Dr. Aziz explains why you feel left out in groups and what actually works: stop waiting for an invitation and insert yourself into conversations. He shares how he learned this in a men's group and why changing your internal rules about socializing matters more than waiting for others to include you.
Hey, Dr. Aziz here. And I want to talk with you today about that wretched feeling of being left out in a group interaction. You probably know the feeling I'm talking about. You're sitting there, there's maybe three of you in a group, and all of a sudden the other two people start talking and they're just like, oriented towards each other. They're chatting back and forth, it's popping, and you feel completely left out, completely third wheel I'm unnecessary area here. And then it starts to feel real bad. And then you kind of recede into the distance. And this can happen in a group of three, a group of five, a group of seven. It doesn't matter. The mechanism is always the same. They're interacting, you're not. You feel left out. Then you feel real bad in yourself. You know that feeling of like, underneath is a sense of like, I don't matter here. They don't want me here. I don't have anything to add here. They don't like me. They like each other more than me. And then you start to feel like shame and inferior and no good. Then it's even harder. I experienced this. Two things would happen. One, I totally collapse in on myself and just either withdraw. Sometimes I just exit the interaction prematurely, like, see you guys later. Sometimes I would just sit there feeling like a fool, and sometimes I would try to overcome it and share something, but I was already so overwhelmed by feeling left out and not good that I'd say something and they'd be like, yeah, that's true. So anyway, and they go back to each other and I'd feel like, see, I knew I didn't matter. I knew they don't want me here, and I just make everything worse. And they keep building on that. So if you've experienced that, then this little video is going to teach you how to break out of that. What's the secret? Well, here's the biggest hitch in breaking out of it. It's what I call your social rule book, and we all have them. It's a social rule book. It's like, this is what's allowed in this. What's not allowed. And my old social rulebook used to say, you can't share information or say things until someone has addressed you. You know, it comes from your training as a kid, where it's like, good children are seen but not heard. And that means don't speak until you've been spoken to. Don't speak up until someone has addressed you and given you permission to speak. This is what we Learn in school. This is what we learn in our families and all and on and on until you. You get to be an adult. And all of a sudden, you can't just blurt things out because you expect that they're supposed to say, well, Aziz, what do you think about that? And then I can give my opinion, but that's not how the world works, and that's not how human interaction works. That's not how the dynamics of conversation works. So the biggest hitch is your rule book that says it's not right for me to speak up unless I've been spoken to you. You have to tear up that page of the rule book and throw it out and. And come up with a new rule, which is this, that you matter. That what you think and what you feel and what you have to say. It matters. It's important. It's significant, not only to you, but to those around you. And that you need to. Here's the new rule. That if you want to be involved in an interaction, then you need to insert yourself into the interaction. And this is something that I had a real hard time learning. I was actually involved in a men's group for three years where we'd show up week after week and talk. And I remember when I first got there, I had the hardest time because no one was inviting me in. There's seven other people in there, and everyone wants to talk about their lives and share. And there I am, and I'm waiting for someone to say, well, Aziz, what do you think? And it never happened. And I got really pissed off. And eventually the leader of the group is like, if you want time and attention, then you gotta claim your time and attention. And the same thing is true in interactions. You can't wait passively for someone to invite you, and you have to step up and just say, hey, I'm going to share something. I'm going to blurt something out. I'm going to ask a question that I'm curious about. Wait, wait. What was that thing you said about your cat? Tell me about that. Or I'm curious about that. Or you volunteer some information. Oh, that's interesting. Oh, I saw that, too. I watched that movie. Actually, that reminds me of this other thing that I saw. And you just kind of insert yourself into the interaction, and if you do it enough and you practice it and you build up the muscle of doing it, then you develop that skill and ability to do it again and again. And the biggest block that you're going to have is not external. It's not the rejection that you think you're going to get, it's internal. It's your fears about what's going to happen. It's the sense of, oh, it's wrong, I'm breaking the rules. And you got to shed that stuff. You just got to practice, practice, practice. Develop that social fitness by just putting yourself in that situation and doing it again and again. And that's how you can break into groups, and that's how you can not feel left out because you can insert yourself into those groups. If you want to learn more about how to do this, I want to inform you of something that I got going on right now, which is actually an Internet radio show called Shrink for the Shy Guy, where I have each week on Wednesdays a new episode coming out absolutely free. You can check it out on itunes or shrinkforthshyguy.com where we're going to go in depth into stuff just like this. How do you break into groups? How do you create friendships? How do you date authentically? How do you excel in business and become a leader in your own life? How do you develop financial confidence? There's so much good stuff that's in that show, including guest expert interviews with leaders in the field of confidence and overcoming shyness and social anxiety. So check it out. It's absolutely free. I'd love for you to participate in that. I have Q and A with listeners. It's really exciting. So go to shrinkforthshyguy.com to check that out. And until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to bring that forward into the world, to stop holding back and to just insert yourself and then create the relationships that you want in your life. I'll talk to you soon.
