How to feel more confident at your college reunion, or any social gathering

As I write this to you, I’m preparing to go to my college reunion. I’m really excited about it, but also a little nervous.

It’s the kind of nervousness I often feel when I’m about to go to an event where I’ll be meeting and chatting with a lot of different people, and I begin to think to myself:

I hope everyone likes me.

Will I sound impressive enough?

I wonder if I seem kind of weird or awkward. 

Have you had those thoughts before? Maybe before going to a networking event or holiday parties where you don’t know anyone, or even when you go to your parents’ for the holidays or see friends you haven’t seen for a while.

You feel vulnerable, and like you want the people you meet to like, accept, and approve of you.

A few years ago, I read something that gave me a lot of strength and inspiration for these moments, and I wanted to share it with you. It’s from Brené Brown’s lovely book, The Gifts of Imperfection:

I try to make authenticity my number one goal when I go into a situation where I’m feeling vulnerable. 

If authenticity is my goal and I keep it real, I never regret it. 

I might get my feelings hurt, but I rarely feel shame. When acceptance or approval becomes my goal, and it doesn’t work out, that can trigger shame for me: ‘I’m not good enough.’ 

If the goal is authenticity and they don’t like me, I’m okay. If the goal is being liked and they don’t like me, I’m in trouble. I get going by making authenticity the priority.

This is such a deep sentiment, and it was truly a game-changer for me.

If I go to a party where I don’t know anyone, and the goal is authenticity, it’s okay if everyone doesn’t think I am hilarious and charming, or if I have no one to talk to for a bit and spend some time looking at the bowl of chips.

If I go into a performance review and the goal is authenticity, it’s okay if my boss doesn’t shower me with compliments. It might sting, but I don’t have to be adored by everyone.

And, I remind myself as I prepare for the weekend ahead if I go to my college reunion and the goal is authenticity, it’s okay if I have some awkward conversations or don’t wow my classmates by explaining how I cured cancer while on a research trip to the Arctic Circle.

As long as I come out feeling like I’ve been myself, it can be a success.

It’s also worth mentioning that this whole “authenticity” thing has had big implications for me in terms of my eating. When I go into a social event and feel like I want people to like or approve of me, I feel like I have to hold everything together to project a certain image.

And honestly, that pressure is tiring and straining. Without realizing it, I will often find myself gorging on food before, during, or after the event to keep down all of the feelings of insecurity and nervousness that would otherwise be coming up.

But when I let myself make authenticity the goal, then the stakes aren’t so high and the outcome is within my control. I don’t need other people to like or approve of me; I just need to be myself.

And I am able to enjoy the food that goes along with these events, and not end the night feeling like I ate 100 tiny spring rolls or mini tarts.

Over to you: Do you have any upcoming social interactions that make you feel vulnerable? How would your attitude towards them change if you didn’t need acceptance, approval, or to be “liked,” but instead you let yourself make authenticity the goal? I’d love to hear from you!

You’ve got this!

Katie

On finding a deeper relationship

It was fall, and I was walking with a girlfriend between brownstones in New York as she told me about this guy that she was crazy about.

Smart, handsome, generous. He was the perfect guy.

“He’s just so much better than anyone I’ve ever dated,” she said as we weaved around a tree on the sidewalk. “And so I want to be really strategic about this. I just don’t want to come on too strong.”

I don’t know about you, but I can relate to that feeling. 

I’ve been in a lot of relationships where I’ve held parts of myself back…

• I let him call me 

• I ended conversations first 

• I let him initiate times for us to hang out 

• When I had big feelings, I didn’t like to really show them to him. I might show him a little bit of my sadness or anger or hurt, but I certainly wouldn’t let it all hang out, the way I would with my friends or my mom.

• I wouldn’t bring up little things that he did that bothered me, because I didn’t want to seem whiny

I was sure that if I called him as much as I wanted to call him, if I talked for as long as I wanted to talk, or if I suggested that we hang out whenever I wanted to hang out, he would get tired of me. 

If I really told him all the feelings I had, all day every day, he would realize how emotional and crazy and what a mess I am, and he wouldn’t want me anymore. 

I also often felt like I couldn’t say no – to hanging out, to social events, to intimacy, or whatever – as much as I’d liked. Not that I was ever forced into anything, but I just sometimes didn’t quite feel like doing whatever it was, and didn’t feel like I could say so without causing a rift in the relationship.

In the end, it came down to: I was convinced that if I showed up authentically – if I said yes in as big a way as I wanted to say yes, and no in as big of a way as I wanted to say no, if I was emotional and volatile and moody in the way that I truly am emotional and volatile and moody, he wouldn’t be able to handle it. And our relationship couldn’t handle it. 

And, let’s be clear, this wasn’t a terrible strategy. There were lots of guys in my life who couldn’t handle it.

The brilliant Med School/Ph.D. student who is going to be a wonderful neurosurgeon but couldn’t handle my feelings when I’d had a bad day, the sweet and generous Russian investor who just couldn’t handle the time alone that I needed. And there were the other relationships, where I never really tried to show up authentically with my strong and argumentative opinions or my existential thoughts because I could just sense that they couldn’t handle it.

So there were some relationships that were failures, and many more relationships that should have been failures, because I said “no” when I meant “yes” or “yes” when I meant “no.”

Eventually, I decided that I was exhausted by all this time not being myself, and needed to find a better way. 

Ironically, at this time I met a guy who frightened me by how honest he was. On our first phone call, his first question to me was, “What’s important to you in life?” But I figured that I had nothing to lose by being honest in return. 

That was the beginning of a nearly five-year relationship that has changed everything that I thought was possible about relationships.

When he’d ask me about my day, I was used to just saying “good.” But when I really thought about it, I realized that wasn’t true. 

What was true was well, I had a nice morning but then work was stressful and I started doubting everything, but by the afternoon I took a walk outside and everything felt a lot better and I had pizza for dinner so that was definitely a highlight. 

I feel comfortable being as messy and sad and angry and confused and happy and delighted with life as I truly am. And since he sees the “real” me, I feel more supported, heard, and loved than I’ve ever experienced before. 

This isn’t a fairy tale. Our relationship is still very much a work in progress, and I don’t know how it will turn out. But it was the first time in my life that I made the decision to show up as I truly am, and it has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. We're getting married in March.

So at the end of the day, here’s what I know:

You get to make the choice, and some people don’t want a super “authentic” relationship. But it’s important to think about what you’re choosing when you hold some of yourself back. What happens when you choose not to expose who you truly are in a relationship because you don’t want to be “too much”? 

It’s important to be clear about what you lose and what you gain, and to be okay with that.

And so, here’s what I said to my friend, who is warm, intuitive, generous, and accomplished, as we walked on that fall day in New York City:

“If you never let yourself be yourself with him, you’ll never really know if he can handle you.”

You’ll always kind of wonder if, yes, maybe you are just too much. And then you won’t see that the real problem is that he is not enough for you. A guy who can’t handle you – all of you – might be a great guy, but he probably isn’t the perfect guy for you. 

And is that really the way you want to live?

On the other hand, if you show up as yourself – as big and overwhelming and too much as it is – you’ll know for sure. Some people won’t be able to take it, and yes, you might lose that relationship. But you’ll also know for sure when you’ve found a good one. 

Over to you: Are you really showing up authentically in your romantic relationships? What would have to change in order for you to do so? I’d love to hear from you, and cheer you on.

I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.

Katie

Something that helped me when I felt sad

Today I wanted to write to you about sadness, about feeling down or depressed or lost.

I’ll be totally honest with you: I don’t remember feeling sad much until I was in my twenties. I had moments of sadness — someone I loved died, or a relationship ended, or I felt homesick. But somehow this sadness was always relatively confined. I would feel sad, I would cry (for 10 minutes or two hours), and then it would pass.

I never feared my sadness.

I will also say that I am very lucky — I had a childhood with a nice family and good health and few “real” problems. I am absolutely aware that not everyone gets to be so lucky.

But starting in my twenties, I started to feel a totally new kind of sadness.

A sadness that would stick with me, when I might just feel “down,” for no particular reason. Of course, there were always things in life to worry or feel nervous about, but my sadness wasn’t always directly “related” to something. Sometimes I just felt sad, for no particular, immediately identifiable reason.  

And also, it wasn’t just sadness. I seemed to feel everything more deeply. I felt more scared, more anxious, more hurt. I also, for the record, felt happier and more joyful, and more curious, but that’s not what this post is about :)

But this sadness? It was freaking me out. It wasn’t there every day or even every week, but it was present in a deeper and longer way than I had ever experienced.

I didn’t quite know what to do about it.

One day, when I was moping on the couch, my boyfriend pointed something out to me that totally changed my perspective.

He said:

“What if you didn’t need for it to go away? What if you were okay being sad forever?”

At first, I felt my brow furrow and anger coming on: I can’t possibly be like this forever! I will explode! 

But he kept going: “So often, our feelings linger on because we are resisting them. But when we really let them stay, it just stops being a problem.”

“What if you knew that you were going to be sad and depressed and down every day for the rest of your life? How would feel?”

When he first said it, it was a very scary thought. Feeling like this? Feeling scared and sad and down, forever?

I think that’s really normal — we don’t want to look at our sadness too deeply because we’re afraid we’ll make it worse.

But then I thought about it. I really thought about going to sleep and waking up and brushing my teeth and making dinner every single day, feeling like this.

And suddenly, confusingly, I felt like a weight was lifted.

When I thought about spending my entire day, and tomorrow, and the next day, feeling sad, it felt…okay. It didn’t feel great. Far from it. But it did feel like I could do it. It felt like I would be tender and a little delicate and like I’d need to be very, very gentle with myself.

It felt like I wouldn’t force myself to do a million things or lift weights or change the world. But it was also very clear to me, in that moment, that i would still love the things I loved: Tea. New soft socks. Reading novels. Eating baked goods and getting brunch with people I cared about. Taking walks and calling my mom. Writing + coaching.

I think that that was almost the most interesting realization: 

I would still love what I loved.

I would still want to help people who are struggling and frustrated with their eating.

I would still be me.

I would just do it a little more gently.

And then, once it was totally okay for me to feel sad forever, I oddly stopped feeling so intensely sad.

There was a little bit of feelings there, like when you have a cold. But it didn’t really bother me anymore, and I got up and continued with my day.

Look, I can see you reading and thinking oh, whatever, I don’t need this feelings stuff. 

If so, great. You might not struggle with your feelings too much. You might be like I was for the first part of my life. If so, file this away in case you ever do find yourself face-to-face with overwhelming emotions. 

But also, if you have ever struggled with feeling “down” in a way that you couldn’t quite resolve, my challenge for you this week is to try this:

• The next time you feel down, be really gentle with yourself. Sit on your couch, make a cup of tea, wrap yourself in a soft blanket. And then ask yourself, “What would it be like if I felt this way forever?”

• At first, that feeling might bring up panic. That’s okay. But really sit with it. Ask what it would be like to make dinner, to take a bath, to do your work and cuddle with a loved one, all while feeling this way. It might not feel great, but could it feel okay? Bearable? Like you had a cold, but could still manage?

• Notice how your feelings change and evolve. They might not immediately go away — they might spike and go up and down before ebbing away. What does it feel like to notice their progression? Stay with it as much as you can.

And, of course, please let me know in the comments how this goes for you, or if you are freakin’ terrified to even contemplate it. I’d love to support you, and it would be a great support to others who feel the same way.

…

You’ve got this.

Katie

p.s. — one more thing, from my heart to yours:

Everyone experiences feeling “down” or depressed in different ways, and if you are afraid that you might be struggling with clinical depression, get set up with a therapist. And if you find yourself contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK