When was the last time you complimented someone?

While staying overnight at my parents’ house recently, I flipped through an old journal of mine from when I was 17, and spotted an exhortation I still often give myself today: “You should tell cute people they’re cute more often!”

Sounds obvious, maybe. But it took me a while to understand that it’s okay to give compliments freely – nay, that it’s a good thing, and that it tangibly brightens people’s days.

See, my social anxiety insists that randomly complimenting someone – specifically, someone I don’t know super well – is awkward, because it could make them uncomfortable. It took practice and experience for me to figure out that the likelihood of this is pretty low, assuming I stick to complimenting people on the right kinds of things (more on that in a sec).

I’ve also sometimes feared that complimenting someone might lead them to believe I’m attracted to them, even if I’m not (although, let’s be real, many of the people I compliment are indeed people I’m attracted to!). This, too, is probably a fabrication of my anxiety more than it’s based on actual fact. When someone’s trying to figure out if you’re into them, generally they’ll assess multiple different signs-or-lack-thereof, not just one offhand comment – and anyway, the more I compliment people, the more it becomes obvious (at least in group situations) that that’s just something I do, so it’s less likely to be taken as an automatic come-on.