How To Deal With Painful Feelings After Rejection

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. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Happy almost new year. 2021, here we come. I'm excited. We'll do some stuff in the beginning of next year focused on what you want to create for 2021. I think it's a powerful time. I know a lot of people are against resolutions and think that they don't work. And setting a goal, there's nothing about setting a goal that doesn't work. It's do you work it? Do you have the right mindset, strategies, capacities, motivation, emotional charge, fuel sources, that's all what determines whether people reach their goals or the time of year. They said it. And most people just don't have the right strategies, tools, motivation and all that stuff to create what they want around the new year resolution time. But you're not most people. So we're gonna come up with some fun stuff in the beginning of the new year. But I wanna share here as we close out 2020 is an opportunity to look at how you relate to rejection. This is a common theme on this show and I actually just recently answered a question. In my Mastermind program, I have something called the Ask Dr. Aziz coaching area where people in the program, it's a one year in depth group program where we meet weekly to help people maximize their confidence. And if that's something that you're interested in, we'll have a link down below to learn more about that because yeah, that if you want to, if you've been listening to the show for a while and you want to really accelerate things in 2021, I.e. hands down the most effective, fast way to produce a radical and rapid change in your confidence. And that program has been running for years and has very powerful results for people with social anxiety. Niceness, excessive niceness, people pleasing, fear of conflict, fear of being assertive, self doubt. Those are the things that we help people eliminate. To step into a much more bold, authentic, expressive, free version of themselves. So go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and check out this episode and and underneath you'll see a link about the Mastermind program. But in it there's a way that people can ask questions. I do hot seat coaching other things with people in the group, but there's also a separate area in the members area where people can submit a specific question and I'll often record. I try to keep them short. Sometimes they get a little lengthy. This one was lengthy audio answer to those questions and this one was all about rejection and how do we deal with that feeling, that intense, uncomfortable feeling of rejection in the moment. And what I love about this answer and why I wanted to share it with you is it's not theoretical. It's very specific and in depth. A lot of tools and strategies. There might be a little bit of terminology in there from the Mastermind that you don't quite fully get. Maybe you do. He talks about the peace process and other things which if you've read not nice or my other books, it's in there too. So even if there's something you don't understand, don't worry about it. Just listen. Get what you can from this. I think you're going to learn a ton about how you can relate to you with any painful feeling, especially the feelings related to rejection. So let's listen to that now. Is the peace process the most effective way to deal with negative feelings evoked from imagined rejection? Or is it best to take a more CBT approach to stop the assumed rejection? I've been working on facing and sitting with negative feelings. I've noticed that a true real life rejection does not even have to happen, but rather an assumed rejection will trigger intense feelings in my throat and stomach. I text somebody I'm interested in and they don't get back right away. Maybe not even the same day. The tension in my stomach is full force and I just want to get rid of it any way I can. Whether that is drinking, eating sugar, and if it's not too intense, running. This is a fantastic question. So much here to look at because whether the rejection is one of the main triggers we're talking about here. And that can occur in any area of life, whether it's dating or in work or anywhere and everywhere. And most people spend most of their life running from those feelings. So I think it's I want to commend you for turning towards it and saying, okay, I've been working on facing and sitting with negative feelings. I mean that's a huge Achievement. And people usually think of achievements as like, you earn a lot of money or you get a result or something. But I mean in terms of your growth, your evolution as a human, I mean, I think that's up there. So let's talk about some ways to how we can work with this. I think you're highlighting a really good point that everyone might not see, which is that oftentimes the rejection doesn't have to be this harsh, negative thing out there. It's just no response or a look or even nothing. And then we're like, afterwards we're like, oh God. So is it best to do the peace process or a CBT approach? My answer to that is yes. Let's explain some people, so many of you, all of you hopefully are familiar with the peace process. If you're not, go to the core tools section, check out the little video there and download the guided audio. It is a meditation sometimes it's also known as somatic tracking, where you get out of your head and you work with the sensation in your body and actually feel the emotion through. Now this is to train us to more effectively skillfully be with emotions. Most of us get really in our heads and try to make the emotion go away, which only intensifies it or makes it linger or makes it turn weird and different. So just feel the feeling. Sounds pretty basic, but if you've ever tried it, especially if the feelings are painful, hard to do sometimes. CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy. And that the cognitive just means thinking. It's a fancy pants word. You know, psychologists need to establish themselves. So they don't call it thinking therapy, they call it cognitive. Anyway, so that's one aspect of CBT is to look at what your. This story you're telling yourself basically, and the thoughts and the beliefs that are the most painful. Right? So for example, if you reach out to somebody and they don't get back to you, you might say to yourself somewhere, it's usually subconscious until you do some of these CBT exercises and you write it out and it says something like your mind is saying something to you to the effect of, this person's never going to get back to me. No one that I really want is ever going to get back to me. I'm going to be alone forever and I'm going to feel horrible about it forever. So if you're telling yourself that and believing those stories, you're going to feel a whole. You're going to be in a world of hurt. You're going to be in a world of hurt. So what do we do with this? Well, first things first, we want to remember that my suffering is not in the event. It's in my perception of the event. My suffering is not in the fact. It's in my perception of the fact. My suffering is not embedded in the circumstances. It's in how I'm perceiving the circumstances. It's in how I'm steering. It's in my psychology, it's in my patterns. It's in the meaning that I give things. And that's really helpful. That's a core tenet of total ownership, and it is one of the most liberating things that you can really adopt to live your life from. So what that means is it gives you the ability to say, wow, okay, someone says no to me, or someone doesn't get back to me, and I feel a lot of pain. And then you want to say with curiosity and fascination, how am I creating this? You almost can take a moment, even amidst the pain, and just have a moment of awe and wonder for your creative abilities. Like, wow, I am amazing. Look at this. Look how I'm creating this. You know, have you ever woken up inside of a dream? They call it lucid dreaming. And sometimes when I wake up inside of a dream, instead of running out and doing stuff like having sex or flying, whatever you're gonna do in the two top two things in a lucid dream. But I'll sometimes wake up in the dream, before I go do anything, I will just look around, and these are the ones where I've been the most lucid. It's been a while because I used to work on it a lot more than I do now. But I'll wake up and I'll just look around. I remember one time I was looking at this landscape, and it was like, river and these trees, and I was like, I'm seeing, like, thousands of leaves, and all the leaves are moving and the colors and the flow of the wind, and it's so real, beyond real, more vivid, more beautiful than waking life. And I remember being in the dream and, like, looking and saying, like, wow, like, this is all being generated from within. I'm not seeing this from without. Amazing. And you can actually bring that sense of awe and appreciation for, like, wow, how I'm creating this. And it's possible to create something different. It's possible. It's possible for me to feel totally different. And it could actually be helpful to focus on that. How would I want to feel? I mean, you might say, well, I want no one to ever reject me. Okay, well, but how would you want to feel when you text someone and they don't respond to you for a day or ever? How would you want to be? How would you want to feel? And don't just like, oh, I want to feel great. I want it to not bother me. Well, but tune in. What would that be really like? How would you really want to feel? Are you relaxed? Are you curious? Maybe you would feel disappointed. Because disappointed doesn't have to feel like. The intense feelings you're feeling are probably not just disappointment. They're probably the compounded disappointment based upon some of the stories you're telling yourself. We'll get to that in just a moment. But how would I want to be as a reasonable human, not some superhuman who's like, I feel nothing. Ha ha ha. You know, we're just like, okay, yeah, maybe I'd feel sad. But that's no big. It's okay. It's okay. It's no big deal. I'd feel a little bit sad. I'd feel disappointed, and I'd be able to be with that sadness and let it move through me in a short period of time. I mean, the bigger the loss sometimes, the bigger the sadness. Not always, but, yeah, I'd be able to be with that. Okay, so, yes, a best place to start. You got the no response, and then you're like, okay, I'm gonna slow down. Whoa. I feel this intense squeezing in my throat, my stomach. I gotta get out of here. And that's number one, right? It's like, I gotta get out of here. That's our first response to uncomfortable, intense feelings is, I got to get out of here. There's no out of here. There's no way to get out of here. Right. The only way to get out of here is to suppress it through some sort of escape. Right? But, you know, we can't necessarily get away from ourselves. But actually, what's happening is you're wanting. You want to get away from a part of you or maybe even a conflict that's happening inside of you. So we're a collection of parts. And you get re. You know, you get this. Let's just say you have this imagined rejection, and then you feel there's a part of you that probably feels like, ah, like it hurts, like, ow. I want her to like me. I want to get a response. Oh, no, I want to be with somebody. Right. It's like a lonely part or an aching part. And then you have another part of you that might be like, what's wrong with you for being achy, you son of a bitch. So weak. You know, like, angry, critical part. Okay, great. Now, with that going on, like, this part that's hurting, that feels bad. And this part is yelling at you inside that feels bad. And then you have another part. Maybe it's the critical part. Maybe it's another part that's like, you know what this means? You're never gonna find anyone, ever. I mean, you're a total fucking loser. Look at you. Oh, God. Right? And then you're like, oh, this is terrible. I gotta get out of here. So how do we work with this? We'll start with the peace process. Start with just breathing and saying, okay, what's happening here? And then I would bring in something else. And CBT is one approach. I think parts work is really powerful. It's sort of getting at the same thing as cbt. It's just personifying these different thoughts and voices in our heads as opposed to just saying automatic thoughts, which can seem sort of jumbled, but they're actually voices or thoughts from different characters within us, different parts of us. So I just, like, slow down, feel the feelings in my body, use my breath and my body as the anchor to keep coming back to, and then get curious and say, what? Who is talking right now? What does it sound like? Is it a critical part? What stories am I telling myself about rejection? Is it something that, like, you know, is it something about the future? What is this? What's happening here? And just get really curious. And then it does help to write something out and not just do this all in your head. So have a journal and just say, okay, let's see what's going on here. Imagine it's like a boardroom of a company, the company of you. And you're like, all right, let's hear from who's talking loudest right now? I think it's a critical part. Okay, let's hear from the critical part. Go ahead. Critical part. And you get your pen out or you're typing out, and you say, okay, go ahead. What you got? Well, you're a loser. They're not gonna respond to you. You fucked it up. You're so dorky. What's wrong with you? And you're like, okay. And so, you know, write down what it says. And you just wanna bring in, like, an energy of, like, a centered head of the company who's just like, okay, we heard that from the critic. Thank you very much. You know, okay, all right, we got now. What about you? The future. I Call this part Chicken Little, who predicts the future is terrible and sky's falling. Right? We're never gonna be with anybody. Okay. All right. Thanks for the good input there. Okay, what's going on with this guy over here? How come everyone's being hard on him? You know, this little kid who's sad and crying, like, what's going on with you, bud? You know? And I'm just. There's different ways to be with it. You can be more tender with that softer part. You could be more compassionate with the critical part. You can empathize. You could do all kinds of things. But the key is, like, you are interacting with these parts, and you're bringing more consciousness to it and, like, having a little practice of this with your journaling when you're, like, one of the most valuable things. When I started to do this, it was one of those valuable things I could do is when I'm feeling that rejection feeling to stop and to do one or two of these activities as opposed to, like, running in front of it or running away from it. I did that for years, you know, and then eventually I was like, okay, like, nothing's gonna, like, really make me feel better right now other than, like, deconstructing why I'm suffering so much and how to shift it. And then, you know, as you listen to these parts, you can start to see, like, wow, some of those stories are really fucking depressing. When I believe that story, of course I'm going to feel horrible. So then you can question that. You can challenge that. Is there another part? Is there a wise part in the boardroom that we could bring in who's got some input, who says, like, hey, you know, and who that voice could be sometimes the voice of a teacher, someone you've read. It could be some wise part of you. It could be some reasonable part of you. And this is where we combine the two. Because if you are not doing the peace process to start and throughout and you're just kind of, okay, this part says this. Oh, God, I got. Oh, that part's scary. All those stories are terrible. And we're, like, tense in our body. We're not feeling much. We're just trying to get these fucking horrible feelings out of us with the technique, then it's never going to work. Because the whole purpose of this is to become curious with all these different parts, be like, okay, everybody's welcome in this boardroom. Everybody's going to have a voice. You know, I'm the arbiter. So if this critic keeps going and going and going and starts yelling at the little sad part. I'm going to say, hold on a second. Hold on. Okay, hold on. We got it. We got it. We're going to hear from everybody, but you can't just keep running rampant over there. But we're gonna hear from you again in a minute, you know, and you can do all kinds of stuff, like, wow, like the sad part. Like, what effect? How do you feel when this guy's yelling at you? Just bringing a lot more awareness to it. And then as you do this, as you listen to these different parts, it's kind of like you do a little bit of journaling, and then you'll pause and feel what's next. Okay, all right. And sometimes you'll, you know, you'll get to that part that's really hurting, and it does just feel bad. It's like hurt in your stomach or your throat, and it's just like. And that's where you just want to breathe in and just be like, I love you. Show me. Show me everything you got. And then when I do that, there'll be something, you know, like, oh, you know, aching for some. But when I was in third grade, the people didn't like me. You know, you're just like, I see you, buddy. I got you. I see you. Yeah, that was painful in third grade. And you just go wherever the imagined or actual rejections happened. It's got a database of them, and you don't have to, like, root out the right one. It'll show you stuff. And maybe it won't, but if it does, you just, like, show me. Sometimes it shows you with memories and images and feelings. And one thing that can be helpful when you're doing this so you don't kind of, like, totally implode, like, go deeper and deeper into the pain pit. You know, you just make sure you're, like, sitting upright. Sometimes as I'll do this, I'll pause for a minute, and I'll stand up and I'll put my arms up above my head kind of in a victory pose, I'll remind myself, like, this is. I am healing right now. This is healing. I'll try to find. Because sometimes if you're going to that sad part and you're really, like, kind of curled over and you got your journal and you're barely breathing, and you're just like, okay, buddy, show me. But what he'll do is he'll kind of suck you into his world and be like, yeah, yeah, it's terrible down here. And you're like, oh, it is. You know, and you want to remain centered in your core self. Like, okay, bud, show me. But I'm here. Like, you're the parent, right? And you're being with the child. We had plans recently to go on a trip to Florida and, you know, go to this seminar I was gonna go to with Candace with Tony Robbins, gonna be amazing. And then we were gonna go to the adventure parks with our kids in Orlando at Universal Studios. And it seemed like everything's gonna be able to pull off, you know. And then there was a last minute local ordinance in Palm beach where Tony was gonna have the live portion of the event. And they banned gatherings of over 100 because of COVID And oh, man, we've been talking it up for a couple weeks. Our kids were so excited. And then they heard the news and they were just devastated. They were so sad. And Zaim, my older one, who's seven now, he, like, Armand was in the bathroom. We were all. It was in the bathroom. Our bathroom's kind of like a hangout spot in her house. Like, everyone's brushing their teeth or doing whatever. It's got a heated floor. It's like, it's the spot to be. Anyway, that's when Candace broke the news. She's like, I just read my email, it's not happening. And then Armand just starts crying because we were gonna stay in this house with a pool and in Florida, right? And he's gonna play and he's like, I wanna go to a house with a pool. He's crying and z the bathroom and goes into the bedroom and hides in the closet and starts crying by himself. And Candace is like, I think Zaim's crying. And so I went to the bedroom and I found him and I like, come on, bud. Like, here, let's. You're sad, I'm sad too. Let's be sad together. So I helped him come out of the bedroom, the closet, and just kind of sat with him on the bed, put him on my lap and just held him and he just cried and felt so sad. And I was like, yeah, but I love you. I feel sad too. But I was the parent. I was centered. I was loving him. I'm not like, it's so terrible. I know we're fucked. It's awful. This is the worst thing that's ever happened. You know, I'm just. You're able to hold this more spacious presence, you know, you naturally do that often if you're centered with someone else and you want to start to Be able to do that with ourselves. And at first, it's a little challenging because we're used to all these voices are like, right up there in our face. I mean, for much of our lives, we don't even know there's these different parts. We're just like, all over the place. But the more you can do this, the more powerful it can be. One last tip, especially if you're doing this yourself, is to experiment with doing it out loud. I said do it on paper, but there's one way to do it by yourself out loud, whereas to actually go and sit in different places in a room. So you sit and say it out loud from one chair and you go sit in another chair or sit on the bed, or sit on the ground or sit in these different places and. And be these different parts. Extremely powerful. When I used to do therapy, I would do this with people. And sometimes I do it in coaching still, but in therapy, I would do it with different clients. Sometimes I've done this with myself. Some people don't because they're like, oh, my God, that makes me look crazy. It's like, well, it's happening in there anyway. Just takes the crazy and puts it out anyway. So I hope these techniques and approaches serve you. And just know that any practice with this will radically grow your confidence, your capacity to handle rejection. Every session you do is a win of sitting with these feelings and learning how to be with them. Because eventually you experience breakthroughs where they don't hurt as much, where you're able to just be with it for just a few minutes and it's gone. It's amazing. Or maybe it's longer, but it doesn't have that same, your life doesn't suck. While that feeling is there, those feelings are there, and you're able to keep going about your life. And it's okay. It's okay. Fantastic. Hope this serves you. So there you have it. That almost brings us to the end of the episode, but not quite, because it's time for action. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is going to be really simple here. I shared a lot of different ideas and tools in there, and the key things to be able to apply this to practice. So especially that boardroom idea of writing out the different parts. Take some time to actually practice that over the next couple days while it's fresh. Even just 10 minutes is all you need. 10, 15 minutes. Just with a journal, with a laptop or something where you can type or write and just experiment with it and really slow down as you do it breathe. Just as I described in the audio and experiment. Because if you just listen to this theoretically and say, oh, that makes sense, and then you're upset one day and you try to listen to the parts in your head kinda, it just doesn't work. You gotta build that muscle. You gotta practice it. And the best way to do it is to write it out. So I highly recommend that you practice that. And again, if you're interested in the Mastermind program, go to shrinkfortheshyguy.com and you can click down below and it'll link you to the page where you can find out all about it. Here we are. The end of another year. Well done. You made it. Still kicking, still alive, baby. I don't know what happened to you in 2020. Maybe it was you skated through. Maybe it was a kick in the teeth. Maybe it involved loss of some sort. Definitely involved change for all of us. And you're here. You're alive, you're still breathing, you're still kicking, you're still growing, you're still listening to this, and you are still awesome. So until we speak again, which will be in 2021, may you 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 one what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free vlogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com. Sam.