Attention to Potential Signs of Negative Evaluation in Your Environment

Now, as much as learning how to redirect your attention toward your external environment will probably help with some of the problems that go along with focusing all of your attention on yourself and your internal experiences, this might not be enough. You see, studies have found that people with social anxiety are more likely to notice and direct their attention toward things in their environments that are threatening or suggest that their fears may be true (Schultz and Heimberg 2008).

For example, let’s say that you are giving a talk in front of a large audience. If you experience social anxiety, your attention is probably going to be captured by the one person in the audience who is frowning, even if there are a number of other people who are smiling and giving you positive feedback. In addition, once your attention latches onto that person frowning, it will be difficult to redirect your attention away from that person’s face. What’s more, even though the person could be frowning about a number of different things (maybe from hunger or just a bad day), there’s a really good chance that once your attention is focused on this frown, you will interpret it as a sign that you are not performing well, leading to even more anxiety and further increasing your attention to anything negative in your environment. Therefore, in addition to focusing your attention on your external environment, it’s important to remember to expand your awareness to include all aspects of your environment. If you find that you are focusing on only one person or aspect of your environment, practice expanding your attention to take in all of the information around you, focusing on everything you notice. Doing so will help you connect with a more balanced evaluation of your performance.

This is also another time when noticing your experience without judgment or evaluation can be helpful. Rather than judging what you observe in your environment, focus on simply noticing it as it is and describing it objectively, letting go of any evaluations (Linehan 1993b). Now, you may notice that these evaluations continue to pop into your head from time to time, especially when you first start practicing this skill. This is natural and to be expected. If this happens, simply notice this evaluation or judgmental thought and return your attention to noticing and describing the things around you. The goal is to not completely eliminate judgments and evaluations (which would be impossible), but to change how you respond to these types of thoughts so that you don’t get caught up in them as much.

Once your eyes are wide open and you are noticing all aspects (or as many as you can) of your environment without judgment, it can also help tremendously to really throw yourself into, or immerse yourself in, whatever activity you are doing right now, in the present moment. If you are speaking in front of an audience, really throw your whole mind and body into the activity, making it the single most important activity in the universe right now. In fact, you can always do this, no matter what you are doing, and it will almost always help.