Quotes about what it’s like to have social anxiety
Articulating what social anxiety really feels like is difficult. Here are some social anxiety quotes to help.
Psst. Some of these quotes refer to shyness, which people understand more than social anxiety – and often use as a replacement word for social anxiety.
- “Social anxiety is seeing our true self in a distorted way and believing the distortion to be the truth.”
2. “The idea that you are somehow insufficient, not enough, broken or damaged is the major source of social anxiety.” -Aziz Gazipura
3. “Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” – Albert Carnus
4. “It’s tricky being shy. You blame yourself for it, and other people blame you too.” ― Jaclyn Moriarty
5. “Ultimately, social anxiety is the fear that whatever we’re trying to hide will be revealed to everyone like a gust of wind sweeps away a bad toupee. We think there is something wrong with us and therefore try to conceal it.”
6. “I have reason to be shy. I’ve been hurt plenty.” ― Ethel Waters
7. “Social anxiety isn’t just fear of judgment; it’s fear the judgers are right. We think there is something wrong with us, and we avoid in order to conceal it. In our minds, if The Reveal comes to pass we’ll be rejected, humiliated, or exposed.” – Ellen Hendrikson
8. “Listen to me. I’m shy. I’m not stupid.” – Jonathon Lethem
9. “Shyness can be interpreted as a kind of aggression” – Richard Ayoada
10. “For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people’s faces.” – Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human
11. “That nervousness that makes your palms sweat and your heart race before you get up and make a speech in front of an audience? That’s what I feel in a normal conversation at the dinner table. Or just thinking about having a conversation at the dinner table.” – Jen Wilde
12. “My shyness probably defined the first 30 years of my life really. It’s a crippling thing, it can be very lonely, knowing that you’ve got things to say but can’t say them.” – Bob Mortimer
13. “My face is like some sort of bashful chameleon, flashing red at any sign of social interaction. Stupid face.” – Allyson Kennedy
14. “There was a combination of shyness and just fear of looking stupid that kept me out of a lot of interesting creative conversations that I could have had at an early age..” – Ron Howard
15. “Nothing so much prevents our being natural as the desire to seem so.” – Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld
16. “First, we hold ourselves to strict, near-impossible standards but are understanding and compassionate to everyone else. As if that double standard weren’t bad enough, we also try to see the best in others, but assume others will see the worst in us. When you think about it, our assumption that others will be judgmental and rejecting is actually quite ungenerous of us.” – Ellen Hendrikson
17. “The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”
18. “Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns…We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.” – Tara Brach
19. “At times, they really did look to me like insects, and at those times, I felt even more at ease. Because the most dreadful thing in the world for me was human beings.” – Osamu Dazai
20. “We are often deterred, not by what others think or would think, but by what we think they think or would think.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana
21. “When you’ve had a life of overthinking, you have the same reaction time and time again. Shyness becomes habitual. When you’re put in an unfamiliar situation, all you want to do is retreat and hide by default. You watch but don’t participate. You listen but don’t respond. You read, but rarely comment. You take a photo, but you rarely post. You write, but you rarely publish. All of this is because your overthinking mind cannot stop thinking about how you will be perceived by the outside world.” – Joel Annesley
22. “I think way too much and speak way too little.” – Lidia Longorio
23. “Clearly she was expected to say something, but panic at having to speak stole the thoughts from her head.” – Shannon Hale
24. “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.” – Brad Meltzer
25. “Shyness is inherently uncomfortable; Introversion is not. The traits do overlap, though psychologists debate to what degree.” – Susan Cain
26. “They say shyness is a form of egotism, and you are only shy because you care too much about what people think of you. And maybe its true, maybe I am just an egotist.” – Mika
27. “I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve.” – Daphne du Maurier
28. “So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them.” – Sylvia Plath
Helpful Social Anxiety Quotes
For when you need reassurance or motivation to keep on facing your fears.
29. “Soon, all will be forgotten, and all will have forgotten you.” – Marcus Aurelius
30. “You are not weak. People like us, we’re brave. We’re the ones who get up and face our worst fears every day. We keep fighting.” – Jen Wilde
31. “What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.” – Martha Graham
32. “Just be your own favorite person and then no one else’s opinion really matters.” – Roshani Chokshi
33. “That peace that we’re after lies somewhere beyond personality, beyond the perception of others, beyond invention and disguise. Even beyond effort itself. You can join the game, fight the wars, play with form all you want, but to find real peace you have to let the armor go. Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don’t let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory.” – Jim Carrey
34. “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” – John A. Shedd
35. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Nin
36. “We suffer more in imagination than in reality” – Seneca
Quotes for Managing Social Anxiety Thoughts
Go back to these quotes when you’re struggling with your socially anxious thoughts.
If you want to work on thought management for social anxiety, we’ve created a list of the best meditations to retrain your social anxiety.
If you do these daily, your social anxiety will be MUCH easier to manage.
37. “How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.” – Thomas Jefferson
38. “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius
39. “Do not classify any thought as negative, because it is just a thought.” – Hospin
40. “Don’t worry about what others think; care about what you think of yourself.” – Debasish Mridha
41. “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become” – Buddha
42. “Courage is not the absence of fear, courage is fear walking.” – Aziz Gazipura
Gentle (and not so gentle) reminders for social anxiety
43. “And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice.”
44. “If you’re not willing to look stupid, nothing great is ever going to happen for you.”
45. “You’re always saying people don’t like you but people can’t like something that’s not there.” – Cath Crowley
46. “If you expect to see warmth in the world, then you will.”
47. “A way of living in which one is constantly troubled by how one is seen by others is a self-centred lifestyle in which one’s sole concern is with “I”.”
48. “When you get shy, you’re simply thinking of yourself. Stop it. Step out of yourself.” – Kamand Kojouri
49. “Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.”
50. “Seldom does anyone actually say, “Wow, you sure seem uncomfortable. You’re weird and don’t deserve to be here.”
51. “At times the world may seem an unfriendy and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. And what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.”
52. “You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.”
53. “But as long as one continues to use one’s misfortune to one’s advantage in order to be “special”, one will always need that misfortune.” – Ichiri Kishimi
54. “Whatever we think the world is withholding from us, we are withholding from the world.” – Eckhart Tolle
55. “You are the only one who can change yourself.” – Ichiro Kishimi
56. “Unless one is unconcerned by other people’s judgments, has no fear of being disliked by other people, and pays the cost that one might never be recognized, one will never be able to follow through in one’s own way of living. That is to say, one will not be able to be free.” – Ichiro Kishimi
Quotes about Overcoming Social Anxiety
57. “We cannot alter objective facts. But subjective interpretations can be altered as much as one likes. And we are inhabitants of a subjective world.”
58. “If you never show people your true self, you’ll never learn that your true self is acceptable.”
59. “Believe in yourself and there will come a day when others will have no choice but to believe with you.” – Cynthia Kersey
60. “The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he’s dead.” – Bette Davis
61. “The actions of confidence come first; the feelings of confidence come later.” – Russ Harris
62. “In truth, you gain confidence by doing things before you’re ready, while you’re still scared. Go through the motions and your confidence will catch up.’ If you wait until you are ready to do the things that scare you because you feel like you aren’t ready, you will never get around to doing them. We gain comfort and confidence through being uncomfortable.” – Ellen Hendrikson
63. “Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through it. Face it!” – Joseph Conrad
64. “Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action.” – Walter Anderson
65. “The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.” – Lady Bird Johnson
66. “We will never overcome our social anxiety by pretending to be someone else.” – Matt Lewis
67. “The key to breaking free from social anxiety is to start becoming clearer about who you are, not who you think someone else wants you to be in order to accept you.” – Aziz Gazipura
68. “The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked. When you have gained that courage, your interpersonal relationships will all at once change into things of lightness.” ― Ichiro Kishimi
Loneliness and social anxiety quotes
69. “Lonely individuals think about and behave towards others in a way that tends to reinforce an isolated existence, socially connected individuals hold a more favorable view of others that in turn tends to reinforce their being perceived and treated positively.” – Thomas Smithyman
70. “Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear is as much as the majority of people fear loneliness.” – Criss Jamie
71. “Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them.” – Ichiro Kishimi
If you’re looking for help beyond quotes:
There are many ways to improve your social anxiety, even if you don’t want to see a therapist.
Seeing a therapist when you have social anxiety is rough.
Here are a few places to start:
- Kick off with the best supplements for social anxiety.
- Then, try out these meditation styles for social anxiety. Some styles of meditation are more impactful for social anxiety than others.
- Next, get out some of these books to help overcome social anxiety.