessarily bad. It's a survival mechanism that without it we would be killed. The stress response becomes truly pathological when your coping mechanisms become disorganized."
Timing is not the most important, especially when it comes to how to enhance our behavior. The first experience a mouse has in the maze is the most important one because it will affect all of its decisions going forward in life. If it enters the first door and is almost devoured by the cat, it will avoid that door to survive, and if something scares it when it enters the second door, it will be afraid to cross that door as well.
The experiences we learned at primary school affect our lifelong decisions because the self-regulation system known as the brain always remembers them. It's how we learn about ourselves and how we interact better with others. As these first connotations that we get and others judge negatively, pave the way for life.
Greg Hajcak, an anxiety researcher and professor of biomedical science, psychology, and neuroscience at the University of Delaware, has studied how different parenting styles can lead to differences in children's responses to their mistakes. He says: “These differences can be due to genetic reasons, but it seems that strict upbringing may be a cause of stress. So imagine a parent saying to their child, ‘My love, this is not the right place to put the piece of the puzzle in, let’s try again.’ This is a gentle and supportive way of correcting his behavior, compared to how some parents are harsh and hurtful."
Heredity indeed plays a role in the presence of our anxiety, but the social anxiety symptoms may first appear as a result of the habit of focusing more on your losses than your gains, which increases their severity. As a result, this can convince them that their small mistakes are evident to everyone, so they tend to feel embarrassed in social meetings, and they think that people are also embarrassed, and no one likes to make mistakes. Therefore, their discomfort with feedback is so apparent that their fear of making a mistake can influence all of their actions.
Human beings can in creative ways meet their social needs, without having to deal with rejection, ridicule, or things that can make social attitudes very difficult. To overcome this anxiety, introverts can create what researchers call "social alternatives", such as caring for their pets and plants, committing to prayer, and coming closer to God.
We weave stories in our imaginations, interact psychologically with situations that are far from reality as if they were real, attack each other through comments on social media platforms as if we were arguing with people face to face, and find comfort in fatty foods. In other words, we start doing things that make it impossible for society to ignore us.
We browse social media to feel like we are communicating with our friends without actually having to interact with any of them. However, by using social media to meet their lack of social needs, introverts may waste the opportunity to enhance their fortunes. This is because of the common cognitive bias that Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, called "what you see is what you get."
Isn't what you posted on Facebook or Instagram a perfect photo of you in the playground with your kids, a beautiful sunset, or meeting your friends after a long absence? Of course, we post the best happy moments as significant events in our lives, but when browsing, it’s easy to forget that we don't see random scenes from other people's lives because we all share happy times only.
After looking for luck for years without success, embrace your introverted side, instead of making it a reason for your lack of luck. Writing a book, for example, requires spending a lot of quiet time alone for even a few years, interspersed with breaks from time to time to engage in social life.
You can go a long time without seeing the people you love or talk to. When you finally have the opportunity to inquire about the latest developments in each other's lives and discuss highlights, it's easy to engage in social comparisons and get caught up in what we think others have. Still, our present is far more complex than what we post on social media or discuss in passing.
Intense attention to presenting yourself requires a positive presentation, not spoiling a job appointment or interview with a lot of unguided mental energy, which is about the other person. This anxiety, even when we don't realize it's happening, is why we feel that some social interactions drain our energy more when we focus on what others think about us, and we're pretty sure that we're going to undergo a negative assessment. Therefore, we'll never have a chance to know that we're misinterpreting someone else's behavior.
One classic study examining the accuracy of people's ability to exhibit their interactions found that "what people say about their communication is nothing like their behavior at all". In other words, we have no idea how we deal with others. The problem of social anxiety is its recurrence, and any type of improvement requires feedback. However, when you're sure that others will give you negative feedback, you may abandon your social life and the chance to meet new people, and you may not even think about how your behavior affects the situation.
Maria Avgitidis, the founder of Agape Match, a company that helps people find a life partner, charges her clients $10,000 and offers a popular matchmaking service. The first step is to assess her clients.
"This is an assessment of what's happening to you and why you're staying single. Most people can tell you why they're staying single," she says. This is the next step that Avgitidis takes, which is a qualitative process for her clients.
Avgitidis continues: "I ask the client's friends why they are single from their perspective, and most times all friends concur, where it's never about things that people think it is. These friends don't realize that their friend believes that their imperfect body is the reason they stay single, which doesn't matter and is not the reason. However, the real reason is their lack of confidence in their body, as a person who loves them - whether a man or a woman - will not care about such matters. "
Often, the only thing an introvert can get wrong in social situations is the false assumption that others will treat them as harshly as they treat themselves.
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