Coping With Nervousness Before Optional Social Behaviors
People can be nervous before unavoidable events like job interviews. I outline some strategies for dealing with these situations in this article. They can also feel anxious before actions they can do that are totally optional, but which they want to do. These scary behaviors often involve approaching people under circumstances where they might reject you. Examples would be talking to a stranger at a party, going to someone in authority to ask them for something, or making a sales cold call.
What usually happens is the idea of performing these actions only makes you somewhat nervous beforehand. They are optional after all, and you always know in the back of your mind that you can back out at any time. It's not like when someone knows they have to speak at a conference and they're worried about it for a month beforehand.
When you're at a safe distance from the feared activity you probably even want to go ahead. The anxiety only really kicks in when you're just about to do the optional behavior, and then it will often flare up enough to actually cause you to you bail out at the last second.Or to put it the way psychologists do: There are factors making you want to Approach and there are factors making you want to Avoid. When you're far away, the approach factors are strong and propel you forward, where the Avoid factors begin to increase in strength. You'll keep moving ahead until you cross a theoretical line where the avoidance factors overpower the approach ones. At this point you'll give in to your fear.
Use the principles of gradual exposure to get comfortable with your fears in the longer term
The suggestions here are on how to get past your nerves once you're already at the place where you can perform the optional behavior, and you just need to go for it. In the longer term you've got fears to get over, and the best way to do that is to expose yourself to them gradually. You may find the following article to be a useful adjunct to this one:
How To Face Your Social Fears (Gradually)
Give yourself time to calm down
If you arrive somewhere and you have the option of doing a scary social action or not, it often helps to give yourself time to collect yourself and let the anxiety fade somewhat. For example, if you arrive at a party you may feel too nervous to try to join any conversations right away. However, if you're not too hard on yourself for being anxious, and give yourself time, you may eventually work up the nerve to do it. This may require several cycles of beginning to approach and bailing out at the last moment before you finally do it, but if you're patient with yourself you'll get there.
You may need to give yourself several days to work up the nerve towards something that really makes you uncomfortable. For example if you want to ask your boss for a raise, you may almost walk into his or her office, or hit Send on an email about it, a couple of times over the week, before you finally go through with it. But if you're persistent about at least trying you'll do it eventually.
This point is all about going easy on yourself. In these situations it's easy to beat yourself up for not being brave enough to just do it already. You may feel like you're 'failing' by hovering around a group at a party trying to work up the gumption to talk to them. It is what it is though.
It also helps to think of this 'give yourself time' idea in a more long term way. Maybe you'll go to a party and not be able to chat to any strangers the entire night. But maybe you're now that much closer to being able to initiate a conversation with someone the next time you attend one. In the short term of that one party you could berate yourself for being weak and cowardly. In the grander scheme of things you may still be making progress.
Within each 'session' you'll have to build some courage up
What happens with this kind of thing is that you'll usually feel a bit rusty at the start of each new 'session', i.e., networking event, party, block of time you've set aside. Even if you've managed to do the scary action during other sessions in the past, some of your courage will have worn off and you'll need to get the ball rolling again. This means at a party the first few people or groups you approach will be the hardest, then you'll hit your stride and have an easier time of things for the rest of the night. Even if someone has a lot of experience they may still always have that delayed start up at the beginning of each go around.
Dive right in before you have time to think
This tip has the opposite philosophy of the 'give yourself time' suggestion, and can work if the optional behavior is only a little bit anxiety-inducing for you. Basically, once you arrive at the place where you want to perform the behavior, you get started before you have time for the 'avoidance factors' to really kick in. So if you go to a party you'd jump into a conversation before you even put your coat away. Maybe that one interaction will be quick, but at least you've gotten things going. Another example may be someone making a few sales calls as soon as they sit down at their desk.
Force your hand somehow
Doing this can give you that last little nudge you need. An extreme example would be something like giving a sympathetic friend twenty dollars and telling him he can keep the money if you don't talk to at least one new person at the party that night. Telling yourself you'll reward yourself if you go through with it also tends to be effective. Tell yourself something like you'll buy yourself a nice dinner the next day if you chat to someone that night.
You can also create a false sense of urgency in your mind. You could tell yourself something like, "Okay, I have to leave this party in half an hour, and I have to talk to at least one person before then." What is likely to happen is that you'll still be scared for the next 25 minutes or so, but once you realize time is running out you'll think, "Okay, it's now or never. I may as well just do it!", and then you will. The time pressure takes away your ability to over think things and get stuck in your head.
Know general approaches to combating anxiety
This article focused on the things specific to one kind of nervousness. Of course having a general idea of how to handle anxiety helps as well. Odds are you've seen links to these articles already, but if not check them out:
Overall Attitudes For Handling Anxiety
Coping With Anxiety In The Moment
