Free Yourself From Background Anxiety & Tension

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey. Welcome to this episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, and today we're going to talk about that anxiety that's kind of always there in the background, and you may or may not be aware of it. You may not think, oh, I have background anxiety. But as you listen to this episode, you just might find that you do. You might not call it that, but it seems to be extremely common. And especially if we're struggling with some level of confidence or social anxiety or we just want more confidence and the freedom to be authentically ourselves, this background anxiety is an impediment. It's a block to you feeling the most free, confident, and joyful version of you. So I'm excited to share this with you today, and I hope it serves you. And of course, if you want to go further with my work, if you haven't already checked out my YouTube channel, I just got a message from someone recently. They're like, I didn't know you had a YouTube channel. And so obviously you guys don't know everything I'm doing. So check it out. If you haven't already looked at that. It's called get More Confidence on YouTube. Just go to YouTube and type in get more confidence or Dr. Aziz, and there's a ton of videos that will supplement what you're learning here. Again, all for free. All part of the mission, which is mass liberation, to inspire unstoppable confidence in as many people as possible. And of course you want to go further. There's many ways to do that as well, with my books or especially my online events. I highly recommend those. But, you know, if you want confidence for free, then this is the place to do it. And also check out YouTube as well. Okay, so background anxiety. Let me describe it so you know what I'm talking about. Actually, instead of describing it, let's check in right now. Do you feel some sort of background anxiety right now? In this moment now, this stuff is so invisible that often we don't know it because we are acting from it without knowing it. So we are checking our phone, we're flicking to the same sites, the same apps, the email, the social media, or thinking about something a lot. Okay, I'm going to fix this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do this. And we don't necessarily know that we're anxious, but often we are tense in some way. So just pause for a moment right now. Maybe you're driving, maybe you're running, maybe you are doing something else. I don't mean pause as in you have to stop moving or stop driving or something. You don't have to close your eyes, although if you can, that could be helpful. But you don't have to just take a moment to breathe and bring more awareness to you and your body. Right now, Breathing in and noticing your. Just the pathway of the breath is where we'll feel a lot of attention. So you might feel tension in your jaw, your face, your throat, your upper chest, right around your collarbone area, your middle chest, your where your heart and lungs reside, especially down the ribs. For me, I'll feel a lot of that tension on the side of my body and those, the ribs on either side can even go around to your back, your low back or your upper back. Your stomach might be tight, your belly might be tight. So just take a full, deep couple of breaths and become really curious. Oh, is there a background anxiety? Right, right now? And if you notice as you're doing this that your mind is very active, that's a reflection sometimes of the anxiety. The mind is a reflection of our feelings. A common perception, especially in cognitive behavioral therapy, is that your thoughts create your feelings, your interpretations of the world around you create the feelings, and at the same time your emotions. It goes both ways. It's not just one way. Your emotions are going to influence your thoughts and your perceptions, right? So if you're in a anxious state, then things seem more threatening. If you're irritated, then everything's so fucking irritating, right? You know, if you've been irritated and then been in traffic or irritated or had to go through some automated phone system, press 3 to talk to. Actually, first listen to all of the following options before you make your selection. Because they've changed. Have you heard that when you call automated robot systems, right, listen to all the following options because the options have changed. BS the options have changed. They just want you to listen to all the options. So they're telling you that it's changed. And then of course, you have to listen all the options and then you press it. And then it's like, Please enter your 7 digit account number before we connect you to an operator. And you're like, connect me to somebody, please. Digit. Enraged. Enraged. I'm enraged because the system is enraging. Of course I'd be enraged. Really. What if you didn't have. What if you weren't already in that irritated or agitated state? Maybe the system wouldn't bother you at all. Maybe the traffic wouldn't bother you at all. And often we have this background tension. In fact, let's just start calling it background tension because we can say it's anxiety and we can say it might be irritation, but they're not that different. It's like an aroused state in our body, you know, and it's a mild fight or flight. It might not be extreme, but it makes us primed to have an extreme or more intense reaction. And even if you're really good at hiding it, even if nobody knows you feel it and you feel that intense wave of fear or that irritation inside, you know, if you're a nice person, then the irritation is definitely hidden. And if you're trying to be confident and look cool and make sure people think that you got it all together, then your anxiety is hidden. But here is a place, my friend, where you don't need to hide, you don't need to pretend. Let's just be honest with ourselves and say, huh? Is there some background tension here? And know that you're not alone. The answer for 99% of people would be yes. The only people that don't have background tension are people who have actively practiced some sort of way of being in the world where they're able to continually release that. And that's a very small number of people. It takes a lot of years of growth and development and training of your mind and your perception. So look, we don't have to eliminate all your background tension. You can. If you're on that path and you want to become more and more free and light and liberated, sure, maybe you are. Maybe that's why you're here. And any improvement in this area is fantastic. And the first step is just to become aware of it and to own it and to acknowledge it, say, yeah, okay, right, Step number one. Of course, if you're wondering in this episode we're going to talk about how to free yourself from this as much as possible so it's not just like, yep, there's the tension. Everyone's got it. See you next week. It's like, what can we do with this? So step two, after we've noticed it and acknowledged it, step two is to withdraw your blaming of the external world, right? So first thing we notice is, like, might not even notice we're tense. But then maybe we bring our attention to it. Like, oh, yeah, I am tense. You know why I'm tense is because Bob in my life, he didn't get that thing back to me. It's not working. This thing, all this is a problem. I have this problem I need to fix. This problem's pissing me off. I'm so stressed. Oh, this is not gonna work. Ah, whatever it is, I got that meeting coming up. Of course I'm anxious. And so we're continually saying, oh, this background tension is there because I have this thing coming up or I'm worried about this thing or whatever. And I want you to start to flip it. It's not there because you have these things coming up. The background tension is there because you are afraid of feelings and experiences. You're afraid of pain in your life. Emotional, physical, ego pain. Pain of looking bad. Pain of not hitting my goals fast enough. Pain I'm not achieving what I think I'm supposed to be achieving, so I feel inferior. We're afraid of feelings. And so all day long we're guarding and bracing and blocking. And I don't want to feel this. I don't want to feel that. Now, of course, there's all these different scenarios in our life where we have been conditioned to feel a certain way. And so you think, of course I'm going to feel if Bob doesn't give me that thing. Of course I got to feel upset if this thing doesn't go the way I want. Of course I gotta feel anxious. There's all these good things that can happen, all these bad things can happen. I gotta get all the good things and none of the bad things. And of course I'm worried about it all. But remember, all of our fears are fears of feelings. And so if we're willing to feel anything, all of a sudden we're free. All of a sudden we don't have to be tense and running from all these different things. So let's recap where we are. Step number one is become aware that there's background tension. Are you with me? As you listen to me, maybe you can bring a little bit more awareness with that breath. Notice where you feel that tightening. Maybe it's in your back and your ribs just become really Curious, Is it creepy, crawly? Is it hot? Is it tight? And then we want to notice if your mind starts focusing on all these different reasons why I'm tense or irritated or upset and start to pull back some of that energy and that focus and say, what if I'm tense because I don't want to feel something? And what is the something that I don't want to feel? And you don't need to know that with your head. You want to probe into it with your awareness. Does that make sense? I'm not sure how long you've been listening to this show or if I'm just like totally out in left field right now. You're like, what is this dude talking about? But this is a practice that I've had to discover and learn for many years. Because for me, background tension was not just anxiety or irritation. Those would be unpleasant enough. Background tension over a period of days or weeks would lead to intense physical pain for me. Horrible pain in my butt, in my back, in my legs, could barely walk. It's awful. And I didn't know that this was coming from chronic background tension, from hyper, chronic hyper arousal in my autonomic nervous system. I'm under threat. I'm under threat. I'm under threat. I'm under threat. And what am I under threat from? All these shit that could go wrong, man. Come on. Duh. That's the part we got to break that perception. We got to change that perception. There's always stuff that could go wrong, right? There's always gonna be ups and downs in your life. You're gonna have. It's gonna go well. You're gonna make more money, you're gonna lose some money. You know, maybe over time, you hopefully accumulate more in your lifetime. But maybe, maybe not. I don't know, right? You're gonna, the person's gonna like you, and then you're gonna have a fight. Someone's, you know, you go on a date and it's gonna go well. You're gonna go on a different date with a different person. It's not gonna go well. You're gonna have a problem at work to solve or in your business to solve that's endless. You know, your kids get through one phase of life, and then there's another phase, and then there. There's this other problem. And now so. And so is hitting something, something, whatever. There's always something going on, right? And so we want to stop expecting life to not have these occurrences. These are, these are the non negotiables of life. And Even if you're on a run, even if you're on, like, everything's going my way, baby, guess what you're due for. Well, in investing, they call it a correction in the market, right? If a stock or the general market just keeps going up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up, at some point, what happens, it goes down. It's called a correction. So that's going to happen. And are we in chronic fear of it happening? Or maybe, maybe it's not even feelings from bad things, bad things happening in our lives. It's just feelings around feelings. I'm tense about feeling, you know, so I'm irritated at this mess. Oh, I feel stressed about. I feel anxious about getting this thing done. I'm worried, or I feel overwhelmed. And then we're like, oh, I don't want to feel that. I don't want to feel this, I don't want to feel that. And so one of the most powerful things that completely liberated my physical health, but also emotional well being is, and confidence is a willingness to feel anything. A willingness to feel anything. Another way to say this is to stop bracing against life. And look, I'm not perfect at this. I will, of course, I mean, you got to be enlightened, right? To be like, nothing, nothing affects me. I am placid water. And I think we can all grow to become more like that. And even if we're not completely unflappable, maybe that's the fantasy or the goal or the desire, but we can be 75% less flappable. That's pretty good. Any reduction in flappability is desirable, I'd imagine. I think you might agree. So how do we do it? Well, there's many different ways, but one of the ones I'm most a fan of, it's got different names sometimes. It's called somatic tracking. In the clinical world. David Hawkins has a book called Letting Go, where he teaches this technique. It's a man. There's mindfulness techniques around acceptance, body awareness, but they're all pointing towards the same thing, which is stop running and just start being with what you're feeling, what you're experiencing. So let's do that for just a couple minutes together right now. So it's not just theoretical, but you actually get a chance to experience it. So you're already breathing, you're already maybe a little more aware of your body. From the questions I asked you earlier, Let's just tune more into your body and into your breath. Right now, Letting everything slow down a little bit. You know, with our attention we can focus, and then whatever we focus on tends to magnify, become more encompassing of our awareness. It absorbs more of our attention, right? So if you're watching a movie and the movie's on the screen to the side while you're talking to somebody else and it's on mute, then not much of your attention is going to be absorbed in that movie, right? You're mostly talking to the person. Or sometimes people like to put a movie on in the background on low volume while they're doing something else and they're kind of like hearing it's like a familiar movie they like or something, right? It's not going to absorb much of your attention. Versus imagine being, you know, watching on a big screen with the volume all the way up, right? Then that's gonna have a different. And imagine it's a really engrossing movie that you really like and you really get attached and associated to the characters. And now, boom, you are like there, and then you're crying and you're elated inside when something good happens and all that stuff, right? So similarly, wherever you focus, your attention will magnify. So right now, withdraw attention from thinking about stuff, planning the future, observing, judging, determining if something's good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse. That evaluation that we can do constantly just let it be there, like a TV that's playing a movie. But you're just withdrawing your attention and you're bringing. You're looking at something else with your awareness, and that is your breath and your body. And as you take that next in, breath in, just soften a little bit. By soften, I mean as you breathe in and breathe out, you let go of resistance to any of the sensations in your body. Remember, we can be bracing against that discomfort, that emotional discomfort or physical discomfort. And they're kind of one and the same. Your emotions have a physical quality to them that you'll feel in your body. And the emotions that we call bad emotions, we call them bad because we don't like the way they feel. They feel bad just like we don't like physical pain because it feels bad. Well, there's certain occasions, certain occasions where some people like physical pain, but that's a different story. For the most part, we don't like physical pain. We don't like emotional discomfort or pain, which are just physical sensations. So whatever it is, though, bring your awareness to be with it. And let go, even if it's. See if you can Just allow the sensation to be there 5% more. Allowing it just 5% more. And if you feel there's a part inside of you, it's like, no, I don't like this, it's terrible. Or is afraid of it, like, oh God, I'm going to get overwhelmed. It's too intense. Then bring your attention to that fear or the resistance to the feeling that. The blocking of the feeling or the fear of the feeling. Bring your attention to that. Where do you feel that? In your body. And just allow yourself to soften. That's right, just a little bit more. And you're just following the sensations with more awareness, withdrawing energy and focus from the mind, from your thinking, bringing it more into your body and softening. You're just allowing. So softening doesn't mean stopping the feeling. That's the problem in the first place, right? Is that background tension comes from trying to stop it. So what if we allow it and our mind wants to maybe go to the certain circumstances that we're looking around like. But I don't, like I'm feeling anxious because of this person or I got this meeting coming up and I got to fig out what to do. And we're so used to saying like, you're right, I gotta figure out what to do. It's kinda like I have a boardroom analogy that I like to use. I think I teach this in the solution to social anxiety, like having a boardroom in your head where you get to listen to the different characters. And in my boardroom there's a character named Chicken Little. And Chicken Little, just imagine like I like to think of a boardroom because it's just a funny scene, right? It's like corporate boardroom. But all the characters in there are all kind of weird. And not no one's in like suits or actually Chicken Littles in a suit. But you know, there's me, sort of like the core self, the arbiter of it all. And then there's like a teenage me. There's a young little kid me, my dad's in there. A young version of my dad from like his 30s or 40 or something. Year old dad is in there. Who else is in my boardroom? Chicken Little, I don't remember else. It's been a little while since I've done that exercise. But Chicken Little is. He's the guy who just imagine like, I don't know, 50 year old dude, kind of curly, disheveled hair, wearing a brown gray suit. That's not that flattering. He's not about Looking all pretty and good. And it's like kind of just, you know, his ties a little undone. He's like, standing with his. Standing above the table with his hands down on the table. So he's leaning forward like, you guys don't understand. That's gonna. And he's got a chart behind him. It's got, like, a red line that's kind of like going. It's like a chart graph going down. The future's gonna suck. Everyone pay attention. This could go wrong. That could go wrong. That's gonna fail. This is gonna. Oh, man. You think this thing is going good now? Oh, just wait. It's gonna fail. So that's Chicken Little. And we're so used to having. And whatever your version of that character is, you can name him or her whatever you want. But the reason I call him Chicken Little, because it makes me smile. Because otherwise, what happens if you're not aware like this? You don't slow down. You don't want to become curious about your feelings and listen to some of those thoughts as they pass through. What will happen is the thoughts will instantly hook you. And so Chicken Little, the thought will pass through your mind and say, like, this thing's not gonna work out. We get to freak out. We're. And we're like, oh, you're right. Okay, Chicken. The whole company, which is you and your body, like, gets into massive action based upon Chicken Little. I don't know if you want that dude at the helm. That's problematic. And so what happens is, if we just become more aware and that thought goes through your mind, I gotta fix this thing. I gotta solve it. Not right now. Not right now. And that's been profoundly liberating for me to see is like, yes, there are. You know, a, maybe nothing's needed. Maybe it's just a crazy, you know, doom and gloom prediction. And B, maybe if there is a problem to solve, you don't need to solve it right now. You don't need to solve all your problems right now. In fact, a lot of your problems you might not even need to solve. I'm going to talk about in a future episode, how to solve all problems. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. The solution to all problems. Top secret. But you certainly don't need to solve all your problems right now. Although Chicken Little thinks you do, to get certainty and security and safety. But there is no total security, certainty and safety. If it's defined as, I don't feel any pain. Pain is here, my friend. Pain. If it's not here, it will Be here soon. Hooray. Emotional pain, Physical pain, pain of loss. Stuff's waiting for you. You're like, dude, my tension's coming back. It's okay, it's okay. I mean, what else? Otherwise, it's denial. It's just delusion, right? I'm never gonna lose anything. No one's ever gonna dislike me. I'm never gonna get rejected and I'm never gonna have a problem. And I'm only gonna succeed forever. And I'm going to live forever, and everyone I know and love is going to live forever and the planet's going to go the way I think the planet's supposed to go. And okay, who's crazy now? So the truth is, there's going to be pain and there's going to be pleasure, there's going to be loss and there's going to be gain, there's going to be being liked and there's going to be being disliked. So let's soften and allow those things as they happen. You don't need to guard yourself from all your feelings. It's safe. The safety comes from knowing I can feel anything, and it's just a feeling. And even better, I can feel anything. It's like, maybe you don't have to do it all alone. Maybe you're held, held by life, held by the universe, held by divine love, held by the love of others, the love you've already experienced and received from others, even if they're not in your life anymore. You know, the love of a parent when you were growing up. What if you're not alone? What if you're never alone, even if there's no human around you? And so the feeling can be held in an infinite ocean of softness, of compassion as you plus the universe. So we're going to do something a little interesting today. We're not going to end with your action step because this whole episode has been an action step. So you've been practicing with me right here. And my invitation for you is to keep practicing this. I have a meditation called a peace process where I guide you through this. And you can find that@notnicebook.com at the bottom there called the Peace Process meditation. It's about a 20 minute thing and it'll guide you through just what we did here, but more specifically guiding and less random interjecting of Aziz stories. It's more just Aziz guiding you. So hopefully that serves you. And just be aware that background tension and you might find that just by being with it, it can start to dissolve and you start to feel a lot more peace. And then come from that comes a reduction in anxiety, more confidence, and ultimately more love as you're feeling there towards the end. Fantastic. So thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level 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 shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.