Fear of Disapproval, Shyness and Social Anxiety

I want to do a series of blogs on the topic of fear of disapproval. In this segment, I want to examine how fear of disapproval deters, delays and blocks initiatives, whether this consists of failure to speak up or engaging with others

The negative threat of others’ disapproval or potential negative evaluation exists in a kind of nether world: one isn’t sure it exists, but imagines the worst. Disapproval as an official act exists primarily in institutional contexts such as job interviews or as evaluations of promotion.

Disapproval is more wide spread in its influence as it exists in the minds of witnesses and in the imaginations of performers and actors on the public stage. Disapproval is conveyed verbally of course, but it is often expressed non verbally by gestures, facial expressions (frowns) or by withdrawal of communication.

The deleterious kind of disapproval exists primarily as projections or imaginative inferences where the person assumes or believes he or she is being observed and evaluated but at a non verbal level. It isn’t always deleterious since much of civilized interactions depend on a certain amount of fear of disapproval to keep people within bounds.

The deleterious kinds of disapproval exist in more extreme forms where, for example, the shy or social anxious are extremely sensitized to their own worries about how they are being observed and evaluated.

It is for the shy and the socially awkward that fear of disapproval tends to be the most extreme.
Shyness is anxiety resulting from a failure, or anticipated failure, to present one’s self or one’s actions to an audience. For the socially shy, it is the anxiety resulting from the possibility of giving unintended offense which, combined with fear of rejection, makes this anxiety particularly strong.
The shy person is sensitive to the potential danger that the other will evaluate them negatively and uses this assumption of threat to avoid interaction or, if interaction is compelled, allow their performance to be depreciated due to nervousness about how they are being judged.
Timidification is the all too frequent outcome and as a result a person’s life chances tend to be overly narrowed. When shyness is so extreme as to interfere with life functioning it becomes diagnosed as social anxiety disorder. However, most common forms of shyness are short lived, tend to be widely generalized in the population and are easily overcome as a person gains friendship and acceptance from others.

Read Mark's Blog

.