Cure your Emetophobia and Thrive – Chapter 6 preview..
Cure your Emetophobia and Thrive – Chapter 6 preview.. Chapter six – The Thrive Factor
The Locus of Control, Self-Esteem and Social Anxiety Triad
Your three primary limiting beliefs – (1) external locus of control, (2) low self-esteem, and (3) social anxiety are strongly inter-linked. They can be thought of as an interlocking triad, where a change in any one of the beliefs (in either a positive or negative direction) will have a knock-on affect on the other two.
Imagine this triad as three separate interacting pairs:
1. Locus of control and social anxiety
2. Social anxiety and self-esteem
3. Self-esteem and locus of control
Locus of control and social anxiety
Cloitre, Heimberg, Liebowitz and Gitow (1992) found that, compared to a control group, those with strong social phobia had a significantly greater belief in ‘powerful others’ controlling the events in their lives. Having an external locus of control intensifies your social anxiety, because if you have an external locus of control, you tend to look to other people for information and judgments. If your sense of self is entirely based on others’ opinions, it is understandable that you worry about being judged. People with an internal locus worry less what other people think, because their sense of self comes from internal sources (their own thoughts and experiences) rather than external sources (what others think of them). So, the more ‘internal’ you are, the less you will fear social situations and being judged generally.
- Develop a more internal locus, and you will become less socially anxious
- Develop a more external locus, and you will become more socially anxious
The relationship between locus of control and social anxiety is not just one way. Social anxiety affects your (external) locus in two ways. Firstly, having social anxiety is basically about feeling powerless (or less powerful) in social or ‘on the spot’ type situations. It’s about thinking ‘I can’t do this,’ ‘I’m not good enough,’ ‘I would make a fool of myself’ or similar. Every time you create social anxiety it will impact upon your locus of control in a negative manner, as you feel powerless, out of control and a victim to your fears. If, for example, you suffer a big embarrassment in public or at work, your sense of power (internal locus) will be likely to be reduced somewhat.
Secondly, slightly more surreptitiously, as someone who suffers from a little social anxiety, ask yourself why you might WANT to have an external locus of control? Social anxiety is, essentially, a fear of being judged, and this fear can sometimes mean that you WANT to attribute certain situations or symptoms to external causes, as a way of protecting yourself. That way the situations or symptoms are not your fault and you can’t be judged for them. People are less likely to judge you, and be far more sympathetic towards you if, for example, you are seen as being addicted to smoking, rather than just choosing to do it. Or, that your chronic fatigue is caused by a virus, rather than anxiety. Or, that your depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain, rather than the fact that you are brooding, worrying and generally feeling hopeless!
- Reduce your social anxiety and your locus of control will become more internal
- Allow your social anxiety to increase and your locus of control will become more external
You can get caught in a cycle: the more social anxiety you suffer, the more external you become. The more external you become, the more you are likely to fear social situations.
Social anxiety and self-esteem
If you have low self-esteem and believe that you are an unlikeable person you are far more likely to be worried about what other people think of you. If you don’t think a great deal of yourself then you are likely to be concerned that others might think the same. So the lower your self-esteem, the higher your social anxiety is likely to be. Conversely, if you feel good about yourself, you tend to worry less about what others think of you.
- Increase your self-esteem and your social anxiety will decrease
- Allow your self-esteem to decrease and you will become more socially anxious
Additionally, social anxiety can affect your self-esteem. Embarrassing ‘on the spot’ type situations can (if you take them to heart, and don’t maintain a healthy perspective) really drag you down. Perceived hurtful and judgmental comments can really affect how we see ourselves, and hence lower our self-esteem. Social anxiety also makes it hard to build self-esteem. If you are continually worrying about how others see you, you tend to only process your strengths and achievements in relation to your perception of what others may think of you, rather than looking at what these mean to you. Take, for example, a student who has just passed a difficult exam having worked really hard. Now this student has done well and achieved something significant but she has gained a much lower mark than her friends. If this student has little social anxiety she is likely to process the achievement and congratulate herself for her hard work – she has achieved what she wanted. If instead the student has high social anxiety she is likely to worry about whether her friends think that she is stupid because she has not done as well as they have and focus on how she ‘should’ have done better compared to others, rather than processing her achievement.
- Lower your social anxiety, and you will raise your self-esteem
- Allow your social anxiety to increase, and your self-esteem will decrease
So again you can get caught in a cycle: the more social anxiety you suffer, the lower your self-esteem becomes. The lower your self-esteem becomes, the more likely you are to feel socially anxious.
Note: It is possible to have scored as having little or no social anxiety on the social anxiety quiz, but to have still scored as external, on the locus of control quiz. People with a strong desire for control and good social skills often don’t appear to have much social anxiety because they have the skill to avoid showing it. If you have an external locus, but didn’t score as particularly socially anxious on the quiz, you probably fit into this category.
Self-esteem and locus of control
The effects of low self-esteem on locus of control are quite straightforward. Your self-esteem, as we have already discussed, is what you currently think, feel and believe about yourself, and your sense of worth. People with high self-esteem tend to be more internal and not judge themselves by external standards, such as what others think, because they feel good about themselves and believe that they are competent and able to make decisions. If you have low self-esteem you are less likely to believe that you have the personal power to affect your life – you are unlikely to think that you are capable of taking control or even that you deserve to, and thus tend to have an external locus of control!
- Increase your self-esteem and you will develop a more internal locus of control
- Allow your self-esteem to decrease and you will become more external
Again the relationship is not one way and locus of control significantly affects self-esteem. People with an external locus tend to always look outside of themselves for validation and to create their sense of self. This is why people with lower self-esteem also tend to have more fluctuating levels of self-esteem – it is because they are external. When they have had a good day at work, been out with friends, been chatted-up by a lovely person, or just been ‘made’ to feel good, they feel better about themselves and their self-esteem increases for a while. These self-esteem increases tend to be temporary though as these experiences are not processed internally. If every time you experience something positive, you attribute it to external forces (such as luck, other people, a higher power) rather than internal ones (such as your effort, abilities, personality) it is very hard to feel more than temporarily positive about yourself and truly build up your self-worth. For example, if you have an external locus and you successfully pass your driving test, you are quite likely to believe that you passed because of luck, because the examiner was nice, or because ‘they have recently lowered their standards.’ Either way, you are unlikely to process the experience ‘internally’ by thinking to yourself, ‘Well done, you can achieve anything that you put your mind to, you studied hard for that test and really deserve a full driving licence.’
- Create a more internal locus, and you will create a higher and more stable level of self-esteem
- Become more external, and your level of self-esteem becomes directly related to the sort of day you have had
The cycle you can become trapped in is: the more external you are, the lower your self-esteem becomes. The lower your self-esteem, the more external you become.
By creating a more internal locus, increasing your self-esteem or reducing your social anxiety, you will in turn, start to see positive changes in the other two. The exercises and techniques described in the preceding three chapters will enable you to make rapid changes in all three areas!
Your primary limiting beliefs are the most critical parts of your thinking to manage, in order for you to allow yourself to Thrive. They are everything. In later chapters of this book you will learn about personality types and unhelpful thinking styles, and understand concepts such as ‘normalisation’ and ‘significant others’. However, these later topics are significant mainly because they are either created by your primary limiting beliefs, or because they have a negative effect upon them. These three beliefs: your locus of control, your self-esteem, and your social anxiety are the three factors you need to understand, challenge, then change. How well you manage these, your potential if you like, is your ‘Thrive Factor’…
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