Overcome the Fear of Judgement (The Spotlight Effect)

It never ceases to amaze me, we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own ~ Marcus Aurelius

This is the analogy: We place a spotlight on ourselves and feel we are constantly looked at, thought about and judged. In reality, there is no spotlight, and no one actually cares that much or for that long. I quit my YouTube channel because I was bullied in school (and my GTA V videos needed some work). I get scared of public speaking in case I mess up my delivery. I rarely talk about body dysmorphia because people might say I’m asking for validation.

What is beautiful about the Spotlight Effect and Stoicism is that things only matter as much as we decide it matters. The reality is everyone is too absorbed in their own self-consciousness and judgement. They are not thinking about you as much as you think about yourself, because how much are you thinking about them? Stoicism nullifies the fear of judgement because it is external to us. It is entirely within our control to live regardless of it or live in accordance with it.

We are Biologically Wired to Avoid Judgement

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ~ Oscar Wilde

In my favourite Mark Manson video, he mentored one of his fans, Garrett, who particularly suffered from this phenomenon. He had a five-stage plan to stop giving a fuck about what people thought about him in a lighthearted and powerful way. How much do you care about a stranger sitting on the train, a street performer, or someone wearing a chicken suit giving out flat earth flyers? Not really, or not for long, and that’s natural. Interestingly, we intuitively know this, yet when inverted, we suffer nonetheless.

We are inherently social creatures as one of our most primal instincts. If we are not part of the tribe because of some isolated characteristic from the rest, we die. Nowadays, we don’t die, we get judged, and we mask ourselves to blend in with the tribe. However, when our reach goes from a hundred people across a few tribes to the entire world, we avoid our fear of rejection at all costs, only to our detriment.

The spotlight effect has its evolutionary routes, but like every behaviour, we always have the choice to accept or change this perception. If we do not deliberately live to our truest selves, someone or something else will decide our lives for us, usually to their benefit. When we are on our deathbed, would we say, “I am so glad I was too embarrassed to be myself”, or would we say, “I lived to who I was regardless of what anyone thought about me”? What truly matters is our own happiness, not fitting in.

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria & Self-Judgement

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more in imagination than in reality. ~ Seneca

I used to suffer from rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), which is an overwhelming feeling of pain when being rejected or criticised disproportionately to the actual rejection. This is one of the reasons I fell in love with philosophy: to challenge and overcome these traits. I interpreted a text as a fear of abandonment or refused to set boundaries and let myself get burnt out instead. I lived in a state of being overwhelmed and acting dissociated from reality and myself.

RSD is an extreme example of why we can’t give too much power to external opinions or events. Therefore, accepting the reality of possible judgement and living independently from it is the key to a fulfilled, authentic life. Amor Fati is loving everything that happens to you. Now, nothing will have power over you, only your power to turn it into something that builds you.

I overcame my RSD by finding my independence for the first time in my life. Security in myself was the main cause. I called it at the time ‘spending time with myself‘ more often. The practice is simply being and accepting whatever state you are in. I accepted my discipline alongside my emotional waves, my sensitivity alongside my empathy, and my awareness of myself with my overanalysing. We do not need external conditions to validate us when we are truly connected with ourselves. Our ‘negative’ traits are less frequent and honest, and our positive ones are strengthened. If we stop judging ourselves, there is no power of judgement from anyone else either.

How to Overcome the Spotlight Effect

The first stage of overcoming the spotlight effect is recognising there is one. My friends and I performed Lose Yourself outside of a hostel in Amsterdam in 2018 (shoutout to Ben and Matt), and the fact that no one gave a fuck was hilarious. I did a yoga session with my friend Max in the middle of an airport and never saw any of those people again. Mark Manson had a guy get rejected on dates with ten professional models and learned that it does not matter who you think you have to be, but who you are.

Live independently from external events. Relationships are not about performance but what naturally flows from ourselves (in a virtuous sense, of course). Stoicism argues that there is always something we can control. Even where we cannot control the outcome, we do control our emotions to be independent of the outcome. Someone’s judgement does not matter if you live to your authentic self. That is the distinction between internal and external fulfilment.

Chase your passions at 100mph, whether creating social media content, producing music, writing a blog, public speaking, or Warhammer models. Doubt and fear of failure have no positive purpose and only serve to distract and derail you. If you don’t know your purpose yet, my next article shows us how to find our purpose using Mastery by Robert Greene and The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida.