• When was the last time you had a social mishap in a conversation?
• Do you remember how it feels to say the wrong thing at the wrong time?

If you’re a shy person or are struggling with social anxiety or social perfectionism, you are holding onto the beliefs that you must sound smart, interesting, or funny; that there should never be awkward silences in conversations; that you shouldn’t stumble over words; that you should never mispronounce a word.

You may manage those thoughts and the anxiety that comes with them by avoiding social situations, rehearsing over and over what you are going to say and how you are saying it, only talking to people you feel comfortable with, or comparing your social performance with others’ social performance.

When you are unable to meet this perfectionistic social standard, you feel that you have failed.

But the truth is that none of us can live up to this perfectionistic social standard or have perfect social performances.

When we start to accept this and stop automatically playing-it-safe, we feel better about ourselves and have less anxiety in social situations.

In this conversation with Julian McNally, M. Psych., we discussed acceptance and commitment skills for anxiety related to social situations.

Key Takeaways

• How to live your values
• How to practice commitment
• Playing-it-safe 
• How to manage negativity biases
• How to deal with comparison thoughts
• Context sensitivity

About Julian McNally

Julian McNally has practiced counseling psychology since 1995. He trained in client-centered and solution-oriented approaches before discovering Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in 2003. The mindfulness components of ACT harmonized with his long standing interest in Zen Buddhism and Taoism (Julian was a Tai Chi instructor for six years).

Shortly after reading Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Hayes, Strosahl and Wilson, Julian started developing the world’s first online audio ACT training resource, 6 ACT Conversations through RMIT University. 

In addition to seeing individuals for counseling, Julian also supervises other ACT practitioners in Melbourne, and throughout Australia and internationally.

He is principal psychologist at Melbourne’s first ACT center, The ACT of Living.

• Have you ever struggle emotionally and a partner, colleague or caregiver overlooked you or made you feel worse?
• “I would have never let that happen,” is uttered or implied.
• Have you ever been in a situation in which an important other misses your emotional needs all together and just focuses on themselves?

When this invalidation or dismissal happens in a key relationship or two repeatedly over years, it can create a trauma of omission.

It’s about what you are not getting so you don’t know you are missing it.

One learns: “No one is going to help me when I feel like a failure, excluded or down. I have to turn my feelings off on my own.”

Abandoning your inner emotional life in service of what others are comfortable with or what your professional culture rewards.

In this episode, you will learn about chronic miss-attunement and how, instead of playing-it-safe by avoiding or placating, you can learn skills of self-care and how to ask for your needs to be met with the people that matter.

Attunement is to show interest in another’s world.

I interviewed Kelly Werner Ph.D., who kindly shares her understanding and approach to struggles driven by chronic miss-attunement.

Key Takeaways

• What is chronic miss-attunement?
• Playing-it-safe moves related to chronic miss-attunement
• How chronic miss-attunement shows up in relationships
• A.T.T.U.N.E (acronym) Process to heal from chronic miss-attunement

About Kelly Werner, Ph.D.

Kelly Werner, Ph.D. is deeply committed to helping people lead flourishing lives. Through therapy and executive coaching with individuals (www.sf-act.com), as well as leading global trainings with the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (born at Google) (www.siyli.org) and the United Nations, she gives people tools to connect with their deepest wisest self to heal their inner landscape and effectively take action in the outer world. “Tell Me…” (her authentic conversation game) facilitates self-discovery, connection and trust with family, friends and workplace teams (www.tellmethegame.com).