Escaping The Web Of Guilt

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 today's episode of the show. Yeah, good to be with you here and I'm excited to share something with you that actually just came up last night. I was leading a mastermind call and one of the themes that emerged in that call was guilt. Oh, yes, guilt. And so if that's something that comes up for you, some people just live in a world of guilt, kind of chronically feeling like they're letting others down, bad about themselves, not doing enough or. The way it came up in the. In the group was around boundaries. And so one of the biggest obstacles to having a boundary is not necessarily that they're gonna yell at me and it's all gonna go awful. That might be a fear too, but one of the main fears is actually how you're gonna feel afterwards. And it's the guilt. Oh, the guilt. And so if you say no to that person, maybe they don't say anything. Maybe they maybe make a passive comment or a critical comment or just go quiet. Maybe they don't even reply. And then, you know, oh, look, no explosions. No, my friend, there are explosions, but they're inside, in my guts, right? It's oh, the guilt hurting them. So I'm excited to help you shift this. Just like we were doing last night in the Call and last week I was talking about my upcoming virtual event and I said there's gonna be a link in the description and there wasn't. So my apologies on that. We are actually putting the finishing touches on the page for that and that'll be coming out like this week. Depends on when you're listening to this episode. But. So basically very soon you'll be able to sign up for Supremely Confident Conversation Master. But the event is on October 10th through 12th virtual, so you can join from anywhere. I'll talk about it next week when we have the link and everything up and ready down below in the description. But you just want to pencil the dates in. Trust me, you're not going to want to miss it. And man, there's going to be some brand new stuff, new ways I'm teaching how you can feel interesting, know that you bring value into any social interaction and then have the skills to easily keep conversations going without having to worry about or feel awkward. Or run out of things to say. So I am super excited to share these tools and skills with you. And we're not just going to talk about them. We're going to practice in real time, as at all my events. So stay tuned for that. And if you. If you're not on my email list, that's a great way to find out about the Early Bird special and other stuff. So stay tuned for that next week. This week, the web of guilt. Yay. Everyone's favorite topic. And why do I call it the web? Because it really feels that way. You know, there's a few different metaphors or ways this metaphor applies. But, you know, obviously, if you've ever seen a spider web and there's a little bug trapped in there, right, it's all wrapped up and it's stuck and it can't move, it can't fly free. And that's one thing that guilt does to us. And another reason why I think the metaphor of a web is fitting is because there's so many different strands, and a lot of those strands were not even consciously aware of. And that's what today's episode is going to be powerful in, helping you see some of these strands, because the more you see them, the more you can, you know, imagine the bug that sees the web and doesn't fly into it. Or did you know that there are certain types of insects that are resistant to the stickiness of spider webs? In fact, spiders themselves are able to walk on their webs and they don't get stuck. So is it possible for you to experience someone trying to guilt trip you or saying something like, oh, you don't want me to come, huh? And not take the bait, not get stuck in the web? The answer is yes. And I want to show you how in this episode. You ready? Okay. First things first. What creates the guilt? I think that's really important to see what creates the. The guilt. Now, you might say, well, saying no to the person, or that person feeling sad or disappointed or upset or angry at me or whatever triggers the guilt. Yeah, no, it might seem like that that might be the external event, but it doesn't actually trigger the guilt inside of you. And let me give you proof of this in your life, because let's say someone came up to you and said, you know what? I think you owe me. Let's say they don't know you're at a restaurant or something. Someone comes up to you and says, hey, you know what? You owe me. You're like, what? You owe me your Dinner, the one you just ordered that hasn't come yet. I want you to give it to me and be like, do I know you? Did I lose a bet or something? Who are you? And then they're like, well, no, you don't know me, but I think it's fair, you know, I don't have the money to buy a fancy dinner like you, and you should give me your dinner, the whole thing and the appetizer, too. Would you feel super guilty there saying no? Of course. If you're a super, super, super duper D. Peter T. Cooper, nice person, then maybe you do, right? Anyone? No one can be upset with me for any reason, but most of us would be like, dude, why are you talking to me? Can you leave me alone? Like, to eat my meal in peace? Because what's going on there? They're upset. They wanted something from you. They're disappointed and angry or sad. But you don't feel guilty. Why? Because you're a heartless, monster animal sociopath. That's why. Next question. No, because you probably don't think that they. You should give them your meal. Right? In other words, another way to say this, and this is gonna be very important phrasing when it comes to real situations in your life where you feel guilty in your experience or in your world, or, I like to say, in your reality, you don't owe a random stranger the dinner you just ordered, right? Might be nodding your head like, yeah, does he? Is. Where are we going with this? Well, because what triggers the guilt is not the other person's upset. It's you inhabiting the same reality as them in which the thing you did is wrong. See that? So that is what makes the difference between getting caught in the web and getting and just sailing on right by. Or dancing on it for a minute to aggravate the spider and then flying away, right? You buying into it. So let me give you a real practical example from your life. Let's say someone asks you for something. Hey, can you meet up with me on Friday? Or I'd love to spend some time with you. Or, oh, you're doing that thing. Can I come too? And then, for whatever reason, you tune in with yourself. You ask yourself, what do I want? Key question. If you haven't read the book, not nice. Check it out. It's the MVP question of that book. What do I want? Then you ask yourself, do I really want to spend time with this person? To me, what do I really want here? And let's say when you ask yourself that question, you Pay attention to yourself. You're curious about yourself. You treat yourself like someone that you love. You say, you know, I'd rather not because they're not really into the thing that we're going to, and they're going to be kind of bored when we're there. Or. I just came up in my life just recently. I'm going to go visit some friends I haven't seen in quite some time in a couple weeks. And one of them is like a super mega ultra runner. And he said, oh, yeah, I'm going to do a run in the morning before we meet up. And he's like, just a, you know, casual tempo. Run 15 miles. Okay? Now, I really love running with him and I would love to run with him, but I probably cannot do it at the speed that he does it. There's. There's no way, right? But I could. I could gut out the 15 miles. And so I messaged him. I was like, hey, I'd love to join you for that run. Just wanted to check in, you know, do one. He's got a family and a bunch of young kids and stuff. Like, hey, do you want that time for solo time? Or also if you, you know, have your training for something and you want to hit certain times on the run, you know, no worries, we can run some other time on the weekend or whatever and we'll see what he says. But let's say he says no. Well, then I don't show up and I'm never his friend again. What a jerk, right? No, I want him to say no if he doesn't want that, because he doesn't mean he doesn't like me, doesn't mean that we're not friends. It means he has his own needs and desires, right? He's training for something or he needs. I get it. I need. I'm an introvert and I need solo time in my life. You know, if I'm spending a whole weekend with friends and I just was with my family and I might want an hour or two out in the. In the woods to myself, right? So it's about you honoring your needs and that's what you'd want for someone else, right? That's what you want for someone you love. That's what I want for a friend. That's what you want. If you have children, that's what you want for them. But we often don't give that to ourselves. So you listen to yourself and let's say you say, you know what, I don't really want to spend the Time with that person. You might offer something else. You might say, well, I don't know about that Saturday thing, but, hey, let's go meet up for whatever on next Thursday. Because you do actually like the person. You just don't want to do that thing with them. So you send that message. And even before they reply, what happens? Well, all right, it's time to pull out the sword, the dagger, and then, okay, shove that into my chest. I'm so bad. I'm so selfish. I'm so wrong. I'm so bad, right? And it's like machinery that just fires off. And we think it's because we said no, but it's not. So what's happening to create the guilt? That was a question I asked. Being this episode, right? Here's what's happening. Here's the great reveal. If we go underneath the surface one, you are imagining that that person is really hurt, upset, disappointed, or distraught right? Now, they may or may not be. I'm not saying that they're not. But first, before we even hear a reply, we're feeling guilty, and they haven't even said anything, right? So we are imagining that they feel some of those things, right? Because if you are imagining, they got the text like, oh, cool, I don't really want to go that bad. Anyway, that's cool. Let's meet up next Thursday. That sounds better to me. Would you still feel guilty? And they're like, oh, that's great. Have a good time on Saturday. I'd love to see you next Thursday. That sounds better to me. Anyway, they're happy about it. They got something else they're gonna do on Saturday. Do you feel guilty? Probably not. You're probably like, okay, cool, Sweet. That worked out well. So we feel guilty because, one, you're imagining that they're distraught, upset, and really hurt. And this is one. You could just be imagining it. Let's say, you know, like, no. They texted me back and said, oh, you know, why are you so selfish? Now, this is rare that a friend might do that, but they might try to, you know, manipulate or guilt you into it. A family member might. Your mom. I don't know. Maybe romps don't like that, but. Right. Oh, I guess you don't want to spend time with your poor old mother on Saturday. Fine. You go live your life. After all, I. I birthed you. All the work I did to bring you into this world and raise you, that's fine. Just cast me aside, right? She doesn't say all that, but she implies it anyway. So let's say that the person you're imagining it or they actually said it, they're very distraught. They might say, well, if they said it then I really have to feel guilty. Not necessarily. And in fact, whether they say it or you're imagining it, the guilt can be the same. And oftentimes what we're imagining is worse. Or they say something mild like, oh, bummer, okay, yeah, let's meet up on Thursday. And you know, they're not expressing massive upset and disappointment and distraughtness, but they don't need to because you can imagine it. You can. Oh, they're not showing me how distraught they are. They're really trying to feeling awful inside. Okay, so then we go to step two in this guilt machinery. And that you step into a reality, maybe it's theirs, maybe it's some made up one. That you are responsible to protect people from all pain and discomfort. Now you know what they call this reality? Insane. O land. You are responsible to protect people from all pain and discomfort. Now you don't think of it this way. What often someone will tell me is like, wow, I'm hurting them, I'm hurting their feelings. Or they're gonna feel so disappointed. I'm really hurting them. Right. Is that how it shows up for you? But if that is using language that implies that you're going over to harm somebody. Right. To hurt somebody would be, I'm going to take this bat and I'm going to bring it to their temple. Let's go. Right. Because they owe me money. Or you are going to say something really, you know, what's wrong with you? I'm angry, I'm going to blame you. I'm going to call you names, I'm going to say, oh, you're effing idiot and you don't know anything and you know you're in a fight with somebody. Right. Those might be intense to cause pain or to hurt somebody, we might do it, we get angry, we lose our cool. But that's very different than tuning into what you want or don't want and communicating it respectfully, maybe even warmly or lovingly. And so you can run it through a little test to see if you're in healthy reality or you're in bizarro insano reality. Healthy reality is did I communicate what I wanted or didn't want? Authenticity. Right. Was I authentic and did I do it respectfully? Because maybe you want to say it in a way that feels warm or respectful. Great. And respectful doesn't have to mean gushing with like, oh, I love you so much and I really want to spend time with you on Saturday. Oh my God. I'm so sorry. But I just. No, no, just. Hey. Oh, that sounds. That sounds fun. I don't think Saturday's gonna work. Maybe you have a reason, maybe you don't. I'd love to see you on Thursday. Like, that's respectful. That's it. Not over the top. Not apologetic. You haven't done anything wrong. That's a healthy reality. In the insane reality, you must bend over backwards, not be authentic. Sacrifice what you really want. Fall on the sword, be a martyr. Try to please everybody to make sure that they don't feel disappointed. And guess what? They could still feel disappointed because you spent time with them on Saturday, but then you weren't really upbeat because you don't really want to be there. Or you spent time with them on Saturday, but. And then you needed to go at 3pm and they wanted to stay till 7pm and have dinner together. And they're disappointed, right? Well, you should stay and have dinner with them. Okay, well, then you should sleep over. Well, then you should get married. You should just marry the person because that's what they want. You should have kids with them too. You don't want to disappoint anybody. This might sound crazy, but I've talked to some people who lived in Insano Land for going on a couple of decades now, and their life is a reflection of that. They're with a partner they don't want to be with. They had children with a partner they didn't really want to have kids with them. They're living in a place they don't want to live. There's so many things stacked upon, like bad choice after bad choice because the choices are not coming from their authentic self. They're coming from this weird bizarro reality where I'm trying to not have anyone feel anything uncomfortable. And then once we buy into that reality that something is wrong, then we're apologetic. Or we don't even have the boundary, or we just give ourselves completely over. Whatever you want. I'll be whoever you want. Say whatever you want. Whatever you want to do. You relate to this. I lived in that world. It sucks. It's not really healthy for sustaining relationships. So what do we do instead? Well, let's talk about that in your action step. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is going to be to claim and strengthen your own reality. And I recommend using that phrase in my reality. It's healthy to or okay to say what I want. Or don't want, with respect, with others, to others, or whatever your phrasing is. And I was actually just getting a client through this last night and she was, you know, oh, yeah, that makes sense for other people. But not for me. Right. Because her own conditioning, hundreds or even thousands of repetitions with her family growing up was, well, it's selfish, it's bad, it's selfish, it's bad, it's selfish, it's bad, it's selfish, it's bad. So she intellectually might see, no, that's good for other people, but for me it's selfish and bad. And that's not her. That's not our authentic self. That's the programming, right? So one question I asked her, and I would ask you, is if you, maybe you do have children, maybe you don't, but if you had children, if you had a son or a daughter and you, you saw them, maybe they're a teenager and they're starting to find their friends or maybe date for the first time and they don't want to be a friend with somebody. Or maybe they tried to date somebody and they didn't like it at all. And you say, you know, you should stay with them because that's really mean to not keep being someone's friend. That's really mean and wrong and selfish for you to not keep dating that person because he really liked you and I know you didn't really like him and he was kind of schlumpy and boring and just wanted to have you watch him play his real time strategy video games and show you how he was climbing the ladder and really impress you. And that was super boring. But he said, no, watch me for another hour, because that's all I do. And you didn't want to be his boyfriend anymore, but I think, or his girlfriend anymore, whatever, I think you need to, I think you should stay with him because that would be really selfish and wrong. Right? Did you do that? You hear that and you're like, no, that's crazy, right? Well, you're doing it to yourself. So, so much of this is just the game is treating yourself like you would someone you love. And even if you don't feel it, even if you feel guilty or uncomfortable as you do it, this is the practice. So you say the no, you have the boundary, you make the request, you do the thing that's uncomfortable. And then you listen to this episode and you practice changing that pattern inside, inhabiting your own reality, because you inhabit your own reality. Then you send the texts and you're like, okay, gonna go do something else. And if they do come back and they're like. And you start. You notice yourself imagining, like, oh, they're so disappointed. Like, no, they're a grown adult. They can. They can take care of their own feelings. They have lots of options, lots of ways to meet their needs. I'm not the only human who can meet their needs for connection. I'm not their savior. And then let's say they do send a message. They're like, oh, I'm so lonely on Saturday. No one wants to be my friend. Say, oh, I'm sorry. That sucks. That's it. You're not responsible. You don't have to fix their social life. Why are you responsible for the fact that they don't have other friends? Right. In my reality, it's okay. And guess what? This is one other thing I would add on there. It's not. Not only is it okay for them to feel that disappointment or that sadness or that loneliness or whatever, maybe it's good for them. Cause it'll motivate them to go take charge of their own life. I see them. I see you. I see myself. I see everyone as a powerful creator. So don't take that away from them. Don't see them as a weak victim in their life who can't do anything, and they're helpless and hopeless. They might see themselves that way, but I don't ever disrespect someone by seeing them that way. It's an illusion. It's not true. Underneath there, every single person has immense power, divine power. They're a powerful creator, and they can use the creative force, and the creative force ultimately uses them and all of us. So whether I tell the person all that or not, probably not. But I just say, oh, that's Sorry to hear that. You know, hope you have a good weekend, and I look forward to seeing you on Thursday. Bam. Then I go have fun on Saturday without that person. What's up? And I text them lots of photos of me doing the fun thing without them. No, no, I'm kidding. I wouldn't do that. All right, well, hopefully this serves you in becoming more free to be yourself, to say what you want, to live the life that you want, until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you are 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 shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.