The Necessity of Exposure Therapy

Why we avoid it all and how to stop

Feeling socially anxious? I would go so far as to say that, divorced from its legitimacy as a very real mental health condition, social anxiety has been normalised as an inevitable aspect of Gen Z culture. By this, I am referring to the fact that we have gone down the road, as a generation, of living for others and their perceptions of us. I’m guilty, yes, I care what people think of me. That is part of the human condition, and the point of my article isn’t to deny this. But I have a contention with the reasons for our behaviour. The countenance of social nonchalance that clouds our generation is a form of escapism wrapped in this all-important conformity and a limited idea of the aspirational ‘way to be.’ And it’s a lot more damaging than we think. 

The most visible aspect of this is the centrality of social media in our day-to-day lives. Online, glued to our phones, we maintain a constant stream of close comparison with everything we see online. The algorithm fosters echo chambers, which show us things over and over again, to the point where, regardless of their value or validity, we start to believe them. Recent trends have decided that maintaining a certain level of ‘coolness’ requires suppressing every emotion a healthy human might exhibit. “Crash-outs,” as we call them (Gen Z for temporary loss of nonchalance), are judged by their validity, lest we express unnecessary or embarrassing signs of emotion. Even as someone who could never achieve any semblance of being unbothered, I find myself aspiring to that level of cool and, let’s face it, completely performative indifference. But who are we performing for? The cult of ‘nonchalance.’ 

I have never, and will never, be nonchalant, and I spent a long time letting this make me insecure. That self-consciousness showed me the true extent to which we embody these values, manifested so strongly here in the bubble. A sense of undying frustration with this nonchalance led me to challenge it, and I can confidently say we all need to. 

Now I reap the rewards of a form of exposure therapy I forced myself to undergo; now it no longer bothers me that people in my seminars look as shocked as if I’d slapped them across their face if I greet them outside of class. I drew a goatee on my face and went out dressed like a dad, and focused far more on the fact that strangers got a chuckle out of how I looked than the fact that a friend visibly pretended not to know me. I’ve stopped hating my entire existence for being a bit of a flirt after a few drinks, because I no longer consider it a crime that we take an interest in people and actually express it. These were hard conclusions to reach, and the last thing I want to come off as is someone looking for the same kind of clout we seek in our social framework. I think we all hide the best parts of us, those which emote, feel, express, and love, behind our ridiculous quest for nonchalance. So please, for the love of God, shoot your shot, send that DM and get ghosted, smile at that person, go outside, not looking your best. It just takes one scary, self-imposed experience to realise that where we should really be directing our nonchalance is at the fact that the world doesn’t stop spinning during a fleeting moment of embarrassment. 

We need to start allowing ourselves and those around us to live, to be human, to have a sense of humour, and to stop living for an image in other people’s minds that we can’t control.

Illustration from Wikimedia Commons