i'm dr orion taraban and this is psych hacks better living through psychology and the topic of today's short talk is conquering the fear of being judged by others this is a problem that i encounter routinely in my clinical practice and i have some measure of success in helping people overcome it the key to doing so requires us to understand a psychological concept called theory of mind it's a little clunky but theory of mind basically means that we tend to believe that other people think the same way that we do in order to make interpersonal communication
efficient let alone possible we project our consciousness onto others and interact with them through that projection this process is unconscious and functionally inescapable theory of mind is a kind of necessary evil because it's just not possible to directly experience the consciousness of others and it's generally safer to assume that for all our differences we have more in common than we don't like for example we assume a common preference to avoid pain and disrespect on the grounds that we ourselves would prefer to avoid those things and this projected assumption keeps society more or less civil so
you can see how theory of mind can facilitate pro-social affiliation theory of mind can also be an effective means by which to change our actual experience of reality let's get a bit more concrete as i mentioned before i often talk with folks who are afraid of being judged by others they generally don't have any concrete proof of these negative judgments however they believe that these judgments are a kind of social inevitability they believe that other people secretly think that they are annoying or stupid or unattractive etc then i talk to these people a bit more
and i generally come to learn that these very same people who believe that other people are judging them negatively are almost constantly in the process of judging other people negatively these folks are often very very judgmental of other people and by virtue of theory of mind they assume that other folks are behaving in the privacy of their own consciousness the way that they themselves are behaving in the privacy of their own consciousness and they are unconsciously projecting this tendency onto other people basically if i'm negatively judging other people on a consistent basis then i'm going
to assume that other people are doing the same thing as a matter of course so what does this have to do with changing our experience of reality well according to theory of mind we can change our experience of reality by altering the content of our own consciousness for instance i typically ask those with a fear of being judged to become increasingly mindful of their own negative judgments of others and to address these with the block and replace technique and when the frequency and intensity of their negative judgments of others begins to decline lo and behold
all of a sudden the world doesn't seem to be as judgmental as it used to be it's fascinating and this i think is how we can potentially understand the buddhist admonition to change the world by changing yourself it's through theory of mind if we change the content and structure of our own consciousness then by virtue of this unconscious projection we come to live in a world that's increasingly aligned with these changes inevitably and by default on some level it can't not occur so that's what i'd like you to consider to what extent can you intentionally
change your beliefs about reality to create an experience of reality that's more aligned with your own self-interests what do you think remember to like comment and subscribe for the algorithm and if you'd like to schedule a consultation you can reach me at psycaxpodcast gmail.com thanks for listening
