Podcast 65: Overcoming Social Anxiety & Building Confidence

Have you ever left a party feeling invisible… or stayed home because your nerves got the best of you?

In this episode, Michelle gets real about what social anxiety actually is — and how to overcome it with practical confidence-building tools that actually work. You’ll learn why your opinion of yourself matters more than anyone else’s, how to stop spiraling over other people’s reactions, and why emotional resilience is the true secret weapon to boldness.

Here’s what you’ll walk away with:

• The #1 myth about confidence that’s keeping you stuck
• A powerful mindset shift to stop caring what people think
• Why keeping your word to yourself is a game-changer
• How to feel social anxiety — and still show up with boldness
• Simple strategies to stop self-sabotaging and start showing up

If you’ve been playing small, second-guessing yourself, or canceling plans because you’re too anxious… this episode is the pep talk you didn’t know you needed. 💛

🎧 Listen now and share it with a friend who needs to hear: You’re not broken. You’re just one habit of self-belief away from your breakthrough.

To discuss coaching with Michelle, book a call at the link below.

www.thechristiandatingcoach.com

Transcript

Michelle Joiner (00:00)
Hey, hey sis, if you have ever left a party feeling invisible or stay home because your nerves got the best of you, this one's for you. Today we're breaking down the real roots of social anxiety and how to build confidence that doesn't shake when someone looks at you in a funny look that you're like, did they just look at me?

and then your brain goes on a tailspin? No, we're gonna shake all of that and like build confidence no matter what. Sound good? All right, let's go. So I want to kind of like tell you some of my biggest tips for building confidence no matter what, even if you have social anxiety. And the first tip is gonna start with a myth. And that myth is probably what you secretly may believe.

Confidence comes from other people liking you. Meaning wrong. The truth is that confidence comes from your opinion of yourself, right? So I want you to think about it like it and like I'll prove it to you. I want you to imagine that everyone's telling you that you're gorgeous and that you're beautiful and that you can do anything. Do you believe them? No, you don't.

Because it is your opinion of yourself that builds, increases, and strengthens your self-confidence or depletes and decreases your self-confidence. It is your opinion of yourself. And here's a quote from me. You can quote me on this. It's not what they think of you. It's what you think of what they think. What you think of what they

think, right? We often tell ourselves that someone thinking a certain thing about us and like thinking highly of us is what we need, but it's simply not. We need to think highly of ourselves. And if someone thinks badly of us or talks badly of us, it doesn't automatically hit our confidence.

What hits our confidence is when we believe what they're saying, when we believe the negative opinion that they have of us. I am just going to offer you this though. Most people don't really walk around spending their life thinking about other people. I just kind of want to offer you that fact. Most people are thinking about themselves. So,

I would like to encourage you to lower the temperature, stop trying to read people's minds, and really go into your mind. What do you think about yourself? It is okay if not everyone likes you. And if you're really honest with yourself, you're okay with that. You don't like everyone. It's okay if not everyone likes you. You need to like yourself. You need to ask yourself, how am I made? Who am I?

What makes me a value? And it is so true that you are fearfully and wonderfully made, that you are so valuable that the creator of this world sent his son to die for you, to redeem you and to restore you as his child and bring you to heaven, that you were chosen before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

that you are an amazing, beautiful, kind, loving person. So valuable and so worthy. That's what you need to believe about yourself. Doesn't matter what other people say. What do you say?

One of the things I encourage people to do is to really protect their opinion of themselves, to protect their self opinion. And one of the biggest ways that you can protect that by deciding who you allow to influence your opinion of yourself. Because a lot of times, you know, like they said, people are not going to be thinking of us, but then there are people

That are takers. They're takers. They're herders. They're destructors. And they tear you down in all kinds of different ways, right? They reject you. They dismiss you. They ignore you. They don't show up for you. They take from you. Those aren't the kind of people that get to decide who you are. Those aren't the kind of people that get to influence your opinion of yourself. You need to recognize that and be like, no.

I'm not letting you decide who I am. You have been disqualified from that position. You've been disqualified from speaking into my life about myself. Who's earned the right to shape yourself? You ask yourself that whose voice do you trust? Only people that deserve it. Only people who are worthy and all the other people, their opinion is

totally neutral until you assign them a meeting and some people you're gonna say you know what this meeting is no thank you it's not their judgment that hurts it's your agreement with it so we're let it go all right so those are your thoughts for other people's opinion of you let's talk a little bit more inward let's just focus on on you how you

can create confidence in yourself. Again, like apart from other people, you've got to learn to keep your word to yourself.

you will have so much more confidence when you trust yourself to follow through. So for instance, I want you to imagine

telling someone I'm going to go to a certain event. I'm going to go to this or that event.

and getting there and looking out at the people and thinking, oh, I'm not going and going home. Do you know what that does to your self confidence that breaks your word to yourself? It really does decrease your confidence. If you always flake on yourself, how can you ever try your own strength? So

This is what I encourage you to do. Like go for micro wins. Build, build yourself up slowly. Make a small promise and keep it a small promise and keep it another small promise and keep it until you can trust yourself to do small promises. Then make the promises a little bit bigger because if you cannot keep your word to yourself, then you will not have confidence. You will not believe yourself. You will not trust yourself.

you will know that your word doesn't mean anything.

And that's hard. So build your confidence by keeping your word to yourself. All right, I'm gonna give you a final superpower.

confidence builder and it's simply recognizing that When you are resilient emotionally you can handle anything and let me show you what I mean by this Emotional resilience is the acknowledgement that the worst that can happen is a feeling and knowing

that you can handle any feeling. When you do that, my goodness, I cannot tell you, I cannot tell you the superpower of not caring if you're embarrassed. I'm not saying that embarrassment doesn't come, although it will lessen when you're like this. If you get to the point where you don't care if you're embarrassed, that you can handle embarrassment,

If you get to the point that you can handle rejection, if you get to the point where you can handle

disappointment, sadness, worry, like you can handle frustration. I can handle, bring on the emotions. I am okay with emotion.

When you can handle any emotion, you can do any.

you can still feel nervous and show up. I'm not telling you, you know, we're talking about social anxiety and what I want to like encourage you is that anxiety is not the problem. We can feel anxiety. We can feel awkward. We can feel nervous. And what I want you to do is just see that that feeling

not going to kill you. That feeling is the worst that can happen. Now, what we want to do what will help with your social anxiety is to have your own back. Right? Because sometimes in our social anxiety, we say, Okay, the world the worst that can happen is I go to a party and no one talks to me. So what? Let tell you what. So what if you go to a party?

and no one talks to you, you're going to yourself up. That's what you're really afraid of. Why did I go? No one likes me. I'm not attractive. I'm stupid. I shouldn't have come. They talk to other people. They didn't want to talk to me. I'm undesirable. And we pile on this garbage of self-talk and we beat ourselves up. That's not loving to yourself.

And if you want to beat social anxiety, the goal isn't to get rid of it. The goal is to allow it and not make it worse.

So I mean, listen, rejection is not deadly. It really isn't. Rejection's not deadly. What's deadly is the self-beating that afterwards, that's what hurts. Social anxiety is not horrible. It's a little bit of discomfort. It's discomfort, yes, but we can act in spite of discomfort and not make it worse by having our own back.

by being compassionate to ourselves. So for instance, like, what do I need? What do I need right now? We say that we want to go to an event. What do I need? Do I need a friend to text me beforehand saying, you've got this? I can't wait to hear about it afterwards. Do we need...

like a buddy at the event that we can go talk to so that we know we're not alone. What do we need? Let's be kind to ourselves in this moment and not be afraid of the emotion. Not be afraid of the emotion. We can handle this feeling of anxiety. It's not a problem. Honestly, the resistance of this anxiety is what really feels bad. Like telling yourself, I shouldn't feel this way. Why?

God made you a social anxiety. What do you mean you shouldn't feel this way? This is the way God made you. Be okay with it.

Go to the event knowing that you may feel awkward, that you may feel anxiety, and knowing that you'll survive it. It's okay. It's okay.

Just allow yourself to be you. Allow yourself to feel those feelings. Like when you really stop and think about, want you to think about what a feeling is. It is a vibration. It's a vibration in your body. It's a, it's a flutter in your chest. It's a little bit of pressure in your forehead. Ask yourself, where is it? Have I felt worse? Yes, you felt worse when you broke your leg last month. That felt worse. This is okay.

You can handle this. You're not broken. You're not awkward beyond repair.

You just need new habits of self-belief. So start small, build trust with yourself, say, I've got you, and then go prove it.

If this resonated with you, if this was like, oh my gosh, what is she saying? I've never heard this before. I am so glad to share this with you sis. What I want you to do is share this with a friend who's been playing small. I want you to tell them like you've got to hear this. I've never heard anyone put it this way before. This is going to be so helpful to you. this with a friend. And if you can, I would love it for you to rate this.

podcast. Give it a five star rating. It helps other people see it. And it helps me it helps me know that this was me with you. And next episode, I am going to dive into something super, super practical. Now that you are feeling a little bit less socially anxious, a little bit less awkward, you might be ready to go meet the men. So I want you to tune in next week to hear

where I think you could go to meet some amazing high value men. Let's get you married, sis.