The Fear of Being Perceived

I’ve seen a lot online recently about this (perhaps it’s just my algorithm), and realised it’s something I’d never been able to put into words—yet it’s plagued me my whole life, until recently.

The fear of being perceived is also known as scopophobia and is often referred to as the fear of being yourself.

The fear often comes down to not wanting others to perceive the real you, due to feeling embarrassed, fearing failure once you put yourself out there, or being scared of rejection or lack of acceptance. The list really does go on. Yet, people on my feed are flipping the fear on its head, empowering others to become themselves, to put themselves out there and get over the fear so that they don’t miss out on other opportunities (almost like pitting the fear against FOMO, and FOMO is winning).

I connected with the trend, because (unfortunately) I have always bought into FOMO. Fear of missing out has led me to put myself out there in so many situations because I didn’t want to miss vital experiences my friends were having, or opportunities that might never come around again. Thankfully, I’ve grown out of the teenage version of FOMO where you can’t say no to any kind of social plans, and graduated to the life-altering version (is that really better…?).

Upon further introspection, I think the fear of being perceived has been ruling my life for longer than I realised, and my FOMO didn’t catch on to it until recently. I have always feared committing to jobs that would get in between me and my dream to be a writer – and somewhere in between that fear and real life, I’ve worked jobs I’ve not been interested in, and watched life pass me by without building a career. To me, writing would always have to be something I did on the side – not what I could do every day – until I turned twenty-five, six months ago, and realised it’s within my power to make writing my life if I want to.

It then took another four months before I decided to get real about it and put myself out there – to be perceived online here, and on my Instagram. Even when I started my Instagram (@liviagreywrites), I was faceless for a while, too aware that people I know might see what I am doing. I grew out of that awareness pretty quickly, emboldened by the writing community I joined.

Whilst I was unconsciously trying to get over this fear, I started my series In Pursuit of Artistry (another shameless self-plug, linked below) to be able to embody the version of myself I want to present to people – that I want to be perceived. I still struggle with letting my friends and family know about my passion for writing, but I am working on it. I am trying to get over the fear, and one way of doing that is by directly addressing it here, and continuing to take one step at a time in putting myself out there, curating my content and accepting that I am perceived.

Technically, me, you, we, have always been perceived – we were perceived at school, at work, by our family – we have been our entire lives. But with the introduction of social media, we are being perceived for moments beyond the right now, for things we did five years ago, through everything and anything on our digital trail. Therefore, I think the fear becomes more ingrained when things aren’t easily forgotten in this digital age we live in. But we cannot change that (well, I can’t), so we must use it to our advantage – own it.

(I also think being online so much has ruined my generation’s perception of themselves. We are all hyper-aware and lacking at the same time. We think too much about what other people think, and not enough about what we actually want. That person from school, who was awful to you, has no hold over you now. What will they do, talk about it with her friends? And so what if she does – it’s a part of life.)

I hope, by tackling this fear incrementally, that one day I will check on it and find that it is no longer there, and all my work and putting myself out there worked. We’ve seen it happen to others, why can’t it happen to us?

Maybe there’s something worse than the fear of being perceived, maybe it’s never being seen…

Livia x

---

---

In Pursuit of Artistry - every Thursday

---