Afraid that people find you weird? You might be suffering from this

There's a good chance you've come home after a party and thought: I made a fool of myself. Let me reassure you right away: the people around you were really not focused on you the whole evening, so as long as you weren't dancing on the table drunk during an important networking event, the other attendees won't be calling each other to discuss your behavior in detail.

It's completely normal to be self-conscious in these kinds of situations because you want to present yourself in a certain way and leave a good impression. It only gets really complicated when you notice that you start avoiding social situations. If that's the case, you might want to explore whether you have social anxiety. Interestingly, this is a fear that occurs quite often in women.

Social anxiety goes much further than just that nervous feeling before a presentation or the tension of meeting your in-laws for the first time. With social anxiety, you want to do everything you can to avoid those situations because you are convinced that you will completely embarrass yourself. It starts with blushing, sweating, or stuttering, but can even escalate into a full-blown panic attack. If you suspect you have social anxiety, it's best to talk to a psychologist about it. Unfortunately, it doesn't just go away on its own. Especially when you notice that you start avoiding social situations like parties or appointments to make sure you don't make a fool of yourself, it becomes difficult to get out of this on your own.

There are various ways to overcome it:

• Talk about it. For example, if you're afraid you'll blush, you could discuss this with a friend. Think about what the worst thing is that could happen if you blush. What would people think about that? The chances are high that your friends will also say that they don't find anything strange about people blushing. This way, you make that scary situation a lot less daunting.. Exposure.
• This means that you consciously expose yourself to situations that you would normally avoid due to your feelings of anxiety. Shift your focus.
• Instead of just paying attention to yourself in social situations and how you come across to others, you can also try to shift your focus to others or what is happening around you. Training.
• . For example, through role-playing, to practice how you would behave and how you react to others in these kinds of situations. By really training this, it becomes a kind of automatism, and you know exactly what you do or don't want to say or do, but also how another person will likely react to you.. Depending on how severe your anxiety is, you can of course try these methods yourself, but the wisest thing is to do this under the guidance of a psychologist. This way, you don't throw yourself unnecessarily into the deep end, but you make a plan to gradually overcome your fears.

Source: Dutch Association for Psychiatry | Photo: Sony Pictures, Margot Robbie in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

It's completely normal to be self-conscious in these kinds of situations. It only gets really complicated when you notice that you start avoiding social situations.