Dear Jilla: On the fear of cringe
The Cringe in me sees the Cringe in you. Push past it and become who you're meant to be!
This is the first edition of the Dear Jilla advice column on art, life, and love! Submit your own question anytime — I’d love to hear from you.
Listen to me answer this question on the Cruel Summer Book Club podcast!
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Dear Jilla,
I'm trying to post on LinkedIn more and interact in freelancer communities to try to “build a brand,” but the fear of being Cringe holds me back. What if people think I'm stupid?
— Behind the Wall, 32, Pakistan 😖
Dear Behind the Wall,
I’ve got a lot to say, but first:
The things you find cringy are manifestations of your deepest fears and insecurities. Being confronted with your Cringe is like being startled by your own reflection, or being caught on a naked midnight run to the bathroom. It’s the sudden exposure of the soft and pale part of your soul that you only risk being seen by moonlight.
You will bump up against Cringe for as long as you are alive, and in order to grow as a creative and a person and reach your full potential, you must push past it. When it comes to making your art and promoting your work, you must learn to live for the opinion of your Highest Self and scorn all others.
You can choose to renew your vows to yourself today.
I’ve been afraid of being Cringe most of my life, far before I understood Cringe as a concept. My memories of wanting to be liked by my much “cooler” and “more normal” classmates go back to six years old. In 4th grade, I earnestly, shyly asked my best friend Becca if she could make me cool. It’s the sort of deeply embarrassing, core-revealing behavior that sticks with you, and in fact Becca and I laugh about it to this day. (She’s been my best friend for 31 years and has been letting my Cringe slide for decades.)
In direct competition with my fear of Cringe is my desire to be perceived, which certainly is part of the reason I became a writer. Here was something I was good at, something I loved, something that would give me a voice in the world, a way to safely exist in public.
Throughout my career I’ve shared personal essays about trying online therapy, swapping platonic nudes with friends, and how my friends helped me ease into greater peace around not getting married or having kids. I wrote a sex and dating advice column in New York City. Each time I published a real piece of myself, I had to face my fear of Cringe and conquer it, bit by bit.
But the decision to press send during the first six months of this newsletter was my toughest battle against Cringe to date. In July 2019, I sent out the first-ever CSBC newsletter. I was physically sick with heartbreak over a recent breakup, and I had decided to publicly catalog my healing process and interview others about their greatest losses. What followed were some of the most raw things I’ve ever written. Some weeks, after holding my nose and pressing send, I would spend 48 hours racked with anxiety and nausea, terrified of how much I had shared, how much people would know I was suffering, how pathetic I might seem.
During that time, people would often ask me if I was worried my ex would see my posts. The truth is that to authentically write and share my truth, I had to pretend as though he did not exist. He was no longer a factor in my life’s decisions, and I forced my thoughts to bend to this new, self-serving regime. I snipped the tendrils connecting my heart and mind to his and gathered them back into myself.
This is exactly what we must do to create our best art and become our fullest selves: slice away all the imaginary opinions of the people you know (and the many more who you don’t) and make it for yourself.
My people wanted to hear about my heartbreak and healing. My people were stirred by my writing and comforted to know that they weren’t alone in similar aches. My people supported me, were curious about me, wanted me to heal. Many of my people are still here, five years later.
A writer friend recently said that cringe is simply part of the creative process; it goes hand in hand with trying new things and sucking at them for a while, which we all must do to keep growing.
To stop fear from holding you back from reaching your greatest potential, ask yourself: What are you most ashamed of? Most afraid of? The truth you’re most trying to hide about yourself? That’s exactly where you’ll find your Cringe.
Here are some of my deepest fears: I’m ugly and unlovable. I’m deeply unlikeable, but don’t know it. I’m a bad writer who doesn’t have anything interesting to say. I’m a bad, selfish person who doesn’t deserve the good things that other people get.
How Cringe that I just blurted all that out, right? But I said it, and instantly took away a lot of the power it holds over me. And I am certain some of you thought, “Me too.”
I can look at this list and know that the things I am going to most fear talking about publicly all stem from these false stories I tell myself. I can also be certain that some of the most powerful, relatable things I could share with the world will include honest reflections on these fears and my relationship to them.
Now, make your own list of your deepest fears. Be brutally honest with yourself — you don’t ever have to share this list with another soul if you don’t want to. (Or you could vomit it all out in a newsletter like me, why not?)
Once you have your list, go through each fear, and ask yourself: Is this true about me? What evidence do I have that this is true? What evidence do I have that this is not true? If my best friend said this about herself, what would I say to her in return?
This is a common exercise to battle anxiety and rumination — you have to talk yourself down from the ledge of thoughts that are feelings and not facts. I do this often when my Inner Saboteur (who I named Jolene) shows up with a common intrusive thought: “Your friends don’t like you.”
These are the facts: I have multiple close friendships that have spanned decades. I regularly get invited to social gatherings. I make new friends easily and often, in every phase of life. My friends like me, and they show it every day.
Our hearts are baby animals that need to be held and given simple reassurance as often as possible. Being extremely gentle and kind to yourself are key weapons in the battle against Cringe.
Once you know that your fears are objectively not true (it’s okay if you need to reassure yourself over and over and over), sit quietly with yourself to see which of these topics you feel most pulled toward.
Which aspects of your authentic self do you want to bring into your professional, public-facing brand? What are the key values you want to express? What do you want (or, better yet, don’t want) people to know about you? What do you want to talk about most, but are too afraid? Whatever comes up here that you feel the most icky about exploring is likely the perfect place to start.
Cringe is your truest self. Cringe is who you would be if you were not perceived. Cringe is how we would behave if human beings weren’t crippled by a core desire for social acceptance. Cringe is freedom. The Cringe in me sees the Cringe in you.
If you look around, you’ll easily find evidence of objectively successful people battling their own Cringe. I constantly see people sharing content that says something like, “If you know me in real life, and you see my content online, no you didn’t.” These creators are making real money from sharing themselves, yet fear of Cringe keeps knocking.
What’s the difference between them and you? They pushed past it. They put Cringe in its rightful place, which is at the bottom of a well, because, in the end, no one’s opinion about your art matters besides YOUR OWN.
Actors are an easy example of the rewards you can reap by pushing through Cringe. Our society holds highly successful performers, especially film actors and singers, in the highest regard. We pay them handsomely. We dissect their dating lives, clothing, bodies, clamoring to be like them. Their art changes our lives, makes us feel, and we value and honor them for it.
And yet, if you look just a bit down the line at where all those successful performers start out, there’s so much Cringe. “Theater kid” is synonymous with “annoying.” To practice lines by yourself in the mirror and tromp all over town for auditions? To sing in front of four strangers judging you? To perform to empty rooms? How cringe. And then there are self-tapes, when you record a video of yourself, at home, as your audition, then send it off to casting agents. Criiiiinge.
Let’s use a recent video from TikTok star and actor Kyle Prue as an example. He runs one of my favorite series, Things You Can Say to Piss Off Men. As a tactic to help raise money for Palestinian families escaping Gaza, Prue promised to release his self-tape for the new Planet of the Apes movie if his followers raised $100,000. Once they did, he followed through.
Before he shares the video, Prue says, “If I had known that this video would be seen by a lot of people, I would have maybe gone a lot further with it. I would have tried to make it more funny. But what you are about to watch is an earnest attempt to portray a half-monkey half-person in order to be in The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes by a person who really wanted to be in it.” He laughs and say, “I’m already cringing.”
Prue didn’t get the part. But half a million people have now seen his self-tape. Yes, we are laughing, but we are laughing with him. He’s making a lot of money off our likes and comments. And he’s got a book coming out soon.
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Think about Amelia Dimoldenberg going on cringey dates we can’t get enough of on Chicken Shop Date. Amelia is an awkward woman being herself! And now she’s interviewing celebrities on red carpets around the world (I’ve watched this many times). Doja Cat started out with a song that repeated the lyrics, “Bitch, I’m a cow.” SZA sings about how insecure she is. Emma Stone practically has Theater Kid tattooed on her forehead. Taylor Swift’s brand is Cringe. As a podcast episode all about cringe noted, “Bad bangs are who she is” — and you’d have to chop them from her cold, billionaire forehead before she’d give them up. Don’t even get me started on beloved Cringe authors (summer of smut, anyone?).
Cringe is about taking risks. What kind of creative (and person) do you want to be? One who shows off the things they care about with pride and enthusiasm? Or someone who tones their joy down to make it more palatable for others?
It is time for you to stop toeing the boring middle line. Lean into your Cringe, unleash it onto the world, and wait and see what wonders happen.
What art would you make if no one else were to ever see it but you? That’s where the gold is. If you gain nothing else, embracing your Cringe will earn you the right to say you tried something new and existed as your authentic self during your blinking time on this spinning rock in space. That is worth it. YOU are worth it.
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When you’re sharing a message that’s authentic to who you are and what you’re going through, you can’t go wrong. As one of my favorite TikTok creators says: “What’s embarrassing about being yourself? Why are you letting other people stop you from being yourself? WHO CARES?”
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It is your right to be annoying when sharing your art, your creativity, your authentic self, your business, what you do. You are the only one who can support you in this way! You need you! And if you need to be embarrassing, so be it!
This year, I’ve pushed past my Cringe by promoting my new 1-on-1 packages, newsletter, and podcast. I got real about money in my freelance year in review. I wrote about being single and trying speed dating. These were all scary new ways of sharing parts of myself, some that people enthusiastically responded to, and some that flopped. I am a deeply earnest person seeking genuine connections, and I believe that shines through in everything I write. Everyone that vibes with my Cringe continues to follow me. Everyone who doesn’t, unsubscribes. It really is that simple.
But as long as you are committed to self-growth and making your art, fear of Cringe will always be waiting for you. For at least six months now I’ve wanted to post more on TikTok, because it’s a rare social media platform I find joy in, and I love the conversational/confessional/storytelling vibe. It matches much of the work I do here at CSBC, and I have a feeling I could be a hit there just by talking through what I’m experiencing and thinking about. And I just want to show off cute outfits and connect with others.
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But Cringe creeps up and gives me pause. I’m considered “old” there. What if I’m not funny? What if people comment mean things? And (gasp) what if people I actually know see these silly little things I’m posting?
Today, I’m reminding myself (and you, Behind the Wall) to have faith and push past it. I have things to say that only I can say. And if I say them with my full chest, my people will always find me and respond.
I’ve heard from so many women that you care less and less about what others think the older you get. At 36, I have certainly learned the lesson that what other people have to say about me when I’m not in the room is absolutely none of my business.
But there’s no denying that I still care, and that I still tie success to follower count and verbal/digital validation. That’s part of my Cringe.
But through creating my newsletter and podcast and doing creative work for personal fulfillment rather than a paycheck, I’ve learned to define success through other gauges as well. Am I proud of this piece? Do I think this could help someone? Am I making something I want to see more of in the world? Did someone let me know that my words resonated with them? Did I discover something new about myself and my work by writing and sharing this?
In the end, all of those things matter so much more than likes, acceptance, and approval.
Find what matters most to you, Behind the Wall. I can’t wait to see what you create.
Submit your own question on art, life, and love to Dear Jilla!
Needed to hear this today after posting my first newsletter (so cringey)! Thanks Jillian. ❤️
Are you kidding? This is the most epic piece I have ever read about cringe, and that’s including this The Atlantic piece about Taylor Swift being cringe (here if you want it: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/07/millennial-cringe-taylor-swift/678874/). Always killing it Jillian!