Where does money come from? Other people. Where does collaboration come from? Other people. Where do opportunities, ideas, love, and support come from? Community. Connection. People.
Your relationship to other people is your connection to abundance. Which means that if some part of you is afraid of people, that fear isn’t just a social problem. It’s an abundance problem.
Sociology has known this for decades. In his famous 1973 paper “The Strength of Weak Ties,” Mark Granovetter found that people often land jobs not through their closest friends, but through acquaintances: the loose connections that link us to new circles, new information, and new chances. Every new person is a doorway. Fear keeps the doors closed.
Wanting people and fearing them
I know this one from the inside. I’ve lived with agoraphobia and social anxiety. As a baby, I wasn’t understood or attuned to, and that left long-lasting marks. Pair that with autism, and you have a recipe for social anxiety and pain around social interactions. So, for good reason, I have a lot of fear of people.
But at the same time, my identity says: I love to collaborate. I built UNICULT to collaborate with other artists. I want to work with people to make the world a better place. Groups of people are among the most powerful things on this planet.
So my ego said, I want to collaborate. And my subconscious said, people are scary. Guess how many successful collaborations that produced?
It started as “I hate other people. Other people are dumb. Other people are incompetent.” Over the years, I slowly integrated and transformed that hatred into a general disdain, then into plain fear. And from fear, I could finally start showing up. I’m no longer a hermit. I can spend time with people and collaborate. There are still psychological costs I have to sit with and integrate afterward, but the door is open.
How the fear limited me
Recently I worked with the photographer Marina Feeney on a series of photo shoots for Dolphin Technology. Watching her work, I was so inspired. And I felt a pang: I wish I’d worked with more people on my video shoots over the years. I wish I’d learned more about cameras and lighting from others.
All I really know how to do is shoot myself and edit my own videos. I know that really well. But I’ve been limited, and when I look back at why, the answer is clear. I was afraid of people. I didn’t work with others because I didn’t know how, even though I wanted to.
That fear shaped my art for years, and I didn’t even see it.
Excuses are limitations
Back then, I would have said the problem was my circumstances. I want to collaborate, but no one wants to collaborate with me. I want to learn new cameras, but I don’t have the money. Those felt like facts. They were really excuses: limitations living in my psyche that kept me from what I wanted.
And as soon as I started integrating those parts of myself, something remarkable happened. There are people all around me with cool cameras. There are videographers who want to shoot footage, and people who want my help shooting their own projects. They were always there. I just couldn’t see them through the fear.
That’s what I mean when I say the abundance is all around you. It’s already here, in your field, right now. The limitations are coming from inside the house. Yes, some come from outside too. But you have far more power inside your own consciousness than you do anywhere else. As you transmute and integrate what’s inside, the world can’t help but change along with it.
If you recognize yourself here, try this: notice the next time you tell yourself a story about why you can’t connect with someone. “They wouldn’t want to work with me.” “I don’t have the resources.” “People like that don’t talk to people like me.” Then ask which part of you believes it, and what that part is trying to protect you from.
The most powerful force on the planet
Groups of people working together can do anything. They can build movements, create art no one could make alone, and change the world on a global scale. That’s why I built UNICULT, and it’s why healing my fear of people matters so much.
During one Cam Church stream, someone in chat shared a principle that stuck with me: a leader who creates only followers perpetuates their own importance, but a leader who creates leaders makes their own authority increasingly unnecessary. That only happens when we’re willing to be in relationship with each other.
You don’t have to go from hermit to social butterfly overnight. I didn’t. Hatred became disdain, disdain became fear, and fear became the first awkward, beautiful collaborations. Every step counts. Every person you let in is a little more abundance flowing into your life, and a little more of yours flowing out into the world.
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