How I Deal With Fear of Negative Evaluation
I stopped caring what other people thought and started living!
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Atychiphobia: the fear of negative evaluation.
We all have it to some degree, but for people like me, it can sometimes feel like a crippling disease keeping me paralyzed from achieving my dreams.
Until last night, I was clueless about the academic label of my lifelong fear. It wasn’t until I found myself at the bottom of a google rabbit hole when the word, in all its glory, presented itself to my lexicon.
You see, despite my ignorance, this fear has shaped my whole life.
And, recently, giving it a name released some of its power over me. It felt like placing a new Petco collar with a shiny name tag on that terrifying, straggly, snapping stray dog that follows me everywhere.
“Awww, there you go cutie! I’ll name you Atychi!”
In all honesty, I was aware of this fear well before last night. It’s a fear whose outline gets a little sharper with each passing year. But before my enhanced eyesight, this fear stayed hidden inside of me. It was a way of being for me. Without therapy, I was left to my own devices to navigate this partially painful world. This fear was my guide, my compass on rocky seas. Instead of looking inside myself, I looked out at others to tell me how I was doing.
“Did they like what I did? Do they like ME? What do they want me to do next?”
I’d ask myself these questions so regularly it became a background program running in my brain’s subconscious, clogging up my CPU. What started out as innocent curiosity swiftly became a toxic obsession. Only I didn’t realize the obsession growing, because it was just below the surface of conscious thought.
All I had were physical clues. When I had to do public speaking, my heart would palpitate hard and my vocal cords would snap. When somebody gave me criticism, my stomach would drop and a heaviness would overtake my body. Growing up I was so introverted that, to my dismay, I was often called shy or passive. The adults didn’t know, but their words made me feel like I was thrashing violently in a cage fifty feet below the ground. On the outside, I just sat there passively, but my insides were in knots. Their view of me was seemingly accurate and yet, the opposite of how I saw myself.
I let the opinions of others torture me. Opinions that seemed random and unstable, which, at any moment, could destroy or uplift me.
And why not let those opinions affect me? There was evidence that people’s opinions of me could make or break me.
In my life, there have been times when people rejected me just for being me. I’ve lost friends over it. My parents have, at times, mocked me or made me feel like a loser. I felt unsupported. I’ve let people down and their disappointment stung. I felt like a failure. I’ve shocked people by being “too much” of myself. I felt humiliated. A person I worked for took a disliking to me. I lost a job because of it.
Then, there’s the opposite.
I got rehired for the same job (at the same company that fired me!) because another person there loved me. I felt validated. There have been mentors and teachers whose eyes lit up when they saw my work. I felt special. My wonderful, supportive boyfriend cheered me on throughout the years. I felt loved. Friends I have lost were regained. Some friends even helped me create art with them. I felt less alone. My own pets have taught me the beautiful reality of unconditional love. I felt inspired.
Despite evidence to the contrary, I was able to see over the years that, in all of these situations, I was the one with the real power over my life. I was the one “acting” and they were “reacting” to my action. Sure, they could fire me, break up with me, or throw tomatoes at me. But, in the end, it didn’t matter. At any moment, I always had the power to act. All they could do was react. When I realized how inconsistent people’s reactions are — it empowered me to care less.
Restarting My Computer.
One year, I had multiple jobs and freelance gigs, resulting in me meeting over a hundred new people at a rapid pace. Some people thought I was a complete idiot. Others thought I was the Second Coming of Christ. Most were somewhere in between. It was too much. Suddenly all the new random inputs short-circuited my system. But instead of blowing a fuse or shutting down, I restarted.
I realized just how random people’s opinions of me were. I realized their opinions told me more about them and who they were than it told me about myself.
A new belief emerged. I started to believe people’s opinions about me just didn’t matter as much as I thought.
I realized I have no control over any of it. We’re all just people, trying to live our lives the best we can. We have limited experiences and as a result, every opinion we have is incredibly personal and unique to us. Furthermore, I’ve noticed people’s opinions change regularly as people grow and we don’t always express our opinions clearly. We often miscommunicate.
After my “restart” — I decided to only use my default programming, which prioritized self-evaluation above all else. That’s because there has been one constant throughout every evaluation: me.
Promoting Myself to Expert.
I Know Two Things For Sure:
1. I am the top expert in myself.
2. Other people’s evaluation of me doesn’t change that.
But knowing and believing are two different things.
Today, I am much closer to believing the above statements. It has taken me years of suffering and confusion to get here. I still have a ways to go, but I have slowly taken back something I should’ve never given away freely: the power to evaluate myself.
Only I have that power: to measure my self-worth, to believe in myself, and to imagine what is possible for me. I’m no longer handing out free evaluation surveys to random passersby.
Taking back this power has helped me feel like my life is more my own. By placing the highest value on myself for evaluation, I don’t discredit or tune-out others' advice, I merely empower myself to be the final decision-maker.
A person’s single negative comment can no longer derail me, even if they’re somebody I love and admire. Their comments just aren’t as important in my overall journey.
What is important is my own self-evaluation. Luckily, I love and trust myself enough to know my evaluation will be fair and just. Even if I do get a “bad” self-evaluation, it won’t feel as random and heartbreaking. I won’t feel helpless to fix it. I always know what I need to do next. This keeps me moving.
I am not cured of my fear, but my immunity is strengthened. I’m taking the self-love medication and I’m armed with knowledge. I’m not going to let my fear maul me and land me in the ICU, paralyzed from the waist down.
That stray dog, which represents my fear, still follows me, but the more I look back at him, the farther away he seems.
It’s just me walking this road and that’s okay.
I don’t need a band of followers. I just need one person’s support: my own.
Chasing my dreams feels like less like a girl scout field trip where I have to check-in every hour with civilization and the chaperones. Instead, it feels more a wild woman’s fun, independent adventure!
And so freely I roam, with a steady heartbeat and weightless jaunt, going further than I ever have before. As it should be.
Take that, Atychiphobia! *PUNCH!*
