The following may have happened to you: you walk down the street, you see a person and you think, “I like their style.” Then, you pass by a clothing store and see the same pants or the same shirt that had caught your attention so much. What do you do, do you go in and buy it because you liked it or do you think it’s better not to try it on?
Suppose that in the end you have bought it, it is the next day and the opportunity arises for you to put on your new outfitit, but you have doubts and don’t release it. Why didn’t you dare in the end?
There may be various reasons, and in the end it is difficult for us to ignore our own insecurities or the criticism of others, in a society that is so prejudiced. Yeah you feel like you don’t dare to dress how you really want keep reading this article and I’ll tell you what you can do.
The key to why you don’t dare to dress how you want is precisely in the first verb: dare. The very fact of daring to do something implies that you have to take the step to do something risky, which involves physical or emotional danger. And when there is a risk or danger, the emotion that paralyzes us is none other than fear.
This fear is complex, because it can be caused by different reasons, and at the same time all very similar and with something in common: how others will react to our way of dressing. Maybe what worries us is that they judge us or criticize us, or on the contrary, we draw a lot of attention, they look at us “too much” or they compliment us. This concern is natural if it is had to a certain extent and is not exaggerated.
However, the perception that we are going to be judged or observed may be the reflection of a psychological problem on certain occasions. For example, when this perception does not fit reality, if it causes us too much discomfort, or if it limits our daily life and our way of being.
It may be caused by insecurities arising from low self-esteem, traumatic memories of experiences in which we were made fun of for our clothes, or it may be a symptom of a psychological disorder such as social anxiety disorder. We must keep in mind that our way of dressing may be more important to us than it may seem a priori.
And why do I care so much about the way I dress?
The first reason to give it importance is that the way we dress is a reflection of our personality. Furthermore, people tend to pigeonhole and label everything. Both aspects lead us to fear what image we are giving: depending on how we dress, people will pigeonhole us into one way or another of being.
We do it too, we all try to predict what people and the world around us are like. We even pigeonhole ourselves based on our style when it comes to dressing. Consciously or unconsciously, When we dress we are deciding what image we want to give to the world and to ourselves of how we are.
On the other hand, we are social beings, with what that implies. As much as we sometimes try to claim that we don’t care what other people think, we would care if no one liked what we do, including how we dress. By nature, we need affection, support and company, and we don’t like to feel like we don’t fit in with our environment.
If your environment does accept the style of dress that you would like, and there are even people who already dress that way, you won’t have that much of a problem daring to do it. On the contrary, if you don’t fit in with your surroundings by dressing like this, it will be much more difficult for you to take the step. This is where fears and insecurities begin: we avoid dressing in a certain way so that we are not pigeonholed as hustlers, boastful, conceited, geeks, eccentrics… And what do we do then?
Once you know the possible reasons why you don’t dare to dress the way you want, it is more feasible to be able to face it and start doing what you really want. However, it is not an easy task, no matter how much we know the theory, sometimes it is still difficult to put it into practice. Therefore, below, I leave you a series of steps that can help you to dare to dress as you want.
1. Ask yourself these questions
Actually, the fear that prevents us from dressing the way we want can be something irrational. Not so much because it is unlikely that they will judge us (that can happen), but because whoever is going to do it will most likely be people who are not worth it or are not people in our environment with whom we really want to fit in.
When you have this fear, ask yourself the following questions. The answers may surprise you and allow you to see things differently to take the step:
2. Face your fears little by little
Even if the answers to the previous questions are favorable and we suddenly see it as very rationally possible to dress however we want, it is very likely that we will still feel afraid. Because? Because we are very emotional beings, even if we try to deny it, and we need to experience things to understand them 100%.
This implies that until we see with our own eyes that nothing serious happens because strangers judge us or look at us, we will not feel safe to dress as we want. Which only leaves you one option: If you want to dress differently, you have to do it, despite the fear, to see if what you fear is true. It’s the only barrier between you and the way you really want to dress.
Of course, I recommend that you do it little by little. Don’t change your look from one day to the next, because you can spend a day with a lot of anxiety and you will not want to put the outfit back on so as not to repeat the experience. So that this does not happen and your changes can be persistent, make a list of situations in which you would like to wear certain clothes, but you do not do so out of fear (at work/study, at a party, at a family meal…).
Likewise, you can include and organize in the list clothes that you consider more or less difficult to wear to go out in them (for example, that show a lot of body or that are not normative according to your gender). Order that set of situations and items from least to most overwhelming, and start facing your insecurities with the first situation. So, fear will not be too strong to stop you. When you feel comfortable in the first situation, that is when you can move on to the next one.
3. Decide according to your own criteria
As you try certain styles, you will discover how they suit you. Some of them may give you the impression that you don’t like them, but ask yourself if it’s because you still feel uncomfortable because of what people may think or have told you, or if you simply think that it doesn’t fit with your way of being. It may also happen that it does not look good on you aesthetically from your own point of view, and this factor is important to you.
In the last two cases, all you have to do is think: if it’s not your style and it doesn’t convince you, don’t wear those clothes. If, on the other hand, it is the first and it is because you are uncomfortable with what your surroundings think, give yourself time to get used to dressing like that, until the initial anxiety subsides and you can differentiate whether you really like it or not. The important thing is that you enjoy your clothes, that you find it fun to try on and that you feel comfortable with yourself.
