Ask The Shrink - Why Am I Struggling With Dating?

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of Ask the Shrink, where. Where I'm addressing some questions we've gotten recently about dating and love and connection, which I thought is perfect timing because we are having our Super Early Bird promotion for unlimited dating and relationship Confidence, which is my live event that's in Portland in October, October 11th through 13th of this year, 2019. And so if you're interested in dating and relationships, definitely check out that you can go to shrinkforthshyguy.com that's the website for this podcast. And then on the right you'll see a link to the event. So click on that and you can register for that Super Early Bird, which is going just for a few more days now. And so the big there's so many questions we get about dating and relationships. I wanted to distill it down into why am I struggling in my dating life? Why is this happening? And really, there's only three reasons that I've seen. Three big reasons that could be a million and one stories, which I talk about in a future episode. But the three big reasons are this. I want to see which one resonates with you. The first reason that people struggle in their love life is they're afraid of rejection. They're afraid of getting no, they're afraid of someone not liking them in some way, shape or form. And so what that causes us to do is that causes us to diminish the amount of energy that we put out there. It's like, oh, there's a person I want to go talk to. I don't know, they might reject me. Now, this obviously is very obvious in the beginning, right? When you first go approach someone, do you approach them? Do you talk to them or not? Well, if I'm afraid of rejection, I might not. But this goes way deeper than that because I see this, I talk to a lot of people that are not just, I can't talk to anyone. I'm scared to approach them, although that's a legitimate issue, which we help people with at the event and all the coaches on my team and in my mastermind. But there are other people who are like, I can approach people, I can start conversation, I can go on some dates, but I'm still struggling, you know? And what's that higher level of struggle? Well, I'm not able to find anyone that I like or the ones that I like don't like me back. You know, those are common stories that we hear. So what's going on there? Well, actually, it can still be a fear of rejection, because here's what we're doing. We're not so afraid that we're not talking to the person, but we're still afraid. So we're not being ourselves. We're not saying what we want to say. We're not sharing ourselves unfiltered. We're doing lots of quick mental calculations, sometimes very conscious, sometimes unconscious, about how to be. How do I need to present myself in order to be liked by this person? And then as soon as we start playing that game, we think we're playing that game to win. To, quote, win their affection, win them over. But we've actually already lost, and we've lost for a couple of reasons. 1, 9 times out of 10, that shit doesn't work. People pick up on that. They pick up on the inauthenticity. They pick up on the incongruence, and it's not sexy. You think your sexiness is going to come from a certain appearance, a certain way of being that's supposed to be right. You know, whether you're a man or a woman or transgender or whatever, you have a story about what's going to be the best. As a man, I need to look like this and be like this and talk like this and act like this. Or as a woman, I need to look like this and move like this and talk like this and think like this. And you think that's what you need to do. But actually, when you are, if you're not aligned, if you're not being you, and so you're trying to run yourself through this, like, facade or this image, your life force is diminished. Your beauty, your sexiness, your vitality is diminished. That's what attracts you to other people. And that's why I'm so excited about the live event, because I can talk about this here with you. You can hear how passionate I am. But at the live event, we. We help people literally see and experience that. What makes you Attractive is the energy that you emit. And I'll be talking about this in a future episode, in the next week or two. But the energy that you emit is what makes you most attractive. And that's so liberating for people to see, because I can tell you that. And part of you might be like, no, that sounds maybe. I'm not sure if I believe that or that would be cool if it was, but not for me, or I don't know how to do it or whatever the story is. But when you experience it and you feel it, like, boom, it's undeniable. And so that is what makes you most attractive. So if you have a fear of rejection and then you're like, I gotta be this way in order to be loved, then you've already lost. And here's the second way. You've already lost. Because Even in the 10% of times that it actually does work and you, like, dupe the person or you do the bait and switch and you present a certain way, even though you're not that way, you still lost. Because now you got this facade to maintain. Now you have the anxiety of, what about the next time they see me? I gotta keep this up? Now you have the fear of them finding out the real you. And worst of all, you experience deep loneliness inside because you don't feel loved for who you are. And I'm speaking from 100% experience on this one. That's the game I played for a number of years. Like, I gotta be this way. I gotta present this way in order to be the, quote, attractive man. And I got responses, you know, because it does work to a certain limited extent, and not for deep relationships either. At least not authentic ones. And then it also created this, like, loneliness inside, this heartache inside. So overcoming that fear of rejection. And at my live events, we have a banner that says, do what scares you until fear has no power to stop you. And that's really what we do there. We help eliminate that fear of rejection. Not by becoming rejection free, where no one rejects you. Good luck with that one. The only way to get zero rejections is to not put yourself out there in any way, shape or form, in any area of life, which to me doesn't really even sound like a life. It sounds just like bare existence. So in order to liberate ourselves, we have to actually confront our fear of rejection and overcome it and then be free. And on the other side of it. That's another thing we do at live events. And of course, you've probably Already gotten from practicing things in this podcast. So what's another reason that people struggle? We have this fear of rejection. And another reason that people struggle is deep down they feel unworthy or unlovable, undeserving of the love and attention of others. And they might have stories about why, or they might not even have stories because sometimes they have a story like, well, I'm not attractive enough or I don't look the right way. So then someone tells them that they're beautiful and they're like, bleh, no, I can't let this in. I'm so uncomfortable. Because it doesn't conform to their identity, which is I'm ugly. And then, you know, swap ugly with any other negative story about yourself. I'm not manly enough, I'm not confident enough, I'm not outgoing enough or whatever. So if someone compliments you on one of those things, you might shrivel up inside and say no. That's how it is. But we also can have a discomfort with receiving love, a sense of unworthiness that's not even based upon a specific story that you can point to because it was formed actually long before then. It was formed non verbally, it was formed unconsciously, often from our upbringing where we just absorb these emotions, we absorb these perceptions of ourselves, our sense of worthiness, our sense of lovability based on how we were treated and how we were responded to when we were young. Hundreds or thousands of iterations over our conditioning and development. And we have no clue where these came from. We don't consciously remember almost all of them. And what we're left with though, is a sense of it doesn't feel right. As soon as love starts to come in, I get squirmy, I get uncomfortable. I just don't feel like I'm worthy of it. And that is another reason why we struggle. And that's something we gotta heal. And that's what I'm writing about my book Omos, which will be coming out, I don't know, soon, end of the year most likely. And also at the live event. Everything I do is about healing that core wound of unlovability, because that's the ultimate source of confidence right there. Because if you can love yourself, you can be on your own side no matter what and really feel lovable no matter what. Not only do you feel way more confident, but boom, your results skyrocket in love, in dating, in relationships, and in everything really socially business. Because you're emitting like your energy is bright. You are bright because you're You. And you're not diminished in that way through that story. So what do you think is getting in the way for you? What are you learning about yourself, about what might be holding you back in relationships? You notice how my answers here are really deep? Probably get that sense about me, right? Like, we go deep. We're not like, well, you gotta do your hair differently. You comb it to the right, you gotta comb it to the left. You gotta stand taller. Like, sure. I don't know, maybe some aspects about your appearance have some effect on your results in dating, but I would say 99% of it is this stuff, this core stuff. And I can say that with 100% certainty because I've seen so many people that I've worked with and have been in our groups and our programs who got into relationships and who started dating and who started feeling a lot more confident in this area of their lives, and everything turned around, and they hadn't changed their hair or their appearance or anything on the outside. They changed on the inside, and then, boom, everything on the outside changed. So I would love to experience this change and watch that happen for you. And again, I'll mention the live event, which is during the super early bird. It's 1 97. Go to shrinkforthshyguy.com, shrinkforthshyguy.com you'll see a big button on the right about live events. Click that. And I cannot wait to see you in Portland. That goes through the end of July is when that special is going through. So I want to jump on that. And you've been listening to this podcast for a while, and you're like, yeah, yeah, this is helping. This is useful. But I don't know about going out there. I get it. You know, it's kind of the next step. But look at this. Tsw. This shit works. What we're doing here in Portland, it works. And of course, we work with people all over the world remotely, but the live events right now are all hosted in Portland for now, and it's worth it. I mean, what is not? What is more worth your time, energy, focus, money, and intention than love and connection and feeling this deep sense of love and worthiness that you can then bring to every area of your life. So the only thing I think that really stops us is fear. And the only way to overcome fear is to face it, to challenge it, and to break through what it's saying we cannot do to get to the other side, which is something that is so much more beautiful than you can even imagine, and I would love to experience that with you. So hope to see you in Portland. In the meantime, let's look at what's getting in the way for you and help release that. Release that fear of rejection. Release that fear of unworthiness. Listen to this podcast, go through my books and find ways to in my YouTube channel. So much stuff. I teach about this to help you heal those core things so you can be you out in the world and know that you're awesome. I'll talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.