Social anxiety and the intimidation value
Each person I come into contact with has a rating assigned to them by my sub-conscience. Everyone is rated, regardless of their relationship to me. Family members, friends, people on the street, co-workers, authority figures, salespeople, checkout girls, etc… Everybody gets a rating. Let me explain:
When I meet someone, I give them a pretty thorough evaluation in my head. I evaluate them on many different things. Looks, speech, perceived social status, financial status, perceived confidence level, and so forth. Literally, hundreds of evaluations are made in a very short time. Many of these assumptions are just that: Assumed. In most cases I use past experiences and comparisons to rank people. For the sake of simplicity, and ease of explanation, I will use a 0-10 ranking system. My actual process for ranking people is more automatic, much less tangible, and harder to explain.
So, in my mind, everyone gets a value. There are many ways to arrive at the final value. For example: a well-educated, well-spoken, intellect may rank as a 9, and someone who is extremely good looking would also rate a 9. The higher a person’s rank, the more intimidated I am by them.
Another good example would be a boarder guard or police officer. Regardless of their looks, they will still rank extremely high because of their job and the fact that they appear confident, assertive, and outgoing. Because they have a high “value”, I am very intimidated by them. This level, or rating, is also not an indicator of that other person’s attributes; it is simply a measure of how they are perceived by me.
The intimidation value is not entirely dependant upon someone having a high number; it’s also dependant upon me having a low number. In fact, you could say it’s the difference between these values that causes my low self-esteem, lack of confidence, and anxiety. I’m convinced that this is the source of my SA.
Now, if that’s true, then the solution would be to bring these opposing values closer - either by lowering that person’s perceived value, or by increasing mine.
Although that sounds like a simple conclusion, the solution is far from easy. I’ve spent the last few years trying to bring these two “levels” a little closer and have had limited success.
It’s all about perception really. I have consciously been trying to raise my own personal value, while lowering that of other people.
Again, I don’t mean to say that I am trying to lower a persons worth, I am simply trying to lower the intimidation factor.
I’m going to make a separate category called “The intimidation factor,” because I’ll be talking about this in detail for the next little while.
2 Responses to “Social anxiety and the intimidation value”
You describe well the near universal human tendency to evaluate and stratify other humans. The rub I suppose is a qualitative aspect to your method which includes an onerous self-critical ‘dialogue’, resulting in a clouded sense of yourself and those you meet. You are clearly aware of this and the problems it creates in relating to others, the latter the therapeutic sin qua non of whether this qualifies as a disorder (versus a normal variant). I am interested in whether the experiences in (self) therapy you’ve written about here have had any effect on closing this interpersonal perception gap.
My personal opinion is that working at (raising) the level of self-esteem in substantive ways would be the main focus of effort- any successes there would begin to adjust the distorted views of others as ‘intimidating’. Adjusting the evaluative factors of others ‘downwards’ would be a theoretical ‘victory’, but without inner peace and acceptance, a hollow one at best.
Best Wishes, MR
I also tend to rate people in a similar way to you. I don’t consciously set out to rate acquaintances, I do it for the same reason as you, an intimidation factor. I always feel more confident firstly, with a female (I’m male), preferably non-professional ( I have a degree majoring in psychology, but never practised as one), and most importantly, one who is shy and quiet. I guess that’s why I stumbled on your site. My drawbacks, apart from low self esteem and a an anxious and depressed state, are that I am older, and overweight - both factors/conditions that constantly disturb me. I have a lot more to say, but you may respond if you wish to pursue our similarities - we could spend time comparing perceived inadequacies !!
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