The Newcomer Anxiety

Newcomer anxiety is usually very stress inducing. Let’s say you end up at an event/place where nobody is known to you. Your brain constantly searches for people in the hopes of finding someone you know in the crowd.

What causes this newcomer anxiety?

In the Stone Age, Food and Shelter were the necessities of survival for humans. Any outside entity approaching them were considered a “Threat” to their survival. Even today, younger children are taught to not speak to random strangers. This, over the course of human evolution has conditioned our brain to perceive any unknown entity to be a “Threat”.

But, as we grow older we realise, to get hold of new opportunities we’re required to network which involves the exact opposite to what we were taught to do or what our brain is already conditioned to do i.e Speak to Strangers.

How do you overcome this newcomer anxiety?

The first and the only option for you is to directly approach individuals and introduce yourselves. Embrace Awkward Conversations and get used to it. The more you delay conversation initiation the more awkward it gets.