How to Be Authentic?

Note: This article is adapted from the book "How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety" by clinical psychologist Ellen Hendriksen, in which she talks about not caring what others think of us and accepting who we are.

Although my social anxiety is less than it once was, I also have a critical inner voice that occasionally appears out of nowhere.

I'll share a recent experience with you. I enrolled my four-year-old son in a cooperative kindergarten where each family participates in a project. Our family's project was to shop for food supplies, so my husband and I would alternately go to the grocery store every few weeks to buy the bulk amounts of supplies required to feed kindergarten students.

Many people experience social anxiety while grocery shopping because they feel like they are obstructing others, they are concerned about what others will think of their purchases, or they avoid speaking to the accountant. However, I rarely experience any anxiety while grocery shopping. I therefore had no value when I volunteered for the food committee.

The first time I went to the grocery store with my five-page collaborative shopping list in hand, however, I realized I would need two trolleys to put the stuff in, which made sense for a week of twice-daily snacks for 50 kids. I filled the first cart by walking it around the store, then I left it on customer service while I continued to fill the second.

I became concerned when I read the rest of the list and saw that my new cart would only hold ten gallons of milk, forty bananas, and thirty apples. As I sped through the dairy section, I wondered what other shoppers might be thinking, including that I was on a strange diet or that they were making fun of me.

I slowly added ten gallons of milk to the cart before pushing it into the produce section and adding forty bananas. I had never purchased so much in my life, and when I realized I was also packing thirty apples, I imagined the horrifying things that people might say. However, when a man approached me and said, "Nice apples," I was taken aback and the truth finally dawned on me.

He looked at me with a wide grin as our eyes merged. My countenance was probably not pleasant when I saw him because he was an old friend of mine. His features quickly changed, and he appeared annoyed. He apologized by saying, "Sorry, I must have startled you." I replied, "No, I'm at fault; I was preoccupied." Then we had a brief but enjoyable conversation during which he made no mention of the items in the cart; in fact, I believe he was completely unaware of them.

You will suffer if you constantly fantasize about the worst-case scenarios and harsh judgments from others, or if you are the one who is self-critical and self-flagellating. That distracted me from my true location, which was in the produce department of a crowded grocery store on a Sunday afternoon, and it led to erroneous self-judgment.

I was unable to see the good people in the store at that time, such as the couple debating the type of coffee to buy, the parents shopping with their kids, or the elderly men inspecting the fruit. I was unaware that no one was looking at me or  what was in my cart.

After my friend left with his cart, I became giddy and decided to look at the people instead of keeping my head down. As I pushed my full cart out, I noticed that some people were staring at the posters, others were staring at the food on the shelves, and still others were staring at me; But they remained silent, and even if they had wanted to comment, what could they possibly have said that would have been worse? Nobody cares what's in my cart, and even if they did, I could handle the situation. I'm just doing my co-op, which involves purchasing a lot of milk and bananas.

I learned something significant that day at the grocery store: My anxiety isn't justified. It took me years to realize this, and it's rare that you hear someone say to you, "Oh my God, you look uncomfortable."

"You're such a weirdo and you shouldn't be around," "We don't like the way you talk, so We don't want to listen to you," or, in my case, "Ma'am, is there a problem? Even if someone did say, "You must be weird for buying so much milk," everyone watching would think poorly of the person who said it to us and the one who criticize will be the culprit, not you. Moreover, if one of them questions me, "Do you only consume milk and bananas? I'll put up with the mistreatment of this miser and perhaps give him something of what I bought.