Exploration of Social Anxiety

The Anxiety and Depression Association of America define social anxiety as an “intense
anxiety or fear of being judged, negatively evaluated, or rejected in a social or performance
situation”.1 The Anxiety Canada Association states that individuals suffering from this disorder
“tend to have negative thoughts about themselves as well as how others will react to them [and]
will often try to avoid or escape social situations”.2 Social anxiety is, therefore, fundamentally a
relational pathology. In analyzing experiences of social anxiety, Binyamin Kagedan produces a
phenomenological account of social anxiety. Kagedan uses the term ‘relational vulnerability’ to
describe the socially anxious consciousness’ experience of profound vulnerability to the
judgements of others (43). He explains that this state of relational vulnerability is endemic to the
socially anxious consciousness’ general state of being-for-others (Ibid. 43). In the experience of
relational vulnerability, the socially anxious consciousness feels itself to be defenseless against
the judgements of Others due to these judgements coming from beyond the ontological borders
of self’s subjectivity. Rather than viewing an evaluation of one’s being-for-others as a mere
external judgement of oneself, the socially anxious consciousness experiences these
judgements as disclosing essential characteristics of the self (Ibid. 48). The experience of
feeling the character of one’s own selfhood as externally determined constitutes an ‘alienation
from self’ (Ibid. 44). This ‘alienation from self’ affects how one understands oneself and one’s
own possibilities. Kagedan explains that:

The sense of powerlessness over the way others perceive the self that is a central
feature of social anxiety pathology can be understood as an expression of the
phenomenon of alienation. The overwhelming sensation of being-for-others that
dominates the socially anxious consciousness entails a felt loss of freedom to (a)
appraise the character of one’s self and own actions, and (b) choose and actualize one’s
possibilities for future action. The diminishing of the feeling of basic subjective agency in
this way leaves the self in a state of vulnerability to the judgments and choices of others;
in being seen, one is forced to be what one is for the Other. (Disorders of the Other 55)

In this passage, Kagedan provides important insights into the experiences of social anxiety.
While I am in agreement with Kagedan’s descriptions, in what follows, I would like to attempt to

1 See https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/social-anxiety-disorder.
2 See https://www.anxietycanada.com/disorders/social-anxiety-disorder/.
establish my own phenomenological account of social anxiety and attempt to incorporate
Kagedan’s insights into my own work.

The possibility of social anxiety is grounded in both consciousness’s desire for

recognition and consciousness dependency on the other to achieve certainty of itself. Therefore,
the structure of consciousness makes consciousness vulnerable to misrecognition.
Consequently, consciousness’s vulnerability to misrecognition exposes it to experiences of
suffering in the domain of interpersonal relations. Misrecognition frequently has a damaging
effect on consciousness because it produces the belief that the self either lacks positive traits or
currently possesses undesirable attributes. This is because consciousness often ascribes the
other’s misrecognition of the self as being grounded in the undesirableness of the self. In short,
it undermines consciousness’s certainty of itself through soliciting consciousness to focus on its
own self-lack and nonvalue. Consciousness’s focus on its own self-lack and nonvalue can lead
consciousness to adopt a self-understanding of ‘relative unessentiality’. A self-understanding of
relative unessentiality is grounded in consciousness perceived self-lack relative to others and
occurs through consciousness’s compulsive tendency to perceive the ways in which others to
possess valuable attributes that the self does not. Therefore, a self-understanding of
unessentiality is characterized by focus on difference and lack between itself and others, and
the self’s recognition of self-absence in relation to others causes consciousness to believe that it
is negatively deviated from others. This feeling and fear of being negatively differentiated from
the other diminishes identity between the self and other, and this diminishment of identity makes
consciousness feel out-of-place in its being with the others.

The self’s perceived self-absence of valuable attributes and the self’s repeated
experiences of being misrecognized can induce interpersonal mistrust and the anticipation of
rejection within consciousness. Ratcliffe explains that the socially anxious consciousness “may
dread, fear, or be suspicious of other people in general” (“Interpersonal” 133). Anticipated
rejection is the belief that the other will establish interpersonal relations with the self which are
characterized by misrecognition and grounded in nonidentity. The socially anxious
consciousness’ anticipation of rejection constitutes a diminishment of possibility because the
self is alienated from their own projection of fulfilling interpersonal relations. Instead,
consciousness’s overwhelming sense of vulnerability and projected disappointment alienate the
self from the future. The socially anxious conscousness’s anticipation of rejection is grounded in
the belief that other will establish relations of nonidentity because the other negatively evaluates
the self due to the self’s possession of undesirable attributes. Ratcliffe describes the experience
of the socially anxious consciousness and states that “there is often an emphasis on one’s own
inadequacy, worthlessness, or failed moral character, coupled with either the threat of other
people discovering it or its being on display for all to see” (“Interpersonal” 133). These real or
imagined negative evaluations of the self profoundly affect the socially anxious consciousness
because their consciousness perceives these negative evaluations to possess and reinforce the
truth of their own self, and this is a truth which the social-insecure consciousness already
perceives in the recognition of its own relative-unessentiality. In other words, the negative
evaluations are understood by the socially anxious consciousness to reinforce the painful truth
of its relative-unessentiality. Or, as Kadegan explains, the socially anxious consciousness
experiences these judgements as disclosing essential characteristics of the self (48). Moreover,
it is this condition of the socially anxious consciousness that constitutes the ‘relational
vulnerability’ described by Kagedan. The socially anxious consciousness’s belief in its own
unessentiality undermines self the ability to negate or resist the negative evaluations from
others. The pain of these real or imagined negative evaluations can cause interpersonal
mistrust within the socially anxious consciousness to the point of propelling it into the tendency
of fleeing interpersonal relations. The socially anxious consciousness’s tendency to mistrust,
anticipation rejection, and flee interpersonal relations constitutes social anxiety.

The tendency to flee from interpersonal relations is connected to shame and the fear of
negative evaluations. Sartre explains that shame “is a shameful apprehension of something and
this something is me. I am ashamed of what I am” (301). Shame and anxiousness about
rejection always occurs before the other, yet the other does not have to be factically present but
merely present in thought. Sartre states that “if I am to be able to conceive of even one of my
properties in the objective mode, then the Other is already given” (361). This means that when
we objectify ourselves or contemplate about how the other will evaluate us, we are operating in
in a second person perspective and reflecting on how we believe the other will recognize our
being-for-others. Consequently, shame is the feeling that one experiences when one self-
disidentifies with oneself due to reflecting on how the other could or actually did non-identify with
the self. In other words, reflection on the other’s [imagined or actual] rejection of the self
produces self-disidentification which causes self-shame. However, shame, at its most
fundamental level, occurs through mere negative self-evaluation, because self-evaluation is
always interconnected with other-evaluation. Similarly, while there can be no self-consciousness
without the other, there can be no self-evaluation without the existence of other-evaluation. Yet,
self and other evaluations are distinct and possess a tension between them.
 Kagedan explains that the socially anxious consciousness allows the other’s evaluations
about their own being-for-other to define the possibilities of their being-for-self, and this entails a
delimiting of possibility which constitutes an ‘alienation from self’. In my phenomenological
account, this ‘alienation from self’ occurs because the socially anxious consciousness identifies
itself with the thoughts of others more than with its own thoughts and, therefore, fails to
actualize its self-agency and self-determination of influencing its own self-understanding. Yet,
the consciousness’s acknowledgement of the thoughts of the other are actually consciousness’s
contemplation of itself. Therefore, consciousness fails to ascribe its contemplation of the others’
thoughts as its own, because the force ascribed to the thoughts of the other are understood to
overwhelm the power of self-consciousness. Yet, the force ascribed to the thoughts of the other
is the force that consciousness itself ascribes to these thoughts. Once consciousness
recognizes that its contemplation of the thoughts of the other are really a contemplation of itself
and that the force ascribed to these thoughts is constituted by the force it itself ascribes to them,
consciousness can begin to rework its own self-understanding through re-evaluating its own self
standard and the force it ascribes to various thoughts. However, the socially anxious
consciousness is in a state of self-alienation due identifying with the thoughts-ascribed-to-others
more than it identifies with the thoughts-ascribed-to-self. Consciousness engages in this
pathological structure of identification due to self-understanding itself as relatively-unessential.
When consciousness associates itself with unvaluableness, undesirableness and lack,
consciousness begins to hate the identification with its own self. As Kierkegaard says in his
Sickness unto Death, the self has become a self that wants to rid itself of itself. Consequently,
consciousness self-understanding of relative-unessentiality undermines its ability to invest in its
own self-identifications. The socially-insecure consciousness’ belief in its relative-unessentiality
regarding its own attributes and traits comes to characterize its relation to thought and ideality.
In other words, the self believes that not only the attributes and traits of the other are dominant
relative to the self, but the thoughts of the other are also dominant relative to the self. In this
way, the socially-insecure self has become resigned with regard to its self-assertion within
interpersonal relations and has allowed the other to dominant the self. Consequently, as
Kagedan describes, “the socially anxious consciousness feels itself to be defenseless against
the judgements of Others due to these judgements coming from beyond the ontological borders
of self’s subjectivity” (44).