Breaking The Avoidance Cycle

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. The show to help you break free from social anxiety, people pleasing and self doubt so you can speak up, connect and be 100% you. I'm Dr. Aziz, sharing tools that have transformed my life and thousands of others. Let's all liberate ourselves together. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about breaking the avoidance cycle, which is extremely important if you really want to become more confident and free. You're going to discover what the avoidance cycle is, how it's playing out overall in your life, as well as in specific areas, and what it really takes to shift this. And this is the key because confidence cannot be built while we're in the avoidance cycle. That means your anxiety or your social anxiety, your people pleasing. Any of the challenges that you're wanting to overcome that have brought you to listen to this show will not shift until we break the avoidance cycle. So this is an extremely important episode. I'm so glad that you're here and if this is the first time you're joining me for the show, welcome and maybe this is your hundredth episode, I don't know. But I'm glad to be here with you today. The purpose of this show is to share the most valuable tools and resources that I can for free for you based upon my work of doing this for the last 20 years. And I've been working with clients on this for decades now. And so when I have an insight or see something that's working or not working, like the avoidance cycle, then I come and I share it here each week with you. So if you're benefiting from this show, there are two things you can do. One is please just give it a review on itunes or Apple podcasts or Spotify, wherever you're listening to it, because that helps me reach more people. So if you've been benefiting from these for free and you, you want to contribute in some way, that would be my request and that will help me reach people just like you who might be struggling just like me. You know, this is, this podcast is like to Aziz when he was 18 and just really struggling with the avoidance cycle. Among many other things, low self esteem, self hatred, social anxiety, it was the worst. But it was also the origin, the genesis of the liberation. And that is true for you as well. So no matter how far you are stuck or in the avoidance cycle yourself, no matter how long you've been struggling, that's the key message that I bring in this show and all my work Is this is a changeable pattern, this is a learnable skill. Confidence is a learnable skill. And in this episode you're going to learn a ton about how to do that. And the second thing is, if you want to take things further, then I highly recommend checking out my website, draziz.coM-R-A z I z.com and you can find out about all the things that I offer, including probably the best thing is going to be a deep dive mastermind training with me. It's a year long program to radically change your life. You can find out more about that at the website draziz.com so the avoidance cycle goes like this. We avoid, right? And you might be aware of avoidance. There's real obvious avoidance that is not going and talking to the person, not doing the thing we say we're going to do, right? Whatever the in the moment relief that we get from shying away from the uncomfortable thing, right? That's avoidance. But why is, why are we calling this a cycle, right? Isn't avoidance just a thing that we do? A choice, a behavior? Well, there's something that precedes or comes before avoidance, right? What is there right before avoidance occurs? Can you think of an area in your life? Because this will make this so much more effective. If you think about, oh, if there's someone that I think is really cute and I want to go talk to them and I don't, or I say I'm going to follow through on this work project and I don't, or I say I'm going to put down my phone and I don't. Whatever it is, small or big, could be socially related, could be not. Pick something in your life because then you're going to see the cycle play out for you. So preceding the avoidance choice, which means to move away, is discomfort, right? There's something uncomfortable there. It could be very mild. It could be extreme terror or fear, right? That's very uncomfortable. But it could also just be a mild, like, yeah, sounds hard, sounds a little, I don't like that kind of groany mild discomfort. And here's the thing, the amount of discomfort isn't what determines whether you avoid or not. Ooh, there's secret insight number one we often point to, oh, this thing is really intense, so I avoided it. And face value, that makes total sense, right? Like the harder or more uncomfortable it is, of course, the more likely we're going to avoid it. But actually avoidance has a creeping quality to it where the more you choose it on the really uncomfortable things, the More, you start to choose it on the mild things as well. That's why it's part of a cycle. Descent into essentially a form of weakness right now might be a pejorative term. I'm not. You call me weak, bro. Well, think about this. When it comes to physical avoidance. So if you were to avoid going upstairs and using your body in any significant way, you never hiked, you never exercised, what's going to happen? Well, your cardiovascular and muscle capacities are both going to decrease and you physically become weaker. So your muscles in your legs have a harder time bringing you upstairs. You're huffing and puffing because your cardiovascular system has become weaker. And this isn't a value judgment. This is just a statement of cause and effect or fact. If you don't use the system, it gets weaker. And it's the same thing with avoidance. So then we don't go approach that really scary situation, but we also don't go approach that mild situation. We come up with an excuse. So, ha, ha ha, we're working our way back around the cycle, right? So we have avoidance. What comes before the avoidance is the discomfort, right? There's actually something that goes in between the discomfort and the avoidance, which is our story or our excuse. So when we face the discomfort and we choose to avoid, especially when we really intended to go do it or approach, there's something we tell ourselves. It's a rationalization, it's an excuse, it's a story. Say something like, I don't feel like it right now. I don't want to right now. Maybe I know how it's going to go. It's not going to go well. And so we tell ourselves something that makes avoidance make sense. And that's the key part. It's not a, oh, this is a real bad thing I'm doing. It's kind of like, you know, this makes sense. I've got to take care of myself right now. Or this makes sense. Of course they're not going to like me. Why would I go talk to them, right? And we buy into the story and we avoid. And then here's how the cycle repeats itself after we avoid. In fact, let me share the opposite with you. If you were to go approach, what you do is you test out reality. You have a story in your head. They're not going to like me. I always tell this with my clients, let's go test it out. So you go test it out, and maybe that's true, maybe they don't like you. But also maybe they do. I can't tell you how many thousands of times I've heard from clients over the years, like, oh, I thought it was going to go like this, and it went like that. Wow. Who knew, right? I knew. Not because I'm a genius, but because I see that their identity, their perception of themselves is heavily distorted, skewed towards the negative. You think, I'm a loser. No one's gonna like me. I don't have anything to offer. I'm ugly. I'm this, I'm that. Trust me, I know. I lived in all those stories about myself. It's a very distorted self image. And so I know that if you were to go test it a bunch, you would show yourself that your self image is all wackadoodle. That actually a lot of people might be interested in you or find you attractive or want to date you or want to spend time with you. And I know how convincing it seems that the opposite is a case that you are absolutely unlikable or unworthy in certain contexts. You absolutely couldn't do this thing if you went and tried it. It feels so certain and true. But here's the thing about your certainty. It's not correlated with accuracy. It's just a feeling inside that's actually coming from a part of you called your Safety Police. And if you haven't heard about that, I talk about that a lot on the show and in my books, especially the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. Safety Police is the party that wants to keep you safe, protected, and ultimately live a downsized, defended life, which by the time you get to the end of it is, well, kind of disappointing or downright painful. But hey, at least you avoided the discomfort, right? So I'm probably highlighting something that you already know to a degree and you say, great, I want to change this. That's why I'm listening to this episode. Right. I want to break out of this cycle. Okay, cool, cool. So here's my first question for you. You ready? Do you, do you really? Because what I often find is people want the result. They want the confidence. They want the freedom. They want the girlfriend, they want the money. They want the new career. They want whatever the results of a more confident version of you showing up powerfully in the world's gonna do they want that? Of course. They want the comfort of being. Of having high self esteem and being socially capable and able to talk to anybody. They want all the results, but they don't want to stop the avoidance cycle, so they want to keep avoiding and get the results. Honestly, deep down, they might say no. No, I totally, totally want to do something different. Okay, let's try this small step. I don't know about all that, right? Then the excuses come in harder, faster, louder, more convincing. And you see something pretty fascinating. And you might not see this because you're only operating props with yourself. Maybe you see the people around you, some friends, but I get to see this on an extremely intimate level. Watching people all day long. Not only people that I work with, but people that I talk to who. Who I end up not working with for whatever reason. I don't think it's a fit, or they are like, totally a good fit, totally want to do it. And then avoidance kicks in, even around committing to doing work with me to change this fundamentally. And they just spent a bunch of time telling me about all the challenges and why their life sucks and how they have to fix this. And that of course they're ready, they're motivated. And then at the idea of really stepping up and saying, okay, I'm gonna make these changes over the next 612 months of my life, let's go. Bam. Avoidance kicks in. And if you haven't really started to break that pattern, then the sweep of emotion and overwhelm and discomfort and your incapacity to handle the discomfort, it's just too much. And we can't do it. At least that's what it feels like. And so to really break out of this cycle, we must ground that decision in a choice. And here's the choice. I am willing to feel uncomfortable. That's it. That's it. I'm willing to feel discomfort. I am ready to feel discomfort. I'm going to feel discomfort. Because that is the opposite of avoidance. That's what the avoidance is a strategy to avoid. That's what the avoidance is of. The avoidance is not of talking to people, not of trying to date, not of speaking up in work meetings. It seems like that that's the behavior. See, I'm not speaking up in meetings. I must be avoiding speaking up in meetings. Yeah, but what you're really avoiding is the discomfort, the fear, the anxiety, the uncertainty. And so you've been choosing. Well, I'm speaking you here. Generally, when we are running the avoidance pattern, I don't know what you've been choosing. Maybe you're like, crushing it and you're like, dude, I've been facing my discomfort. I read that whole chapter in not nice about discomfort tolerance, and I'm doing it, man. In which case, awesome, let's keep going, right? But I gotta tell you, most people out there Are not. It's so easy in this era, too. There is an infinite amount of options to numb yourself, to be comfortable, to become more comfortable, right? Oh, man. It's just. Do you want to. And soon it's going to be. You want to put these goggles on your face, these glasses on your face. Do you want to plug this thing into your brain stem and experience to direct? You know, basically, we're not too far off from when they do experiments on rats, when they're doing like a various experience on the brain and neurons and pleasure centers in the brain and trying to identify all this stuff in rats. They did an experiment, or probably many experiments like this, where they put a device that directly stimulates the pleasure centers inside of the rat's brain so they don't have to give it a substance like sugar or cocaine. They don't have to have the rat, you know, put a little lady rat in there so we can have some rat sex. They don't need any of that. Like, let's bypass all that. Let's just give a little zap to whatever system in the. In the limbic system that floods them with pleasure, right? Releases some internal oxytocin and endorphins and whatever. And then they set it up where that little device was on a remote control response to a little. Little platform. I'm trying to think of the word, a little pedal that the rat could push itself. And so imagine you press a button, literally, a little pedal or a button, and you're flooded with great feelings. I mean, that's an internal drug, right? Guess what? The rat pressed it and would not eat it, would not do anything else. And it wouldn't even. They put a little lady rat in there. And I was like, whatever, babe, I got my porn. I mean, my pleasure button, right? And that's what humans are doing. That's what we're doing. We got the phones, the porn, the food delivered to you, rich food, salty fat. Read the book by Mark Moss called Salt, Sugar Fat. If you want to go down that rabbit hole. I mean, stuff that's engineered to stimulate your brain. I mean, there's a whole chapter in that book about the pleasure point where they do extreme nuance levels of research to find the exact combination of sweetness, creaminess, whatever, for like yogurts. Or in this example, they were doing. Or maybe it was ice creams. And they tested, okay, this variety is 3% sweeter, this one's 3% creamier. And they just give it to people again and again and again until they find the exact combination that gets people to eat the most. And of course, you eat it that day. What do you want the next day? More of the same. And this ice cream is the most kind of obvious example. That's why I'm using it. But there's a million different things in this era. And so this choice becomes more and more and more important. Not because I'm telling you this is what you should do. This is because there's a life that you want to live. And trust me, this is coming from a guy who was living a life that was not what he wanted to live a life that was not his own. And it was seeing where that pattern was taking me that led to a dramatic wake up call inside of me that I have to do something different or I'm going to. I'm not going to die in a gutter. You're probably not going to die in a gutter. Social anxiety usually doesn't lead people to dying in gutters. It's not that kind of condition or experience of life. Same thing with niceness. You can actually be quite functional as a very nice person. You can have a lot. You can have relationships, you could be married, you can have kids, you can have a job that you hold for your whole life. Then you retire with a white picket fence and a 401k and 1.5 dogs. Right? You can have it all externally and be dying inside, be disconnected inside, be numbed out inside. Feel like this isn't even my life. I'm awash in regret and depression. I'm trying to manage it with medications and my own drinking, to try to handle the fact that I'm not living my own life fully because I'm living a defended, downsized life to avoid discomfort. And so not because you should, or Aziza's telling you, but because there's something in your soul that's the reason why you're listening to this show, why you're drawn to me. Why? Because it's the same. We are on the same journey. It's a liberation path in life. I want to go beyond what I've done. I want to see what else is out there. I don't want to live a defended life. I want to live an adventurous life of exploration, of connection, of love, of experience, of expressiveness, of authenticity, of being who I fully am in this world. And so that that's what we must choose. And it might seem like, oh, you're choosing discomfort. That's very, you know, David Goggins masochistic. No, you're Choosing temporary discomfort to unlock awesomeness, an extraordinary life. That's a question I would often ask clients. Like, are you willing to be temporarily uncomfortable to create an extraordinary. When you frame it that way, it's hard to say no, isn't it? All right, well, let's find out. Let's turn this into action. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is going to be, well, short and simple here. Let's go do something uncomfortable today. Write me out. I don't know, whatever that might be for you. It could be something physically uncomfortable. Just. It's like a symbol, right? More than an actual specific goal that you're going to move towards. Although it could be like you're going to send an email. Been avoiding and is an important part of an important goal in your life. Could also just be literally getting to a cold shower right now, or reaching out to somebody or putting yourself into the unknown. I'm going to text that person and see if they want to hang out with me. Maybe they won't even reply. I don't know. Something uncomfortable. Physically, socially, emotionally. The conversation you might have been avoiding, whatever, it might be something. Even if it's really small, it's a symbolic gesture that says, enough of this. I'm choosing something else. I'm choosing a different life path. And if you take that small gesture and turn it into a habit or a practice, well, that's a whole different universe. And again, if you want more, if you want guidance and support on this journey, because I know that changing that pattern on our own can be hard. I call it the lone wolf pattern, where we get fired up from, like, a podcast or a book, and then we do some things, but it's hard to sustain. And it's not like a fault of your own. I think it's just, you know, humans. I had one of my mentors a long time ago said that salvation is communal, and I've updated that to say liberation is communal. Communal means, you know, in community, in. In groups, like we. It's very hard to do this solo alone, and so there's no shame in that. I could not be where I am had it not been for groups and training and coaching and mentorship. So if that's something you're drawn to, Definitely go to drzeze.com we were making some amazing updates to the Mastermind program just coming out this summer, and that I'm going to be sending some things to my email list about and having a special summer promotion for it as well. So it's a phenomenal time to really take control and really put yourself in an environment that ensures that the results become inevitable, because that's a proven pathway and a system to really get those results. So that speaks to you. Go check it out on the website. You can apply on the website and all applications are reviewed. And then if it seems like it's a potential fit, then we take it to the next step. So thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level 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 com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.

Com.