Home > Author > Ellen Hendriksen
1 " Jia, who said to me: “It was surprising how easy it was to get a yes. I realized how many opportunities I missed because I was afraid of people rejecting me, but I was just rejecting myself. "
― Ellen Hendriksen , How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety
2 " As one of my clients, Anthony, exclaimed after we stood on a subway platform for an hour of looking at faces, “But wait, these are just people!”. "
3 " In truth, you gain confidence by doing things before you're ready, while you're still scared. Go through the motions and your confidence will catch up.' If you wait until you are ready to do the things that scare you because you feel like you aren't ready, you will never get around to doing them. We gain comfort and confidence through being uncomfortable. "
4 " Ultimately, social anxiety is the fear that whatever we’re trying to hide will be revealed to everyone like a gust of wind sweeps away a bad toupee. We think there is something wrong with us and therefore try to conceal it. "
5 " social anxiety is seeing our true self in a distorted way and believing the distortion to be the truth. "
6 " Ending conversation is another safety behavior—we’re trying to save ourselves from the anxiety. But we trade the anxiety of the moment for loneliness in the long run. "
7 " Seldom does anyone actually say, “Wow, you sure seem uncomfortable. You’re weird and don’t deserve to be here. "
8 " First, we hold ourselves to strict, near-impossible standards but are understanding and compassionate to everyone else. As if that double standard weren’t bad enough, we also try to see the best in others, but assume others will see the worst in us. When you think about it, our assumption that others will be judgmental and rejecting is actually quite ungenerous of us. "
9 " We like people more when they’re imperfect. "
10 " I once had a client who, terrified of the tight space and restriction involved in getting a head-and-neck MRI, readied himself by lying on the floor with his head under his bed. When that got boring, he upped the ante by lying under the bed with his head duct-taped to the floor. The only problem was that he neglected to warn his wife about his practice and when she found him taped to the floor she had to be coaxed out of calling 911. "
11 " I love working with people who experience social anxiety because they are invariably brave and amazing, and I am privileged to help them discover exactly that "
12 " Meeting people” is really different from “making friends.” One is an event; the other is a process. "
13 " Share what you think and feel and do. Show others that you like them. These are the building blocks of beautiful friendships. Epilogue In 1938, researchers at Harvard wondered: What makes a good life? "
14 " friendship is fostered, not found. "
15 " deep-sea volcanoes might erupt on the ocean floor, but the surface hardly shows a burble. "
16 " This second myth is unbelievably common. But why? What’s to blame for the idea that how we feel is how we look? For the primary culprit, look no further than your body. To explain, "
17 " This fear is the core of social anxiety. It’s the sense that something embarrassing, deficient, or flawed about us will become obvious to everyone. Jim feared what I call The Reveal. Social anxiety isn’t just fear of judgment; it’s fear the judgers are right. We think there is something wrong with us, and we avoid in order to conceal it. In our minds, if The Reveal comes to pass we’ll be rejected, humiliated, or exposed. "
