Being judged doesn’t feel good. Whether it’s a family member or close friends, a person’s judgement is usually always hurtful. But it doesn’t have to be. As it turns out, there’s an effective way to deal with the fear of being judged. All it takes is a simple shift in your mindset, and how you see and understand the judgement of others.
Key Takeaways
- Judgement takes root in human evolution; the ability to evaluate someone was an essential survival tool. Danger lurked everywhere and our survival depended on how quickly we could categorize a threat.
- People judge in social situations because it makes them feel safe and secure. This instinct is often subconscious and hard to detect.
- When you get judged, remember that those people don’t have any control over their behavior.
How I Developed a Fear of Being Judged
When I was 15, I wanted to fit in with the other kids. I had just moved to Canada and didn’t know anyone in my school, let alone my classes. There I was, sitting in classrooms that smelled like a mixture of sweat and deodorant, and with chattering teens who spoke a language I barely understood. Whenever I looked around, I felt like an outsider. My classmates wore different clothes, cared about ice hockey, and ate food I had never seen before. They had an air of confidence that made believe that their way of living was right.
One day, I said to myself, “Mike, if you want to fit in, you have to make some changes to your life.” And changes I made: I refreshed my wardrobe with new clothes, started watching hockey on television, and tried some typical Canadian dishes at the school cafeteria, like poutines and smoked meat sandwiches. All the while, my English became much better, and after a few months, I started to sound just like everybody else.
With the camouflage of a normal person, I had put myself in the perfect position to gain acceptance. But, as it turned out, I still had a hard time fitting in. People caught on that I wasn’t being my true self and began to comment on it, both in person and on social media. What I wore that day, what I ate for lunch, how I pronounced certain words—There was no shortage of opinions, and their judgement, I must admit, made me feel insecure.
What was I doing wrong? I had changed certain things about myself, so how come they were rejecting me? What else did I have to do in order to fit in? Or maybe, just maybe, the solution was not to change who I was, but to be true myself and deal with my fear of judgment?
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Why Do Humans Judge in the First Place?
My experiences propelled me to study human behavior. As I began to understand why people behave the way they do, I realized that judgement takes root in human evolution. Read anything on human history and you see that the ability to evaluate a situation or person immediately was an essential survival tool. Danger lurked everywhere and our survival depended on how quickly we could evaluate someone.
Let’s say we meet the leader of another tribe for the first time, and the year is 10,000 B.C. That person could be dangerous, because for all we know, he might want to kill us. What do we do? We assess the situation by looking for visual cues. We read facial expressions, check out body posture, assess clothing, and watch for gestures. We paint a picture based on first impressions and decide how to engage.
This mechanism is still working today. It often surfaces in social situations when we meet new people. We naturally and automatically judge others because it makes us feel safe and secure. If we believe someone else poses a threat, we form judgmental thoughts or ignore them altogether. My classmates formed opinions about me not because they wanted to, but because they were instinctually compelled to do so. It’s not that they were bad people; their brains were wired to protect them.
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Do We Have to Live With the Fear of Being Judged Forever?
We may have been taught not to judge a book by its cover, but when we see a new face, the brain automatically decides how to react. Research by Alex Todorov, former professor of psychology at Princeton University, found that people make judgements of someone else within just one second of seeing their face. As Todorov put it, “We decide very quickly whether a person possesses many of the traits we feel are important, such as likeability and competence, even though we haven’t exchanged a single word with them.”1
We respond intuitively to faces so rapidly that our reasoning mind does not have time to influence the reaction. This is because the prefrontal cortex, our brain’s rational part, has had much less time to develop than the emotional parts of the brain—the areas that help us survive. Judgement happens automatically and naturally because it’s what the brain demands. The human brain has learned to survive in dangerous situations, but doesn’t know how to navigate the modern world we live in today.
If people don’t have control over the things they say, what can you do if you are on the receiving end of judgement? Are you doomed? Do you have to live with the fear of being judged for the rest of your life?
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How to Deal With the Fear of Being Judged
One of my favorite quotes reads, “Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing, and you’ll never be criticized.” It’s a quote by Elbert Hubbard and it reminds me of the fact that judgement is inevitable—It’s human nature to observe our peers and form opinions about them. Someone will always have a problem with the way you do things. There’s no hiding from critics.
The next time you get judged, remember that those people don’t have any control over their behavior. They fall victim to their instincts. Something about you is posing a threat to them, and their brain is sending messages of fear so convincing that they believe them. A simple way to deal with the fear of being judged is to realize that judgmental people are a puppet to their emotions and don’t see the strings that control them.