Healing The Cause Of Social Anxiety & People Pleasing

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.

Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today I'm very excited to be with you. I'm gonna share some brilliant stuff and guess what? I don't even know what it is yet because it's all mushy in my brain. Let me explain. So last week we didn't release an episode and this week we're late. So if you're listening currently, my apologies for not hitting those targets. Usually we get them out every Wednesday, but I didn't this last time. I didn't get a chance to record a few ahead of time as I might normally when I travel. Where did I go, you might ask. Well, and why is this relevant to me? You might ask. Well, let me you because where I went is relevant to you. I was actually at a week long couples workshop with my wife Candice and had a massive amount of insight and growth. Now the downside though is I'm extremely sleep deprived. I slept like five hours a night for a week, every night. And maybe there's like macho. Are you one of those macho people? He's like, yeah, I sleep like four hours a night. Doesn't affect me. I'm so macho. I'm not one of those people. When it comes to sleep, I am weak and weakling. And so if I get seven hours. And by the way, by the way, I mean, when people say how much they sleep, if you're not trying to exaggerate it to seem macho, you actually sleep less than the time that you're in bed. Now that's a no duh thing if you've ever done any sort of sleep tracking. But I didn't know that when I was younger until I had, you know, devices on me that could measure how much I was actually asleep when I was in bed. And I just thought, oh yeah, I was. I slept for eight hours because I went to bed at 10 and woke up at six. But you don't actually sleep eight hours, you sleep less than that. So anyway, actual sleep time, I mean, seven is what I generally get. Usually in bed for eight hours, sleep about seven. If I get six hours of actual sleep time, I can feel pretty okay. But less than that. I just feel bad, man. So many, many days of like Four to five, four and a half to five and a half is probably the range anyway. It was so worth it. And I'm back. But this long preface is to tell you that there's brilliance. There's brilliance in this soup that is my brain right now. Let's see what emerges. All right, so you with me? Are you down to hang out and see what comes out of this soup? Because I'm telling you there's some profound insights I had. Let's just see if I can fish them out. Okay, So I told you it was a couples workshop, right? Well, it was a couples workshop with Tony Robbins and his wife Sage or Bonnie Pearl Robbins. And there's a lot of fascinating stuff about love and relationships and masculine feminine polarity. I could talk about that. But what I wanted to share today though was something that really struck me and I think it will help you see something about yourself related, man, to the core of all of this. I mean, what is this, right? It's what you call it social anxiety, people pleasing. These are different kind of conceptual things, but at the root of it is.

An unease in yourself, a not totally being in myself. I am okay, I like myself. I love myself. And again, sometimes people hear that and they think that that means high self esteem or feeling confident means that you walk around in your head saying, I like myself and I love myself. But. But it's not. It's just a knowing, it's a relaxed self assuredness, a feeling of okayness, of belonging, of worthiness, of love.

And so, so often when people are trying to overcome this, they say the words, right? Like, I am enough and I'm worthy of love and I'm lovable and I am love. And people love me and they try to do these sort of affirmations essentially, and they might feel relieving. Maybe they do for you. I know people will literally, you know, get I am enough tattooed on their arm or their hand. That's kind of a thing that's gone around in the last couple years. And hopefully that really, boom, like supports somebody and helps. And if you have one of those tattoos, hopefully you look at it and you're like, ha, right? I feel, I feel better now. I feel what we're going for is not the words we're going for a change in your body and then of course, the way you perceive yourself too. But it starts with a relaxation, like a letting go in the body. I'm safe, I'm okay, I'm loved, or I'm lovable. And then from that place, it Shows up in all kinds of different behaviors, right? Like social anxiety and people pleasing are kind of more in that behavioral realm. Do I avoid people? Do I not make eye contact? Or do I say things that only people want to hear? Or do I move towards people and say what I want to say and be who I am and approach and try to create connection? Right? So that's all coming out of this core feeling of okayness.

And what I was really seeing at this workshop is how we. Oh, there's a fascinating teacher. I gotta find his name, see if I can interview him on this podcast. He was talking about attachment theory, attachment science. And maybe you're familiar with that, maybe not. But it's basically how humans bond with each other. It's the study of human bonding and our capacity to give and receive love. And the stat that blew My mind is 65%. I don't know if this was the world of the United States, but I guess we'll just go to, you know, the United States. 65% of people, if you were to survey them or give them a little assessment, would have some sort of, what's called insecure attachment, which means that the bonding or core capacity to give and receive love.

Is.

Negatively impacted or impaired in some way. We're not very good at it, basically. And now sometimes people hear, you know, attachment styles, oh, I have an insecure attachment. I have anxious, avoidant attachment or whatever. And then they're like, oh, God, I'm broken. You're not broken. It's just a pattern, right? It's a learned pattern. But the essence of it is we don't feel securely bonded. And this can happen even if you have parents that love you and a family life. You don't have to grow up, you know, on the streets or something.

I had parents that loved me, and I developed. I had an anxious or avoidant attachment pattern. And that's often due to a discrepancy, a gap between what the child needs to feel securely attached and what the environment can provide. And that environment includes parents, siblings, whoever's around you, humans wise, and the environment itself, right? Like if you're in a chaotic environment, a war environment, or moving or sort of threatening things, or like health crises that occur, all these things can. Can impact. And then there's this gap between what I need, this. This organism of Aziz, or you, what. What we need, and then what life and our surrounding environment and family can provide. And if there's a gap there, then we kind of miss some sort of core sense of security and the Good news is you can get that, you can create that. In fact, that's what I have done in my own life and help clients do all the time. That's really what we're doing, is we're helping them experience a new way of life. And then you get to have what's called a secure attachment. Now, under times of stress or something, you might revert back to your old style, but it becomes just a temporary thing rather than the permanent state. And so this guy was talking about that there's 65% of people that are that. And when we aren't securely bonded, we have this insecure attachment. The feeling is a sense of. And get this. This is really important because it relates to what I was talking about earlier. The feeling is I. I'm not okay. I'm not okay, right? It's not like I didn't securely attach to those around me, right? We don't know that. We just feel inside that. It's like an animal. The organism of our body is like, something ain't right. Something ain't right. It's not right. And then from that.

We have this chronic feeling of, like, not belonging. Not enough. When people say, I'm not enough, that's code. Have you ever said that I'm not enough? Have you ever thought that I don't feel like I'm enough? I'm inadequate, I'm less than right? That's all code. That's code. It's. What it's saying is I feel this lack of bonding in my body. I feel a lack of loved and lovable in my body. And so I look around in the world and I try to figure out, well, what is this? It must be because I'm not that enough. I'm not tall enough. Look at him, he's taller. He gets all the latest, right? Oh, look at her. She's so pretty. I'm not pretty enough. Okay? And, oh, he's rich. People like rich people. He's successful. He's, oh, I'm not successful enough. Right? So we look at the environment around us to determine the, quote, reason I'm not enough.

But it's not because, guess what, you could be not enough at something or less than somebody at something and feel totally fine. Totally fine, right? And it's not related to the underlying feeling of unlovability not held in this world. So someone could be way better than you at all kinds of things, and you could feel great.

And as long as we're believing that, it's because I'm not X or Y and that's what people do, you know, from this place we'll go strive like crazy. Maybe you've done that right. Well, I'm going to achieve more. I'm going to get this way. Now if we feel like we can't make ourselves taller or whatever, then we just go into despair. But otherwise we might be really driven. And this, I talk about this in the book on my own side, but this is the birth of the idealized self or that what I call the fantasy self. So you look around and say, okay, this guy here, this gal here, something ain't right. Something's missing. Now this is. 65% of people have this. Now if you have experienced social anxiety or people pleasing. 100%. 100% of those people have this pattern, by the way. So that means if you relate to these patterns, you probably do if you're listening to this show. I certainly do. I grew up that way. You probably grew up that way. So we could say this is what we get to experience. This is the.

Some of the curriculum of your life school that you get to grow through and grow out of. And trust me, there is phenomenal news here. If there's any part of you that's discouraged hearing this and thinking it's permanent, that is part of the problem. That story is what's keeping you stuck. This is everything I say in this show. Whether it's social anxiety or people pleasing or this underlying attachment stuff, it's all patterns and everything is changeable 100%. Now if you collapse into despair and say it's not, that's actually a part of you that is wanting to hold to the familiar as bad as it is. Because it's like, it's like I'm not going to trust anything. I'm not willing to open myself to a new possibility. So let's get back to this fantasy self fella. This is where you start to look around the world and you accumulate. Think of it as this. There is. Had this image come to me during the workshop. It's like imagine two ropes kind of braided together, right? One rope wrapped around the other. One is blue and one is orange, right? Just so they have different colors and you know, have you ever seen a rope, like a nylon rope where the rope is whatever, however thick, half inch or something, but it's made up of smaller strands. You ever seen that? You ever kind of pulled the strands of a rope apart? So just imagine that, that this orange rope has got little strands in it, right? So the blue rope would be this. This Core sense of not enough, not lovable. Right. And that's threaded around that is this orange rope, which is your fantasy self. So you say, okay, I'm not lovable, so I'm going to become this.

Other person, and that person will be lovable. And that's the birth of the. Of the striving towards the fantasy self. Now, what is the fantasy self made up of? It's made up of all these different threads, right? The orange rope is made up of multiple little strands. And these strands are things that you piece together. And it starts from a young age. You say, well, dad really liked it when I was, you know, smart and good at, you know, got an A in math. So, okay, I'm going to be a really smart guy. And then, you know, oh, oh. People seem to really love my, you know, sister. When she was, you know, performing or she shared a story and everyone loved her, she was the center of attention. Okay, I got to be kind of loud in the center of attention. All right. I want to pull that strand in there. And we're looking around the world like a detective. It's like I'm missing something. I have to go on a quest to find it. And then as you grow into school age, you find out what's cool and what's popular and what's desirable, and you get a teenager. What's romantically desirable and seen and known and admired. And then you get a professional age, and it's like, oh, how do I become a success? How do I become a somebody in the world? And what makes you a somebody? What the strands of that fantasy self are really depend upon? What do you pursue? Who do you look up to? Who are your mentors who do models? And then you combine all that into this rope that might keep accumulating things.

And then you say, okay, I'm going to become that person. Let's go. And then you strive and you learn and you. And you act and you pretend and you. And I'm not saying that you can't be outgoing like your sister or strong or smart or. I'm not saying these aren't qualities of your authentic self. But we don't even know, man, we even know what our authentic self is. It's just like, let me go become this thing and get love. And then the reason I say the ropes are kind of threaded together. The. The. The blue of not enoughness, not loved. And the. And the orange of the fantasy self is because we just flip back and forth between the two. So in one moment, and it could be Literally for the day. It could be for this second, right before this meeting, whatever it is, I feel like I'm not enough.

You know, and that's, that's like that touching into that kind of terror of alone in the world. Ah, you know, and then I say, okay, I can flip into a relief. Let's say I go through the meeting or approach the person or whatever and it goes, okay, it goes, well, I act like the person I'm supposed to act like and they seem to approve of me.

I can feel good about myself for a moment because I acted like the fan I was. My fantasy self. Or maybe if I'm striving towards becoming, if I'm on my way to being that fantasy self, maybe I'm not there yet, but I'm on my way. And that can feel okay too, sort of, right? And then that lasts a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a season. And then flip back to not enough. And around and around, I mean like a double helix braided rope. Around and around and around we go.

And we never solve the actual core issue though.

And so there's, you know, different people that I work with. Some people have not achieved that fantasy self and they're in suffering and they think they got confidence is going to make them be that fantasy self. That's exactly what they think. Oh yeah, I need more confidence, then I'll become that person. And then another type of person I work with is they've achieved a lot. They put on the masks, they became who they were supposed to be. You know, they got the profession, they got the family, they got the whatever, the accolades and they're still so freaking uncomfortable. They're a doctor or a CEO or a professional or whatever. I'm a somebody in the world. And then inside they're still freaking, freaking anxious. But they're just so good at, no one knows. They hide it and they're tense and they're uncomfortable and they stress out about the conversations they're going to have and they worry about the presentations and they worry about an imposter. And they worry and they worry and they worry because that other thread that not enough I can't just be me in the world, is still there no matter how much you wrap the orange rope around it of the fantasy self. And in my heart, you actually become the fantasy self. It doesn't solve anything.

Does this make sense? Are you with me here? Do you see this? Do you feel this in your own core? And so that is what we need to shift and we need to heal.

And it's one of the simplest and scariest things that we can do.

Right? Because what am I saying to do? And what I'm saying is that you don't need to become the fantasy self.

And that the not enough is an illusion. That's a story that was underneath is the feeling of unlovability. It's a lack of bonding. It's a lack of loved and loving and being loved.

And so you can. The way you heal it is you let yourself be seen and known as you are and experience increase your capacity to give and receive love.

And it's so simple and it's so vulnerable and it's so uncomfortable. And that's the work. And so when I say it's simple, I don't mean you snap your fingers and you've just done it and it's over forever. It's a retraining, it's a relearning, and it requires a deep commitment to practice, something to recode your nervous system.

But this simplicity, it's kind of like when it comes to fitness and health, right? It's like. Well, there's a core simplicity to it, right? You move your body, ideally in ways that you enjoy, but maybe you don't enjoy it at first, but you eventually find the enjoyment of it. And you, you know, you move and you. And you. You ask your body to do stuff so your body can keep doing stuff. So you don't just become sedentary. You ask your body to run or to lift or to play the sport. Because if you keep asking your body to do that and giving it regular opportunities to do that, then you'll be able to do that for, you know, to the rest of your life. But if you stop, then everything atrophies, right? Use it or lose it. And you eat well. You eat.

The right amount of food for how much you're moving, basically. And you'll know, you will know if it's the right amount of food, because if it's not, then there tends to be this accumulation upon your body. And then if you're eating the right amount of food, you don't gain weight, right? And your body stays in a stable level. So pretty simple, right? Move more, eat less for most people, but then doing it well, doing it's the. Doing it's the challenge. Doing it's the practice. And it's the same for this. So let's talk about how to put that into action right now. Time for action, action, action. I'd say for now, can you just reflect on this fantasy self, like what are the. Who are you supposed to be? What are some of those threads that you put together of what an ideal person is that would be attractive and lovable? In fact, that's a great way to uncover your fantasy self if you're not familiar with it, is. Well, if you feel inadequate in some way, whether it's professionally, romantically, socially, physically, what would I need to be like or look like or have or accomplish or whatever to be totally enough to be totally awesome? And then there you go, there's your list right there. Now when you first, if you do this, you're gonna be like, yeah, that's right, I do need that. Okay, this is not. You tell me to not want these things. You tell me to let this goop. Huh? Hmm. We're so bound up with that fantasy self where we're outraged at the idea that we shouldn't be striving.

But just notice it, notice it. And then I guess another question to sit with would be like, well, how's that been going? You got there yet? How old are you? How long until you think you're gonna get there? You think it's gonna give you what you want? And maybe, you know, Maybe you're like 20 years old and you're, screw you, man, I'm gonna become this fantasy self. And then, and then, you know, then I talk to people in their 30s and 40s who are like, yeah, I got some of the way there or maybe all the way there and it didn't work, man. Well, you know, we can depend wherever you are in this, in the journey, you can, you can at some point question be curious if that strategy is going to get you where you want to go. Because then when you see that it's not, well, then the, the unbraiding occurs, the on the unthreading. And you could just drop that whole frickin rope and step into such a whole nother level of not just enjoyment of who you are, but the rightness of who you are, the trueness. It's just a feeling of coming home and of oh, this is right. It's like a shoe that finally fits. And it's extraordinary. And it's not because you achieved something or became somebody or everyone gives you praise. It's you getting to be you. And it's one of those things where.

If you lived for many, many, many years in this, maybe a whole lifetime in this. I'm not, oh, it's not okay to be me. I'm not enough. I'm not loved and someone's like, you know, it feels amazing to be yourself, authentic self. And you might have a concept of that. And you're like, yeah, yeah, I kind of get that. That sounds nice. You have no idea. No idea. It is.

It's an extraordinary. It's like the beginning of everything to make that shift. So thanks for being with me today and hope this was not too disorganized. I think it came together pretty good. Out of the soup, right? Well, there's more. There's more in that soup. We'll see in the next few episodes. But thanks for being with me today. And if you're hearing this and you're like, man, I want that experience, I. I believe that we need community immersion support to make that happen. It's not just something we learn in, you know, intellectually or from ChatGPT or something. So if you want to go on that journey with me, then that's what I'm doing. That's what I've been doing for years. Still doing it. Keep doing it. And I work with people in a variety of contexts, including a beautiful Mastermind program. That's an opportunity to really practice this in a community of people who are hungry and ready for that change. And it's freaking works, man. Can reprogram your whole system. So if you're drawn to that, you can go to my website@drazeez.com and just click on the coaching. You can find out more about the Mastermind and how it works and apply there as well. All right, thanks for being with me. Until we speak again, we have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level, and 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.