The other night, my child came home from a phone call looking deflated. He flopped down on the sofa, a little defeated.
“Are you okay?” I asked gently.
He sighed. “I was so quiet on the phone. She probably thinks I’m boring.”
I could see the familiar spiral—worry, self-judgment, the fear of not measuring up socially. It was a moment that reminded me of a lesson my own mom drilled into me and my siblings during our awkward preteen years, a piece of wisdom I’ve carried with me for decades, and one that now feels etched into my bones.
“Honey,” I said, brushing his hair back, “In moments like these, everyone is just worrying about themselves.”
It’s a simple but profound truth. Think about it: Have you ever come home from a party and lain awake wondering how you appeared to others? Or had an awkward encounter and thought, “Why was that person so embarrassing?” Or hung up the phone wondering if the other person thought you were too quiet, too loud, too awkward, or too boring? I bet your focus was on yourself, not them.
That’s because, almost always, we’re the center of our own mental universe. We’re hyperaware of how we’re coming across, endlessly rehearsing and revising our performance in our heads. The reality is that the people we worry about are doing exactly the same thing.
I cuddled up next to my son and explained, “If she even noticed that you were quiet—which, honestly, she probably didn’t—she wasn’t thinking, ‘Why is he so quiet?’ She was likely thinking, ‘Am I being boring? Should I say something else?’”
This mindset shift can feel like magic—once you really get it, social anxiety begins to loosen its grip. The spotlight isn’t on you the way you imagine it to be. Everyone’s too busy starring in their own drama.
Even now, at 46, I have to remind myself of this truth. Just recently, one of my closest friends went quiet over text, and after a while, I found myself wondering if she was upset with me or lost interest. Finally, I asked her what was up, and she replied that she’d just been distracted and caught up in her own worries—nothing to do with me at all.
It’s a shared human experience: we all worry, all the time, about how we appear, how we’re being judged, how we’re fitting in. And we’re invariably harder on ourselves than anyone else is or ever will be.
Recognizing that everyone is too busy managing their own insecurities to spend much time scrutinizing you can be freeing. It allows you to be kinder—to yourself and to others—and more openhearted. You can afford to be awkward, to be quiet, to be loud, to stumble, to be perfectly human.
This lesson—simple yet transformative—has been a quiet anchor in my life and now in my child’s. It’s a reminder that social anxiety doesn’t have to trap us in cycles of self-doubt. Once you realize that no one is really watching you as closely as you think, you can breathe a little easier, relax, and maybe even enjoy the messy, imperfect, beautiful dance of human connection.
So here’s to being kind to ourselves in those moments of silence and awkwardness, to embracing our humanity with all its glorious imperfections—and to remembering that sometimes, the #1 thing we need to hear is just this: everyone’s just worrying about themselves. And that’s okay.
