This wonderful addition to the Engagement series is by Suzanne Vara. Suzanne, in addition to being a dear friend of mine, is queen of community and founder of Kherize5 Marketing and Advertising. Suzanne blogs and tweets (@suzannevara), and I recommend you find her in both places!
Fear: a vexing emotion actuated by a perceived threat in response to some sort of stimulus. The stimulus, while generally thought of as external as in being afraid of the dark, bugs, a noise late at night, is also found in some deep seeded emotions. We are reactive to the stimuli that are happening now and proactive in a way by predict what will happen in the future, thus creating many different scenarios that are the building blocks for the fear to emerge. Fear holds us back as the perceive risk increases and it starts to overtake us, making us pause and the fear is so intense, we fail to act all together. Breaking away and rationalizing the fear is where we need to focus our efforts to avoid continuing the cycle of fear.
Interaction and Fear
Innately we are social people. We are taught at a very young age to play with other children, to share and respect elders. We are also taught values and, as we grow and mature, we socialize with people who share those values and develop long lasting friendships. When we are met with some adversity and are not accepted into a group or by an individual, we become angry. Our need to be accepted causes us some anguish and we immediately question ourselves and what we did wrong as opposed to looking at the group and individual and seeing why they are not right for us. We become fearful of any interaction with them and avoid them at all costs. We were rejected and that rejection shines through in anger, hostility thus leading to us refusing to have any interaction with them. The anger and hostility is the wall we build up from the fear of being rejected and are the excuse for why we do not try again.
Engagement and Fear
Fear in engagement is more prevalent than we like to admit. There are many people in the social sphere that we want to connect with but we are fearful to initiate the communication. This fear could have developed from reaching out to someone and not receiving a response or from the fact that we have placed them on a pedestal. We become anxious to make the first move and sometimes the fear devours the anxiety and we become very apprehensive as maybe what we said was “dumb” or they laughed at us (the scenarios that we create in our head that are so many times filled with insecurities and ridiculousness). When we hit that enter/send button, we take a few deep breaths and then watch them closely. When we see them responding to so many others we start to panic – what about us? What is wrong with us? Again, we immediately think it is us and not them. Do we know them well enough to know if we would want them a part of our community? Would we be friends with them in real life? Is their popularity creating the want for us to connect? Popularity is a big part of that inner need that we feel to connect with people. If we are tweeting with someone who is viewed as an a-lister, immediately people start to see us in a different light.
In engagement we fear the unknown. The thoughts of what will I say start to creep in and we stare blindly at the status update trying to find the words that we could jump in with and they would respond to. If we are trying to write something that they would respond to, are we showing them who we really are? We are treating them differently than we do others, but we still have conquered the fear of making that initial contact. We have taken the first step of trying to get them to notice us but now the new fear is will they respond? If they respond, a new fear then comes into play, do we respond back? When does the dialogue go to a deeper engagement? The fears stack up and are ongoing.
How to Conquer Fear
How we conquer our fears is different for everyone. Sometimes we have to just take a deep breathe and take the chance. Minimize the risk associated and go full steam ahead. We see this when people open a new business, offer a new service, merge to create a partnership and yes even in following/friending someone. What will the outcome be? The fear of the end result has to be diminished and we have to take the action so that there can be an end result. When we join in on a new chat, we tend to lurk for awhile and see where we can fit in. Once we feel that comfort level and talk, we only feel welcomed when we are responded to. It is interesting as we almost seamlessly launch a new blog but yet we are afraid to jump into a conversation. The fear should be greater in launching the blog. But, we hear over and over I do not know what to say to someone on Twitter or in a comment on Facebook or on a blog and see where the fear to engage is far greater than the one way communication of posting a blog post. Overcoming the fear of the one on one conversation in real time is difficult as once we are ignored we feel upset, angry and these emotions come back to us and we are apprehensive to try again.
Fears continue to inhibit us everyday and until we bring it to the forefront and accept it, we remain unable to conquer it. From the simplest fear to now knowing what to say to someone, the right question to ask, asking for help or venturing into a new business, we have to face our fears so we can grow and build upon our strengths and be guided through our weaknesses.
What are you afraid of when interacting and engaging?
This excellent contribution is post #17 in The Engagement Series. I hope you are enjoying it so far! 🙂
photo credit: epSos.de
Great post. As someone who was lurking on Twitter I recently faced my fears to start to post my point of view. I also have started to respond to those whose thoughts I respect and am interested in. The conversation is important. The changes and innovations that can result are far reaching.
Kudos to Suzanne and Marjorie for keeping the conversation going…and facing your fears.
Maureen
Thank you for taking the time to read and also comment. So happy to hear that you are facing the fears and getting your POV out there for people to engage with. It is important. When we look at fear as an inhibitor and recognize that with each fear immediately a new one is born we start to see and wonder what we are afraid of. We can overcome them one at a time.
I know that I want folks to think I have something valuable to offer, so if I think about that too long, that it can completely lock up my mental wheels. Places like Twitter, where you see the real-time conversations going on (and realize that a reply isn’t coming back your way), can be quite depressing. But in the end, I’m getting comfortable with the idea that I’m not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. And that’s okay because I’d much rather build a relationship with poeple that I can be myself with than with folks that I constantly have to worry about impressing (which likely means I’m self-censoring). That mental fear never completely goes away, but I’m giving it a lot less credibility.
Christy
I love the way that you ended your comment -“That mental fear never completely goes away, but I’m giving it a lot less credibility.” That really says it all. It is easier said than done when we think about looking past the rejection that we feel when we are not responded to. I found myself falling into the trap as well early on and what I ended up finding that the people who were never responding, I really had nothing in common with and the connection was pointless and would have been self serving for them and empty for me. It is hard for us to think about that when we are initiating the communication.
Finding people that can build a relationship with that has value to us both and is full of some good ole fashioned laughs is the people I want to spend my communication time with.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek!
Khadevis
So very true until you have the treasure and have to figure out what to do with it.
Hi Susan,
How very intuitive and insightful of you! What you say is very meaningful and certainly makes people stop and think about their own fears. As well, it helps readers think about how they might deal with their own fears in different situations.
In one of my blog posts, I talk about the fear of public speaking. You can find it on my site at http://www.thelanguagelab.ca. The title is Public Speaking: It’s About the Writing. It starts out with a great comment from Jerry Seinfeld about the fear of public speaking. I think you’ll enjoy reading it.
Sandra
Sandra
I agree with your article that the content does matter however great content delivered poorly is a bigger issue. If someone has a fear of public speaking, they would need to first overcome that fear (which sometimes happens in the first few minutes) before they can give the delivery that reaches and resonates with the audience.
This was a great post. I used to take a while to take part in discussions and always held back before jumping in, or didn’t jump in at all. I had no worries about posting my own articles and initiating discussions.
Recently I completed a social media bootcamp run by Ann Evanston and that just catapaulted me into a new space. It helped me to overcome any inibitions around contributing to other people’s conversations and feel confident about letting my voice be heard. But I can totally understand the fears that many feel and the worry about possible rejection can be huge.
Once you’ve experienced no one responding or not agreeing with you, it only gets better. I think when you learn to always express yourself authentically then you can speak up anywhere to anyone. And that feels really powerful.
In response to your question, I would feel inferior contributing to threads that I know relatively little about but I can still go in and thank the person for sharing their expertise and make friends.
Thanks for this interesting topic.
Fiona Stolze
Inspired Art and Living
http://fionastolze.com
This was a great read. I find fear to be far less prevalent when engaging with those through social networks than IRL because you can read, see if you’ll be able to find common ground, and then connect and built rap-ore and a relationship. Fear shouldnt be there in the realm of the online world, you have the ability to take longer to think and articulate a response as opposed to being on the spot, and the further you engage online, you should be able to take those skills and apply it IRL.
Devin
I agree that fear should not be introduced in the online world however it is. We never know what to say or not to say, we hear and see stories where tweets have gone bad, we get lost in trying to jump into conversations and one bad experience sets the stage sometimes for fear to enter.
In real life, we are able to gauge their reaction and have more of a personal connection.
Thanks so much for reading and sharing your thoughts.