Changing The Way You Think (Part 1)

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon, welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy, helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Hey.

Welcome to another episode of Shrink for.

The Shy Guy, the show that's dedicated to helping you break free from whatever shyness, social anxiety, self doubt, social fear is blocking you, you from stepping up in the world, from taking on the next big thing, whether that's a new project, a new career, moving to a new city, making new friends, starting a new relationship. Wherever you're stuck, wherever you're held back, wherever you're doubting yourself. This show is designed to help give you the tools and resources to break free of that. And in the spirit of that, today's episode is all about changing the way you think. This is an incredibly powerful concept to get. Once you understand that you can change, you have the power to change the way you think, then your entire life can change, because you can change. If you can change the way you think, then you can change your beliefs, you can change what you're able to do, you can change the actions that you take in the world, and you can change how you feel about situations. It's incredibly powerful, incredibly useful skill to develop. In fact, when I'm working with a client, or even before we start to work together, once I get a sense of what they're facing or what their challenges are, I will share with them that there are two things that they must be willing to do in order to overcome whatever fears are holding them back. And that if they're willing to overcome these two fears, then in my opinion, success is inevitable. But if you're not willing to do these two things, then it's unlikely that you're going to get what you want. It's unlikely you're going to be able to overcome social fear. It's unlikely you're going to be able to be bold or big in the world. And here's what they are. And one of them relates to exactly what we're talking about today. The first thing you have to be willing is to be wrong. You have to be willing to be wrong. That means you have to be willing to acknowledge that perhaps the way you see the world, a belief you have about yourself or other people, maybe even the thoughts that pass through your mind about a certain social situation, that you could be wrong. You could be dead wrong, you could be mistaken, you could be misperceiving. And I find when we're stuck in that place of wanting to be right, of wanting to maintain Our perspective at all costs. Like, no, this is how it is. This is how it is for people. Then we're lost. I had one guy who wanted to work with me, and he was sharing about some of his experiences. And he was highly successful in several areas of his life and his career and other things. However, when he got outside of work, when it came to his social life, he was struggling. And one of the challenges was he didn't have close friends, he didn't have a girlfriend, he didn't have a partner, he didn't have lovers. He was lonely, and he wanted to reach out and he wanted to meet people. And he was a powerhouse at work. He could get things done, but he didn't really have too many friends at work. You know, he was the guy who got things done. But when it came to going to social events and gatherings, he'd have a lot of social anxiety, a lot of fear that held him back. And so when I asked him about these events, I could hear in him a challenge with this first thing to be willing about, to acknowledge that he was wrong. It was sort of like, this is how it is. You know, when I get to a party, if I don't know anyone, that's going to be incredibly awkward. There is such a certainty in his voice. If I don't know anyone at a party, that's going to be incredibly awkward. And notice the language. It's not. I feel awkward. I experience anxiety at a party. It's. It is awkward. Implying that this is just how it is. And we went through the whole night, you know, imaginary hypothetical party night, and. And thing after another, it was like, oh, am I supposed to sit on the couch and turn to someone and just say, well, how are you doing today? My name is blank, and that's ridiculous. I couldn't say that that is out of the question. So there was so much certainty in him that I actually told him at the end of our conversation. I said, well, I think you have a tremendous. I think you have a tremendous capacity to grow and connect in these ways that you want. However, you have to be willing to be mistaken to be wrong. And we ended up having a very interesting discussion about that. So that's what I'm introducing to you today, is we're going to be looking deeper into changing the way you think. In this episode and the next one, we're going to be doing an interview with Brad Pendergraft, who is an incredible master practitioner of nlp. And if you don't know what NLP is, you will during the interview, master of language, of changing the way you perceive the world by looking at your mindset and shifting that and changing your thoughts. It's masterful. But if you're not willing to be wrong, then you resist at all. You say, no, this is how it is. And even though it is crappy and I'm stuck and I'm lonely and it's painful and I'm suffering, at least I know how it is and no one's going to tell me otherwise. And we get that small hit of significance of at least feeling right for a little while. So I encourage you to let go of that for this episode and the next one to start to be questioning and be curious about your thoughts and about your mind. And just in case you're curious, the second thing that I require people to be willing to do in order to work with them and because I believe it's a necessity for change, is you have to be willing to eventually do the very things that you're scared of. Talking to that person at the party, going to that party alone, interacting with that person you don't want to. Now there's a way to do that systematically and compassionately so you're not just beating your head against the wall. But eventually there's some measure of challenging your fears that's required. So that's what today's gonna be about. How to question your thinking, how to change the way you think. So we're gonna get into that in a minute in depth with our interview with Brad. But before we do, I wanna take a moment to share something really fascinating that's gonna help you realize that you do have the power to shift the way you think. You do have the power to shift shyness and social anxiety. And then you're not stuck.

In fact, this is something that I.

Often say, and if you've heard an earlier episode, I'm sure you've heard me say this, that social anxiety is not something that you're just born with and stuck with forever. It's actually a pattern that you can shift. And I want to share a story today that recently just came out from Social Neuroscience, so a legitimate peer reviewed journal that talks about the genetic underpinnings of social anxiety and what it means. And, and this is really empowering information that's coming out right now. So let's take a moment to check out today's top story.

Today's top stories.

A study recently came out in Social Neuroscience that talks about some research done by a fellow named Scott Stoltenberg. And here's a breakdown of the research. So there's this gene they discovered called 5ttlpr triallelic, and the name is not very important. But this gene, they say, has been linked to social anxiety. And they were trying to find out how. And it turns out this gene affects the amygdala, which is a part of your brain deep, deep in the emotional centers of your limbic system that is monitoring the world for threats, that is keeping you aware, say, of that car passing by, or back in ye olden times, some sort of predatory animal. That part of your brain is attuned to that and is ready to deal with that. So the people with this particular gene activated are more sensitive to threats, and this included social threats. And if you're scared of social threats, what do you have? You have social anxiety, social fear. So you might be hearing that first part and saying, aha. See, I knew my problem was genetic. I was just born with a 5 httlp tri allelic. And that's all she wrote. But hang on, this is what is further in the article and what Stoltenberg himself says, the guy who did this research, he said he wanted to be very clear that this gene does not cause social anxiety. He said in a statement, quote, we're not talking about any sort of disease state or disorder. There are many other genes, as well as environmental factors in life experiences that influence social anxiety. In addition, and here's the most fascinating part, in addition, many people in the study had that gene dominant and did not have social anxiety. So this to me really highlights the reality that, I mean, yes, we're incredibly complex and there are so many genes that are activated and turned on and dominant, recessive that make up who we are. But that's not all. She wrote that two people could have the same gene dominant and one person could have social anxiety and one person could not. And what's the difference? Well, people might say there's a strong component of the environment. In fact, there's a whole field of genetics called epigenetics where they look at, well, how does the environment determine what genes are actually turned off and on? And more and more research is showing that it's not just this is what you come into the world with and that's how you are no matter what, that it actually strongly influences. Well, was your home environment safe growing up? Did people help you learn how to soothe and calm that sense of threat in your overactive amygdala? And again, if the answer to that is no, you're still not doomed it's not like, well, dang, I had that gene turned on and I had a rough childhood, so I'm toast. No, the reality is you can always change your patterns and that the only thing that stops you from beginning that process is the belief that you can't do it. And that's why I keep coming to that again and again. And that's the first thing I want you to change your thinking around. And it's going to open you up a lot more to receive the benefits of what Brad has to say in this interview. Because if you're stuck in the place of I can't change the way I think, then it's going to be really hard to really benefit from what he says. But if you are open to it, then there's no end to how much you can shift your experience from being shy and stuck and afraid of being vulnerable and lonely to being connected and joyously relating to deep friendships and relationships. So if you want to learn more about that, just go to Google. And the name of the full article is Afraid to Help. Social anxiety partially mediates the association between five httlpr triallic genotype and prosocial behavior. That is a mouthful, but it's pretty big on the interweb, so you could find that. So we're going to take a brief break right now, and then we're going to get into this interview with Brad, which, I mean, if you can, I would suggest even getting a sheet of paper and a pen or opening up a document file on your computer because he shares so much powerful information about how to change your internal experience away from social anxiety, to want a more confidence that it's worth writing these things down so you can actually apply them. So stay tuned. We're going to be back in just one moment with that interview. Hey, Dr. Aziz here, and I want to take a second to commend you for listening to this podcast. By listening to this, it shows me that you are taking your life and your destiny into your own hands. When I started to do that over 10 years ago, everything shifted in my life. And what helped me more than anything else was to learn about shyness and how to overcome it. And starting with reading books. And I read a lot of books.

Some of them were pretty good, but.

I felt they lacked a real, authentic look at the challenges facing men who are shy. So I decided to write one. It's called the Solution to Social Anxiety, and it lays out in clear, simple language what causes us to feel anxious and more importantly, what we can do about it it's full of powerful tools, key insights and illuminating stories from my own journey and from the journeys of the clients I've been working with over these last years. It's an honest look at social anxiety from the inside out. I truly believe it can help you.

On your path towards greater social confidence.

And I strongly encourage you to pick.

Up your copy today. You can get it on Amazon.com and paperback or Kindle.

And you can go to Social Anxiety.

Solution to find out more.

That's socialanxietysolution.com.

Expert Interview.

So welcome back.

We have our interview with a guest today, Brad Pendergraft. And I'm particularly excited about talking with Brad because I've had dozens of conversations with Brad and I feel like there are so many different ways that I can engage with him. But one thing I haven't talked about with him a whole lot is shyness and social anxiety. And I just from what I know about Brad, I'm willing to bet he has a wealth of knowledge to share in this subject. Brad is a licensed clinical social worker and he's been licensed for over 20 years. He can probably give me the exact number of how many, but well over 20 years. And he's done a wide variety of work as a therapist. He's worked with NYPD officers who are experiencing PTSD after 9 11. But in addition to being a therapist, he's also a businessman, an entrepreneur. So a very well rounded individual. And he's helped build a multi million dollar international mental health crisis response company. And as if that's not enough, he's also a certified master practitioner of NLP and clinical hypnotherapy. And for those of you who are not familiar, NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic programming, which is something that we're going to be getting into in our interview today. It's a fantastic healing and transformation modality that can really help people overcome a lot of challenges including anxiety and shyness. And one other thing about that is.

If you are familiar with nlp, there's.

A wide range of ways that someone might become certified as a practitioner of that on the lower end ranging from Internet course or something. But Brad has been actually working with Steve Linder, who's one of the top NLP trainers in the country, who's worked with Tony Robbins. And every time I talk to Brad, he's either just finishing something with Steve or about to start something new and has just an incredible depth of experience with this. So I think we're incredibly fortunate to have you on the line with us today. Brad, thank you for joining us.

Well, thanks for being here. I'm really looking forward to it. Great.

So let's just jump into the first question, which is kind of broad, but I think you have really unique perspectives on mental emotional challenges that people face. So I want to ask you broadly, what do you think social anxiety is?

It probably won't surprise you that I have a little bit of a, of an unusual take on that. You talked a little bit about my NLP background. And as you know, for the last couple years I've been particularly focusing on the brain and looking at brain based therapies and the amazing research that's coming out of neuroscience and really looking to use practical neuroscience with clients. And so when I think of social anxiety these days, I use what I call a brain frame for it in almost anything else. So first thing then I'd say is I would tend not to use the label social anxiety. But here's what I think's going on when people, for what people. So I'll use air quotes around social anxiety.

Sure.

Even though it's obviously an accepted and established term. But here's what I think people. What's happening when people think what I think it is is first, it's a overreaction of the sympathetic nervous system. So firing off simplistically, let's just call it the fight or flight response, that is firing off in circumstances of personal interaction or social interaction. Additionally, that by itself would not be enough to accomplish what I think people refer to as social anxiety. The second thing that's going on is an interpretation of those physical sensations and people are labeling those sensations, oh, look, I'm anxious, I'm upset, I'm panicking, I'm shy, I'm doubtful. So to accomplish the social anxiety from my perspective, I think it requires first a brain response, response basically of you could even call it a fear response in a social situation. And a labeling of the physical sensations of increased heart rate and the little fluttering in the stomach that people often have and the itching on the hands, that's the precursor to little sweaty hands, the labeling of that as anxious or panicking. That's what I think. Social anxiety, as you can tell, I'm thinking about it in a certain sense from a behavioral description and then thinking about it from a physiological, the facts about what's happening in the body.

And do you have a sense of what might cause that fear response, a sympathetic response in the first place?

Yeah, I do. And that's actually another really interesting thing that there are Two ways to answer that question. So I'll get fancy here for a moment and then kind of break it down. I'd say we want to distinguish between the initial cause and the proximate cause. So the initial cause is what people are often asking for when they say, well, how did that start? Or why am I having this? And the proximate cause is the. How is it occurring now? What's driving the process at any particular moment? And this actually goes into one of the things I think is going on with a lot of emotional issues for people, but certainly for social anxiety or shyness, is that the original cause, the way that it happened initially, is not at all what's driving the process now that these things become habitual, becomes a habit. And so the initial cause is very likely a set of experiences where people learn that in almost always in childhood, that learn in certain circumstances that there's a sense of threat or challenge or. Well, threat's the best word. And just coming back to that, there's a sense of threat in certain situations. And that gets, again, simplistically speaking, that gets wired in to a neural network where there's a connection made between the experience of being around people and the experience of feeling threatened, feeling either emotional or physical threat, and most commonly, emotional threat. So I think that's how it happens, so to speak, that people start to learn it. And then what's happening now in terms of proximate cause is that that's become habitual. And it's been driven by the way I. The way I described it. It's been driven by the interpretation of that experience, such that. And I think a lot of people think this is true of most of what would be called anxiety disorders, that very often people now are afraid of the physical experiences themselves. They're afraid of getting afraid, they're anxious about getting anxious.

Yeah, I know that one's particularly interesting in social anxiety is that there's a sense of, if people knew I felt anxious, they would think even less of me, and there's more fear about that particular experience.

And, gee, that's not a very calming thought process, is it?

No, it's actually.

Which leads to another question I had for you, because I think this might be from your NLP background, but I remember you telling me one time you said, aziza, people just aren't depressed, they're doing depression. And I would love for you to say what you mean by that, particularly when it comes to, say, being socially anxious. Like, how is someone doing social anxiety?

If it applies in that way, it absolutely applies. And I'll tell you that what I'm about to give you is what I consider to be a map or a framework. And just a tiny tangent that I think will help our listeners get a better understanding of how I'm thinking about these things, is that I think that any of the different frameworks that we bring to them, either clinical orientations or philosophical approaches, or even spiritual approaches, it's really useful to think of these as maps to the experience that even the internal experience, I think it's better for people to realize that their own map, their own interpretation of what's happening, is always affecting what they experience. So that this is one of the things about the brain, that the brain being what we call a self organizing system, meaning that whatever we've already thought, experienced, believed that is there as we experience reality, any experience we have right now, it's there and it actually interprets our experience and guides the brain to what to pay attention to and how to prioritize it and how to connect it so that we're never working with a blank slate. But then as soon as that experience has happened, now that experience, of course, is part of the experience in there, the self organizing system. And so now the next experience is filtered through that one as well. So we're always filtering it. And one of the big filters that we're using is the maps, the framework, the way we think of what's going on. And so I'm going to offer what I call a brain based map. And it can be really useful to look at these different ways of thinking things and think of them as complementary ways to do it. So like a cognitive behavioral therapy approach, I'd think of as a CBT map. It's like, well, what does that map say about what's likely going on here? Or what's a psychodynamic map? I don't happen to endorse anyway, it's kind of psychodynamic approach. And yet it's still helpful for me to look and say, hmm, what would that map say about this? Because if all the maps say, to push the metaphor here, if I look at a whole bunch of different maps and they all say there's something at this location, the likelihood is there is something at that location. Even if some of them say it's a mountain and some of them say it's a, it's a gorge and some of them say it's a drop off, they may disagree about the explicit things, but I think there's something there. So, all right, so why did I say all that? Well, to think about the idea of doing social anxiety comes from a approach, a framework or a map that looks at all of our experience, including our emotion, as results that we are accomplishing. And right up front, if you're going to bring that map to the table, you have to say, hey, this is a different kind of map. It's not looking at the same things you're looking before. Because obviously, from a person's perspective, it doesn't feel like we're doing anxiety. It doesn't feel like we're doing excitement. It feels like these emotions happen to us. But this map has explanations for why it feels that way and explains that in such a way that thin would argue that it's a helpful map to say, whatever emotional results you're getting to think of them as results, especially when you can get them pretty reliably, say, hey, look at me, I can reliably and consistently get the result of becoming anxious in this situation with people. Hey, well, if that's the case, once you start thinking about it as a result, then it does two things. First of all, just by doing that, it changes the way it feels. And then secondly, it starts to give some new perspective or information about what you would do about it if you're thinking, well, it's not that I just get anxious. It's that reliably I apply certain approaches, I do certain internal experiences such that I get the result of these physical sensations that I have been calling anxious.

And can you say a little more about the things that someone might be doing, the internal things that they might be doing?

You bet. And you'll notice that I did a couple things in that sentence. I focused on the things, and then I also focused on the way that those internal, I like to call them strategies. Those internal strategies result in sensations that the person has been labeling. Because in a moment, if we have a chance to tell you a story about the way in which the labels and the sensations get tied together as if they're the same, but they can actually be separated. And as soon as you separate them, the person's experience can really change. But let me answer your question. The question was, what are the kind of internal processes that might result in an emotion like anxiety? There are a series of them that are like the big dogs. There's a whole bunch of little ones that can affect it. But there are a couple of processes that if anybody wants to change the results that they had been getting, the first thing they'd focus on is, in fact, that what we focus on or where our attention is, is a key mediator between the world and our brain. Well, what does that mean? What it means is that our attention or our focus determines the experiences that we have of the world. There's always only so much that we can consciously process from all the information we're getting. There's some estimates that we're processing 2 to 4 million bits of information per second in our brain. Our conscious mind, as a lot of people know, generally can hold in mind maybe five, seven plus or minus two bits of information. You can chunk those in a way that maybe we can get about 100, 133 bits a second consciously. That's being affected in some way or another. Which leaves all those millions of bits to be processed by the non conscious part of our brain that's processing our right now. It's keeping your blood flowing and your lungs breathing and your spleen spleening. Right. It's doing all that stuff, whatever that organ does. Exactly. But it's doing all that and paying attention and processing it all the time. So our focus, our attention is one of the primary things that determines which of those bits of information comes in at any particular time. So the same experience focused on, paid attention to in a different way is very different. Now this is true. Well, one of them is context. We might think of context as, oh, well, no, that's just the way it is, but, but it's not true. Let me ask you a question. So let's suppose that right now you're having a really sharp pain in your back. Okay? A really sharp pain in your back. How likely is it that you'd be saying, wow, that really hurts. Oh, that's so good. I'm so glad that I'm feeling that. How likely is it that you'd be.

Saying that, well, it hasn't happened yet in my life, so pretty unlikely.

So I'm going to argue that actually it's happened a whole bunch of times. Because what if that is happening during a massage and the massage therapist's arm or elbow. Right. Then is pushing in your back. Right. Same physical sensation, different context, and they're different focus, different attention. And so you experience that pain is completely different, even though it can be pretty painful sometimes. Right. So back to what are some of the internal processes that determine the creation of an emotion that I would call doing social anxiety? I'd say what we're focusing on is paying attention to is one of the very first things. And then there are three primary internal processes. One is, what are we saying to ourselves about it. And not only what are we saying, but how are we saying it. The internal dialogue, how we say things matters. That internal voice of oh, yeah, Is it very different experience than oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, right. That even internally you can have the effect of tone and pace and all the things that we use our internal voice. Sometimes people say, my thoughts are racing. Right. Well, what does that mean? That just means that internally their internal voice is really fast. And they associate that with feeling anxious. And for most people, it doesn't occur to them to say, oh, well, then maybe then I'll slow down my internal voice. Because you actually can. You can take manual override of your internal voice through doing things like speeding it up first and then slowing it down. And as you slow down, just practice seeing each word, the actual physical, like the spelled word, like seeing it rolling across your visual field before you allow yourself to think it. And the thought processes start to slow down. And when people do that, they almost always find that there's a sense of calm that comes to them. And all they've done is take control of one of these processes, in this case, the inner voice.

And what's an example of how someone might take control of that focus? Let's say they're in a social situation and they're say just have introduced themselves or just started a conversation with someone, and then all of a sudden they're focused on the other person and perhaps interpreting the other person as being disapproving or judging them.

That is all the time that we have for the interview for today. We're going to get into the second half of that interview with Brad in the next episode, which is even more important and revelatory than the first. In fact, he's going to go in depth into how you can shift your focus in a deep and powerful way. More ways to learn how to shift your focus, which, as you know, can shift the way you feel, what you experience. And he shares a number of techniques and some very powerful stories. So stay tuned next week for that episode for the rest of that interview. And in the meantime, before we wrap up today, there's always one thing we gotta do, which is your action step.

Time for action.

All right, so here's what we're gonna do with the action step. We're related to the interview.

Some of the stuff you just heard.

With Brad, and that is, I love the way that he phrased social anxiety as a result. So that's the first question I want to ask you, is what results have you been getting in your life, especially your social life. And then here's where we get into the action part. What actions? That means things that you do or do not do. Because not doing something, holding back, staying quiet, that is an action. Inaction is an action. So what actions, things that you've done or do not do are leading to the results that you're getting? And what could you do differently in a social situation or around your confidence? What could you do differently? And then here's the action part. Pick one thing. You know, you might come up with five or something like that, but just pick one and do it. Doing one is much more important and significant than thinking of five or ten. Oh, I should try that. Or I could try that. Or maybe that would work. No, just pick one and do it. That's your action stat for today. And we're going to get more into.

That interview next week.

We're also going to get more in depth into how to change the way you think. I'm going to give you a brief introduction into some of the most fundamental pieces of what's called cognitive therapy. And you're going to learn the top three ways we distort our thinking. The top three thinking errors that you, I guarantee, are making on a daily basis, because we all do that are really contributing to social anxiety, to fear, to self doubt. And then when you learn these things, you're going to learn how to break free of them. So we're going to jump into that and the rest of the interview in the show next week. So stay tuned and until we speak again, know that you're awesome.

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 shrinkforthyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com. Sam.