A Mall Bench and The Judgmental People (in My Head)

Is this a social experiment or a self-experiment? I am not really sure. Maybe I will function under the pretence that it is a social one, so that I can live with myself. But deep down, I know I am mortified of doing this. In fact, my fingers are trembling nervously as I type, betraying one of my greatest anxieties in life– that of societal judgement.

For context, I am typing this out sitting in a casual corridor of a mall. Without having ordered anything from any of the stalls that surround me, without working here and without anyone to meet. Truth be told, I got ready, packed my lunch and left my house half an hour ago to do just this: to casually sit in the corner of a random mall and work on my drafts. I admit I was feeling much braver at that time. But now, I am a bundle of nerves. What if a staffer walks up to me and tells me I cannot occupy space here unless I order something? What if passersby judge me for sitting alone with a laptop in a mall? What if…

Why should this bother anyone at all, you ask? It might seem silly to worry about what strangers think of a person sitting on a mall bench. More than that, who even cares about a random person in the mall sitting and typing away? My apprehensions might seem illogically trivial, almost laughable. And trust me, as much as my thinking brain is judging my own fear of judgment (haha), my chest is still sinking, as if on a downward rollercoaster free fall. 

As someone who has lived with (sometimes crippling) social anxiety, I can tell you it is no joke. As a kid, and even now, as that same kid trapped in an adult’s body, I would conjure up scenarios of how everybody was smirking at me because I probably had a hole in my clothes, or my zipper down. Or how they were probably side-eyeing me because I looked disgusting and unbearable. Ironically, I have occasionally had people tell me they adore my confidence, but they seldom know it is a painstaking and downright draining attempt at constantly covering up my nearly non-existent sense of safety in public settings.

So again, why am I writing about this now? Mostly, as a means of observing this emotion move around in my body. Funnily, even as I started spelling out the first words of this article, I felt something inside me shift. I could feel my fear transform into curiosity; the internal dialogue going from “this is catastrophic” to “this is somewhat exciting”. At some point, I decided “let us treat this as a little experiment, perhaps one dissecting our perceptions of the world”. (Yes I talk to myself as if we are a group of friends hanging out inside my head. No I am not crazy. I think).

What I realised was two things. First, the Spotlight Effect is real. I was scared of people looking at and scrutinising me, but one glance around the corridor and it was evident that I was not the centre of attention. Shocking, right? People have their own lives, their own preoccupations. It is one thing to know this at an intellectual level, and I have known it that way for a long time. But it seems as if the body has a mind of its own, and it does not function on logic. Rather, what it carries is years of conditioning and fears, that show up no matter how intellectually armoured you think you are. It is like playing basketball with a badminton racket– the racket was never meant to survive even a single hit.

The second thing I noticed was how fun this feeling of nervous excitement is (once you sit inside it long enough to get past the I-am-going-to-die phase). Honestly, I have not felt this engaged in any of my projects for days. Perhaps that little rush of energy nudged me into a focused flow state, because now I cannot stop churning these words out. Given how I have struggled to get anything done at home over the past few days, this one is an absolute win!

It has been over an hour since I claimed this bench, and all hell hasn’t broken loose. So much for people hating my presence and getting angry at my audacity. We often say that this world is a cruel and unforgiving place, but it would take this world decades of training, and maybe two different doctorates, to match the expertise some of us have already developed in tormenting our own selves. Sometimes I feel sad for myself, for the pain I have caused the young girl who just wanted to claim her place in this world. I taught her how to second-guess her every move, to “think ten steps ahead” (as if it were a sign of wisdom), and to not try out new things. But at least now I know I can begin to do better for her, one tiny experiment at a time!

PS- I was a little worried this piece shifts too quickly from conflict to resolution. But then I realised that the pace mirrors exactly how things shifted inside me once I allowed them to flow! It is almost magical to experience it happen within yourself, and I wouldn’t take that away.

PPS- Of course this article does not mean I have “fixed” my social anxiety in an hour of writing. Still, it has done something powerful- it has helped me build evidence for my tenacity, and probably reshaped the story I carry in my head a little bit for the next time I am in a similar situation.