"There's a moment in your thirties-or maybe your forties-when you realize something has shifted inside you. The anxieties that once kept you awake at night no longer carry the same weight. You stopped caring, somewhere along the way, about whether people thought you were funny enough, smart enough, interesting enough at dinner parties. That constant internal monologue about how others were perceiving you just... quieted."
"When you're young, your primary terror is social. You fear judgment. You fear exclusion. You fear being exposed as a fraud while others watch. These fears make evolutionary sense: for most of human history, being cast out from the group meant death. Your nervous system is calibrated to care desperately about what others think of you, because it once literally meant survival."
"Social anxiety dominates your twenties and thirties for a reason. It's the anxiety of performance, of visibility in the immediate social sphere. Will this person like me? Will I get this job? Will I fit in at this party? These fears are exhausting, but they're also immediately actionable. You can do something about them. You can prepare, practice, perform better. There's a pathway, however elusive, to "winning.""
People commonly experience a shift in midlife from social anxiety to existential anxiety. Early adulthood centers on fearing judgment, exclusion, and exposure as a fraud, driven by evolutionary pressures linking group belonging to survival. Social anxiety motivates performance and is actionable through preparation and improvement. Overprioritizing social approval can prevent developing the ability to sit with oneself. Midlife brings a quieter social fear but a new dread about legacy—worrying whether anyone will remember one's existence. Psychologists interpret the transition from social to existential anxiety as a hallmark of psychological maturity rather than pathology.
Read at Silicon Canals
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