Did Your Family Cause Your Social Anxiety?!

Did your family cause your social anxiety? Are they to blame? Is it their fault? You can point the finger at them. Well, actually in this episode you're going to learn how your early life may have contributed to social anxiety and how to be free of that. Now. Welcome to another episode of the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, and this is the show for you if you want to maximize your confidence. And, and if you want to maximize your confidence, the best thing to do actually would be to subscribe to this channel. You can click below, there's a little subscribe button and the bell notification to click and that will let you know when new videos come out. Because the more you immerse yourself in these videos, the faster your confidence is going to grow and the better your life's going to become. Because confidence is the master skill. So let's talk about social anxiety and family because this is a question I had from someone. They were asking like, you know, is this my parents fault? And yeah, yeah. So your early life does contribute to your feelings of social anxiety and other emotions. Now as you're gonna see in this episode, that's not the end of the story. There's more we can do about it. So this isn't like a death sentence. This is just helping you see clearly about what's influenced you in your life. So there are certain ways that our family can relate to us that create more stress, more anxiety and more sense of inferiority. So the core problem around social anxiety, what creates what generates the social anxiety? And I talk about this in my book, the solution to social anxiety is a sense of not enoughness, unlovability, unworthiness. And then from that unworthiness, we have a lot of fear of connecting with others, putting ourself out there because they're going to reject me. So we anticipate rejection, we over anticipate rejection. And then we also have a fear of opening up, fear of showing our real selves because hey, that's apparently unlovable. Now where would you learn that? Well, in a lot of ways from your family. Now I think we're also in the broader context of your culture. And so it's not just your individual family members, but also where you grew up and the messages you receive incessantly from the media. I mean thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of messages about worth that are affecting your whole family, not just you or not just your parents, but everybody. So that's like an underpinning of it all. But then there's also the ways that your parents Relate to you, which can really protect you from some of those negative messages or just make it worse, make you wide open to hear from the media that you suck and then be like, yeah, you're right. Right. Because you haven't had that protective factor from your parents. So how do our parents protect us or make us more vulnerable? Well, it's how they relate to you. And there's little subtle things that parents do, even well meaning parents that communicate things that don't serve the kid. So. So, for example, communicating that someone is worth attention has a big impact on whether you feel significant and worthy of attention now as an adult. So if the, if you're kind of a burden to the parent or they're really busy, they might love you, but they're just so busy all the time. Like, I'm sorry, I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. And then they're trying to. You know, kids develop that sense of significance, like you matter and you're special and stuff. One of the ways they do that is by being observed by their parents. Have you ever seen a little kid be like, watch this, watch this, daddy, watch this, mommy, I'm gonna do this thing. And then the thing they do is objectively probably not that awesome, but if the parent is connected and loving their kid, and they'd be like, yeah, cool. And they're with them and the kid gets fed on that. But if you had family where you weren't fed, you're like, watch this. And they're like, ah, yeah, later. Maybe they weren't typing on a cell phone back then, but now that's what parents are doing. Like, yeah, hold on, let me just send these nine texts. These are more important than you. All right? And that's what's being subtly communicated. So if you parents didn't really seem to be that interested in what you're doing, or worse, you just stopped asking, you didn't say, mom and dad, look at this. Because you knew they were busy or you knew they'd be critical of you. And of course, that even more conveys that you're not worthy, you're not worthy of my time or my attention. And that carries forward to the future, where now you want to share a story about what's going on in your life or an interest that you have. Just a basic thing that you're interested in right now. A hobby, a passion, a challenge. And you're like, oh, I don't want to share that. Why? Well, because it's not going to Be interesting. People aren't going to like it. Do you see the connection of where you might have learned that? And another one, which is super important is shaming you for having feelings. This is the big one. And I grew up a lot with this. And again, my parents loved me. They dedicated themselves to me and my brother in a lot of ways. And it was not an ill intent. It was just maybe a lack of understanding of this emotional intelligence. And so what happens is, you know, kids have feelings, and a lot of the time, parents are like, yeah, feelings. Put those away. Don't feel that. So the kid's angry, and they're like, calm down. Don't do that. Don't hit your brother. Whatever. Or the kid is anxious, and you're like, oh, come on. There's nothing to be scared of. Let's go. Let's go do it. Just get up there. Face your. Come on. You know, and it's like this sort of impatient, maybe trying to help them get through the feeling, but also, like, just get over it is the message that most of us got. And what that creates is a lack of capacity to work with your feelings. And ashamed of having feelings, ashamed of feeling anxious, ashamed of feeling angry, ashamed of feeling sad, ashamed of feeling sexual desire. You know, you might have got heavily shamed for that, directly or indirectly. And so all these things lead to a big ball of shame. And that goes back to the sense of inferiority that's underneath. It's like the root of social anxiety. There's something wrong with me. I'm not enough. Why? Because I have these sexual desires or because I get anxious or because I don't feel confident in myself. And we're afraid to reveal that. We're afraid to. Well, even us acknowledging that is painful and shame inducing. And so, yes, that those messages can contribute to your social anxiety. So what do we do with that? Well, your parents are not gonna be able to help you heal. I mean, maybe you can have a conversation with them. Now, I've seen this happen a lot with clients. Like, I'm gonna go talk to my dad and get him to admit that what he did was shitty. It's like, okay, you know, maybe something's gonna come from that. Probably not, right? It's more like, okay, whatever happened when you were younger parents has now been internalized. And so unless you're still hanging out with your parents and they're criticizing you or whatever, you are doing that to you now, you are invalidating yourself. So you have this interest or this story that you want to share. And then your mind says, oh, that's not interesting. Stop that. Right. Or you're feeling anxious, and your mind's like, you suck for feeling anxious. Who's doing that to you? You. It's like some programming in your mind that's just running itself out endlessly, and it's your responsibility to uproot that and to upgrade that. Well, how do you do that? Well, watch videos on this channel. There's hundreds at this point about how to do that. You can listen to my podcast, Shrink for the Shy Guy. Find it on itunes. You want to go further? You get one of my programs, like Confidence University, to systematically break this stuff down. Become aware of these things and neutralize them one by one. Then you can absolutely heal all those messages you got when you were young. And then you create a new life, and then you create a new experience for your kids when you have them. So you're not just passing, you know, kicking that can along down the generations. Awesome. So share below in the comments below what you noticed, what you're learning about yourself, and we'll all support each other in our growth. So until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.