Existential Congruency and Social Anxiety
September 11th, 2006 by Ryan Oelke
William’s post, “Social Anxiety in a Public Job“, reminded me of my own similar struggles with working in residence life, a profession involving a great deal of socializing. I responded in much the same way he did, which was to be an actor of sorts, and as with William it left me feeling very drained. It was even more pronounced as I could not easily separate the job and my personal life as the position of a residence hall director is not a 9-5 job, and for three out of the four years I lived right where I worked, in the hall.
Something I’ve noticed and became even more aware of in reading William’s post is that working in residence life was not a perfect fit for me, which affected my social anxiety. It’s clear, on the other hand, that William is very much passionate in being a fitness trainer and I wonder if his existential congruency, if I could call it that, is helpful for him in working with social anxiety. I believe that my choice to go back to school and to leave the position of hall director gives me energy to work with my social anxiety because I am now living more congruently with my values and vision, with who I am, not partially as was the case with the hall director position.
In other words, does living incongruently with our vision and purpose compound social anxiety? I believe it does. I believe what we are doing with our lives - our actions, our jobs, our decisions - existentially speaking, has to impact how we experience and deal with social anxiety, for example encouraging us to face our problems or make the SAD walls a little thicker. Perhaps I need to expound on what I mean, but I leave it at this for now.
What are your thoughts on existential congruency and social anxiety?
For a little more on what I mean by existential congruency, check out my post on Time Yoga and Creating Your Vision Statement.
Posted in Goals, Motivation, Ryan, Social Anxiety|Subscribe |
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William Harryman wrote on 09/12/06 at 8:50 pm :
Hey Ryan,
Good post. I think you have a point. When I was working in sales/marketing, I was miserable. That’s the job in which I developed the “mask” approach, and it worked, but I was still miserable because I didn’t like what I was doing.
I love being a trainer. Certainly working one-on-one with my clients helps a lot. But loving what I do helps me get past the trying times when I am anxious and uncomfortable.
For those who have the option, or who can make a change, I would suggest that creating existential congruency should be of great use in dealing with SA.
Peace,
Bill
Katyusha wrote on 01/29/07 at 5:18 pm :
I’m grateful I stumbled on your post. I painfully agree that lack of fit only deepens social anxiety. I’m beginning to lose faith in the “fake it ’til you make it” school in this respect. Faking it has brought me a series of supposed accomplishments that only make me feel more anxious in retrospect. I recently got a promotion, but instead of feeling I’ve made it, the anxiety has started to black out my ability to think. I’m making myself right back into a 10-year-old me. (There must be some defense mechanism at work here.)
That said, as frightening as it is to try to just be me, I feel there’s going to be value there.
Thanks again for this site. I’m looking forward to reading around.
Ryan Oelke wrote on 01/31/07 at 10:49 am :
Hey Katyusha, thanks for sharing your experience.
So true for me as well. I did well with many experiences, jobs, commitments but because it didn’t feel like “me”, I really was even more anxious. I would then trap myself in it a bit because I wanted to be able to do and not be anxious, like proving something to myself. Now, I’m much more comfortable saying, “that’s just not me” and moving on, though it has taken me a lot of will power:)
Ansela wrote on 02/9/07 at 11:06 am :
Wow, what an interesting site/post. I am currently going back to school….which is terrible for me regarding a kind of Task Anxiety I have as well as having no ‘regular’ social contact associated with my previous jobs. Studying is Very lonely and empty for me. (I looked that the Time Yoga post and I have major issues with meaningless). SCHOOL feels ‘existentially incongruent’ to me…I feel like so much of it is total ‘BS’, etc. but it is a means to an end that will hopefully feel More congruent than my office jobs. Any thoughts?
Ryan Oelke wrote on 02/11/07 at 9:51 am :
Hey Ansela, thanks for sharing your experiences with this. Finding meaning, or aligning our external world with our internal world, can be quite a challenge - I don’t know that it’s ever something that’s “finished”. Viktor Frankl, father of Logotherapy and the existential movement in psychology, describes life as this continuous process of finding meaning. That is the nature of life. We are left with infinite choices and the responsibility to make those. If we don’t or we choose things not in line with our being, we feel emptiness, discontinuity. I think this is important to remember. If we grasp at some grand final resting place, we might be disappointed. And I think that there is excitement and life in discovering moment to moment.
But on a more practical level, aka how the hell do you do that, well, I’m not entirely sure I have any good answers. Something that I have been using as a mantra for others and myself is that if you’re not having new input and new experiences come into your being, then you won’t change. So, if you continuously search for new experiences and new input - reading a book, talking to someone, trying something out - I think we’ll find what we are looking for. If we do nothing, we get nothing new. You sound like you already have an impetus: School is BS. I say hold on to that, water it, feed the feeling. That’s what happened with me. I didn’t push it away and eventually I completely agreed and decided to do something about it, though at the time I had no idea what. But I kept seeking.