How To Heal From The Past

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 today's episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz. And. And today we're gonna be talking about how to heal from the past. And I'm gonna share some interesting and perhaps very different perspectives than you've heard about how to do this. And I think that's a good thing because many people that I talk to, both just in life that I come across, and then, of course, especially through my work, have wounds from the past, stuff from the past, baggage, things. Things that's kind of there and bogs them down, and it just seems to still be there, and they're kind of working on it or wanting to address it or they want to work on it, or they feel like they should work on it, or do they need to know that I got to work on this? Where they're like, oh, because of this, I have this issue now, and they're kind of explaining their current circumstances or challenges because of stuff that happened in the past, as if that's set in stone in some way. So whether they're kind of resigned to it or they feel more empowered and are trying to work on it, it's rare that I, you know, if someone is really free and has really healed it, they don't talk about it that much. It's not that big of an issue if they reference it. It's more like, oh, yeah, I remember that. Or maybe they use it as a story to inspire or help others. I guess what I'm saying is a lot, a lot, a lot of people are not free from the past and maybe don't know how to heal from the past. And so I want to share some things that I've learned from my own experience and also working with lots of clients on this, some new perspectives about healing from the past, what might be needed, and how to really, truly liberate yourself to live your life now in a much more empowered and free way. How does that sound? Okay. Fantastic. If you're benefiting from this show, please go to wherever you downloaded it from, Spotify, itunes or podcasts now on the app. And if you have a Apple iPhone and give it a review, it just takes maybe 30, 60 seconds. Got to poke around to figure out how to do it. But my request would be that you take the time to do that because it will help me reach more people with this show. And that is the sole purpose of this show, is to find the humans out there who might feel alone, isolated, disconnected, like something is wrong with them or discouraged about their future. And to help them realize you can break free. You already are free. You just gotta find that version of you and bring him or her out now. And your life can be so much better no matter how long you've stuck with social anxiety or shyness, which I lived in that cage for many years, so I am passionate about this. Thank you for helping me spread this mission. Okay, let's talk about healing from the past. Well, where does that even come from, by the way? Why do people even say that? Why is that even a thing? Well, because people experience challenges. They have an issue, right? They have an addiction that they're working with, or they have social anxiety, or they have panic attacks, or they have low self esteem, or they have a hard time in relationships and they can't get into relationships, or they stay in relationships way too long, they don't serve them, or they get crazy in relationships and they get immature and they fight a lot or they flee, or they can't keep their life together outside of relationships, just their finances or their work life, or they can't speak up in meetings or they can't be assertive or they're too aggressive, they have anger issues. There's a thousand and one reasons why people might have a challenge with the right now. There's pain. Right now is how we could sum it up as succinctly as possible. And they say, oh geez, I have all this pain right now. I want to solve this pain, which is 100% reasonable, natural. Of course, maybe that's what led you to this show. That's what led me on my own journey to discover confidence and then become obsessed with it is I had pain and I wanted to solve it. Mine was the pain of shyness and isolation and low self esteem and no dating life whatsoever and very low confidence and fear of public speaking and fear of groups and fear of meeting new people and blah blah, blah. Right. Okay, so we have this pain now and then we seek to solve that pain. And it is so endemic in our culture and just so infused from pop psychology and therapy and everything that we say, you know what? You know why I am the way I am right now? It's because of something that happened when I was younger. It's kind of a deterministic perspective of you. So. And this is, you know, a lot of schools of therapy will kind of go with that and help you dig in the past and say, okay, yeah, let's look. Tell me about when you were young. Tell me about your childhood. Tell me about your mom. Tell me about your dad. Tell me about your siblings. Tell me about school. Tell me about your. The changes in your life. Oh, you moved a lot when you were young. Okay, I see. And then we explore the past, and we come up with a story, a narrative about, okay, well, the reason you have anxiety now, social anxiety now, is because your family moved a lot when you were young. And that's very hard on a child to move a lot. And your father was emotionally distant and didn't support you, and you didn't feel seen or known by your father. He didn't love you well enough, and your mom wasn't very supportive with all those moves anyway, so you were forced to deal with it on your own as a kid, and that made you very anxious about moving, and that's why you're anxious to meet new people now. And then you nod your head and say, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That feels right. And then the therapist says, I know I am right. I went to a lot of school. You better believe it. And I have theories and titles and names that describe all those things. We've, you know, given jargon to all of those processes. You say, wow, well, that's. That must be right. And they say, that's right. Then you pause and then. And you say, okay, well, I gotta say, I feel a little bit better already because you've named my issue. And I say, great, great. And then you say, okay, but I'm still scared to meet new people. I haven't fixed anything. I could just explain why I am the way that I am better. And the person's like, well, we're out of time. We're gonna have to resume this next week. Now, I'm doing a little bit of a, I don't know, satire here. There's a lot more merit to these forms of therapy than I'm playing at. I'm poking fun here. And there is also a lot of wasted time, frankly, with these approaches, because knowing why and having a narrative doesn't deliberate you at all. At all. I mean, it could, as some byproduct, produce some liberation feeling, but it doesn't in and of itself change anything. Because here's the thing. I'm not saying that those experiences when you were young did not have an effect on you. I'm not saying that maybe that is very well why you are anxious when you meet new people. And here's the thing, okay? Humans have this desire to simplify complexity, to understand it. We want to understand stuff, and when I say understand it, we want to be able to describe it verbally, and we want to understand it logically. And then it makes us feel like we have a sense of control, which humans love. And when you are reducing things, the things that you can describe verbally and understand logically, you are instantly reducing the universe and its insane complexity down to a billionth of what it really is. You're just compacting it into a little box that your mind can understand. Now, this is useful. Models and mental models are useful to try to navigate life, but they're not true. The map is not the territory. And so when I come up with a narrative about this is how it is, and this is how I am, and this is why, it's like, okay, that's maybe a little good summary of one perspective from one angle. But that's not truth. That's not reality. That's not how it is. That's not exactly why you're scared of people now. I mean, there are so many billions of layers that to narrow it down, to reduce it. It's reductionistic to reduce it down to that is grossly inaccurate. And it's okay to look at those things to have some idea or something, but if you're trying to think this is how it is, that's just a false sense of certainty and control, because there are a thousand and one other explanations. How about you're nervous to meet people because your nervous system on a biochemical neural pathway level has been primed and practiced to do that. What if there are influences of the food you ingest? What if there's certain nutrients that affect your nervous system? What if there are ways in which you're responsive to collective unconscious of humanity? What if you're responsive to different phenomenological events in the universe, such as the moon, tidal poles, solar flares? I mean, you might roll your eyes at this stuff and say, oh, come on, Aziz, come on. Are you telling me it's astrology? I'm gonna say, you know, the idea that you are some independent fragment that's not affected by your environment, including the natural environment, including the human condition and the collective mindset of humans at that time, including your environment, of your home place currently, including the food that you ingest and the toxins and the chemicals you're exposed to. And the idea that none of that affects you and the reason that you feel the way you do on a Tuesday morning is because what happen 6 that's more reasonable. What I'm saying is we can't pinpoint anything we don't know. I don't know. You don't know. The therapist doesn't know. The therapist with the 17 acronyms after the name doesn't know. And that's not bad news. This is liberating news, my friend. Because the reason I'm challenging all this sort of dogma and doing so in such a direct way is because I'm trying to break through the hypnosis, the deterministic hypnosis that says because this, therefore I'm that. Because so many people take that information, it's not empowering, it becomes disempowering. And now they defend their story, and now they're pissed at their parents, and now they're trying to get something from their parents that their parents never gave them. And when I work with clients, I come at it from a very different angle. And they might have done five, ten years of therapy. And that's why I'll take. If I feel like I can help someone with their confidence, I'll say yes. And they'll say, oh, but I've been to therapists before. I'll say, it doesn't matter because I know that if you approach it in the same way, you're going to get the same results. But if you approach it in a new way and you're willing to be flexible, there's a whole new radical difference. So how do we heal from the past? Well, first it starts with saying, the past doesn't equal the future. The past doesn't control me. The past isn't why what's happening now is happening now. Well, why is what's happening now what's happening now? Well, is that the best question to ask? Is that the question that's going to set you free? I mean, what if you ask the question, how might I be more confident around meeting new people? Maybe I don't need to know why I'm anxious at all. How can I be more confident when I'm meeting new people? How can I be More trusting? How can I be more courageous? How can I access courage? And, you know, those questions are pretty good. But what if there's even better questions? How can I light people up by connecting with them? Whoa, whoa, now who's the focus on the other people, not am I good enough? But them. And you ask a different question, and all of a sudden your experience might radically change, and you did not spend 17 hours talking about your dad. Now, I know you hear this and you say, but, Aziz, I feel bad. I feel unworthy around people, and I know that that comes from the past. I hear what you're saying. I know it doesn't control me now. And I can make different choices and I can ask different questions, but I feel so bad. And every time I think about these things from the past, it hurts and I need to heal it. I say, okay, great. And I've talked to a lot of people like this. They say, what are you going to do to heal it? They say, well, I've talked about it in therapy a lot, and I say, okay, great, great. How did. Well, I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. I'm working on it. I say, okay, great. Seems like you're still stuck, still working on it. Yeah. Okay. What else have you done? I've meditated. I've really gone into the pain. I felt the pain. I've talked to my younger child self. I've journaled about it. I've told other people about it. I confronted my dad about it and said, I remember what you said when I was 9 years old and it hurt. And then the dad says, I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't say that. And they're like, God damn. Damn it, dad. Terrible. Ah, just admit it and apologize and then I'll feel better. Would you really? Is that really all it would take? Is someone else taking ownership? If someone else took ownership for what they did, then you'd feel better. I don't know about that. Because you're not taking ownership right now, and you're demanding an apology from someone else for you to feel better. Right? So what do we do here? You see that it is an illusion in the first place. So let's say something painful did happen to you in the past. Your father left or abused you or didn't love you, or those kids mocked you and teased you and beat you up and bullied you. You might have been through some pretty horrific stuff or even mildly unpleasant, ongoing stuff that could erode your self esteem and be painful. I'M not denying that. And maybe there is pain there when you think about it and when you focus on it. And it only exists when you think about it and you focus on it, by the way. And you might have a habit of thinking about it and focusing on it because it keeps you stuck in the past. So you don't have to live your life fully right now, because if you fully owned your confidence in who you are and what you're capable of right now, then you would take different risks, you would approach things. And right now there's a party that says, I don't want to get rejected. And so you might want to ask, how do I increase my capacity to feel uncomfortable feelings right now as I move towards a future that inspires me and others? That might be another better question to ask than, why do I have this problem and whose fault is it from the past? In any case, though, you got this pain from the past, and I relate to this. I had so many stories because I grew up. I was going to say grew up, but I was educated in academic psychology. I have a background in clinical psychology, and I got a doctorate in psychology. And I learned all about the different psychodynamic approaches, the Freudian approaches, the Jungian approaches, as well as more behavioral approaches and empirically supported treatments. And, you know, this sort of baked into a lot of the world of therapy and mental health is sort of healing the past. And so I believed I needed to do that. And it feels so true, doesn't it? It feels so dang true because you got painful stuff and things that were missing. And so I did all these different forms of therapy and I did role plays and I went back into the past and reprocessed things and, you know, went onto the soccer field where I was getting yelled at by my dad and felt humiliated and worthless and hugged that part of me and defended myself against my dad. And there's. There was some benefit in all that. And it never. It never went away. I always wanted something from him, and I always had the perspective that he didn't do it right. And yes, I appreciated the other things he did for me, but he didn't do it right and he needed to give me more. Do you relate to this, by the way? Are you holding onto something with one of your parents or someone else from the past? And yes, you've tried to forgive them, try to let it go, but dang it, it's just like they didn't do it. They didn't give it for me. And it will never. It will never stop. If you haven't healed it by now, you're never gonna heal it, no matter how many hours you spend doing that. That's just my perspective. You obviously can have a different perspective. And you can challenge me. You can say, I'm full of it. But if you haven't gotten there yet, why is another five years gonna make a difference of doing the same thing? Maybe something else is needed. So here's where, the hugest turning point for me and where I've guided a lot of clients to since then, since I discovered this stuff, which is you look at the wound from the past. What was I needing that I did not get? I'm not saying this is literally true, but this is my perspective, right? Well, I was needing love. I was needing acceptance. I was needing a warm, nurturing, paternal or masculine presence who could put his arm around me and say, I love you. It's okay. I love you no matter what. It doesn't matter if you perform well on the soccer field. I got you. What were you needing more of from these wounds? From the past? Was it love? Was it acceptance? Was it encouragement? Was it support? Was it connection? Was it being cared for? And this could be with parents. This could be a family. This could be other kids. This could be wherever. Wherever the perceived wounds occurred. Okay, so you have some sense and get specific here as best as you can. What did you need? Okay, here is when that past really becomes, quote, healed. It's when you see that the wound was what was needed to occur, that there was no error. There was no cosmic error here. And let me share briefly a little quick story. I was working with a client on this, and he had some painful experiences in his past with his father. And I don't know his dad. His dad might have, you know, some of the stories he told me, his dad sounded like, you know, like he wasn't, frankly, taking full responsibility for being a parent and didn't really show up the way that I would want to show up as a dad and the way that I want my dad to show up for me. So I acknowledge that. I'm like, hey, I'm not saying your dad. I'm not defending your dad, saying he did great. These are painful things you're telling me. And then I said, let me ask you a question. He said, what? I said, what's your personal philosophy on life? He said, what? I said, well, you know, what do you believe about life? Is everything here a ghastly accident, just kind of random? Are we here for a reason? Are There accidents. Do things happen just chaotically, or is there a purpose behind things? Do we have a purpose as humans? Are things unfolding for our benefit, or is it just randomness? What is your philosophy? I mean, whether you're religious or not or spiritual or not, everyone's got a life philosophy. They might not ever vocalized it, but they got one. And he's like, well, you know, I'm not really a religious guy, but I think that everyone's got a purpose. I think there's something bigger than us humans and that we have a purpose here. We're here for a reason. I said, oh. And I smiled because, okay, that makes it easy. If he didn't believe that, then I would have to take a different angle. But I said, okay, well, I wonder if we might be born with part of that purpose. But I wonder if also, what if life events shape us to steer us to have that purpose? They make us live that purpose. He's like, oh, that makes sense. I said, okay, well, is it possible that the events that happened that you were young, were necessary to shape you to live your purpose now as an adult and as a human on this planet of any age? Then he paused and he said, well, yeah, maybe I can see that. I said, okay, well, if that were so, how could we really fulfill that purpose? I said, what if you gave. What if part of that purpose is for you to give the thing that you felt like you didn't get and that the more you gave that thing, the more healed you'd be, the better you'd feel, the more empowered you'd feel, the better your life would be? And at that point, I lost him. He's like, what? Right? Because he's in pain. This was terrible stuff his dad did. That's the story he's been in. He's been in therapy. And other people told him he's right, and it's awful. And I used to think that was the case, and I used to believe that. So I said, let me tell you a story from my own life. I told him a little about some of the specifics of my dad and some of the really painful moments and how I tried to heal them and how it never worked. And then I said, you know, the shift occurred when I realized that when I was young, the thing I wanted most was to be deeply seen and heard and known by my dad. Just like I get you, like, looking me in the eyes, like, I know your soul. I know who you are. I really see you. I'm emotionally connected to you. You Feel seen and known and hurt. And I talked to a lot of people who wish they could have more of that when they were young. Right. Maybe you're nodding your head right now. And I said, and I didn't get it at the level that I wanted. And that used to just be this endless ache I was trying to get my dad when I was my 20s. I was, like, giving my dad books to read and trying to improve our communication, make him talk a different way and speak a different way and be more emotionally expressive and shake it out of him. Come on. And things didn't really shift until I realized that because of that experience when I was young, that wound, it unlocked the gifts. And the gifts were that now you listening to this episode and hundreds of thousands of people who've read my books. We get letters and emails all the time. Not letters. Who sends letters these days? I mean, emails. Emails all the time. That people saying, like this book, like you. It feels like you're in my mind. It feels like you get me more than anyone. I've never. I've read all these other books or I've talked to therapists, and I've never felt as seen as you are by reading this book. And so because of that wound, I have this gift for. Because the very thing that I wanted, I now can give. And the bigger you give it, the bigger I give it. The bigger you give it, the freer you become, the happier you become, the more fulfilled you become, the more healed you become, the more you realize there was nothing to heal in the first place. And this was perfect. This is exactly how it's supposed to be. And the choice isn't whether it was supposed to be this way or not, because it did. It happened this way. The choice is, do you accept it or not? Do you own it or not? Do you take ownership of your life finally now and say, yes, I'm going to find the gifts in that wound and I'm going to give what I used to think I did not have enough of to show and prove and discover that there is no lack here. I have an abundance of compassion, an abundance of love, abundance of acceptance. And I've just been withholding it from myself as well for however many years since these stories of my childhood came up. And by giving it, I realized that it's freely available. And it is love, acceptance, connection, all the things, compassion, all the things you wanted to be seen and known, all that stuff that you wanted when you were young is available in infinite abundance, and it's available right now. And here's the biggest thing. It doesn't have to come from your dad or your mom or your cousins or those kids at school. And now you are 20 years later, 30 years later, 40, 50 years later, trying to get it from that person from then, like, 30 years later, and maybe they're dead and you're still like, I needed to get. Come on. It's like trying to get it from this poor old man, this poor old woman. They don't have it to give. You don't need their love, their approval. You want divine love, divine approval, life, the universe, it's accessible, and you get to access it. And the way that you access it is by deciding right now that you're going to give it. And you're going to give it not just a little bit, you're going to give it consciously and give it 10 times more. So if you're like, I want everyone to, you know, feel accepted, well, then truly reach out to someone and let them know that they're welcome here. Not because you know you should do that to be a good person, but because you do it and you feel the impact of that and you see it in their nervous system. And then, boom, you receive, too. And then you feel that abundance, and then you're healed from the past. And it's not because you had to work on it more and more. It's just you stop focusing on it. Started focusing on what you can give and what you can contribute and who you can be and how you can be your most full, bold, authentic self now. So, speaking of that, let's turn this into action. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is going to be to look at one of the things that you think of as a wound from the past that you're trying to heal and go through that little process that I described in this episode where you discover the gift inside of it. What is it you were wanting? And so therefore, what have you been sensitized to possibly be able to give a lot more of. Even if you feel like you're lacking in it, it turns out you can give it better than anyone else. And then on purpose, start giving it. And just take your best guess at this stuff. If you're not totally certain, just go with your gut, trust your intuition on this, come up with something, and then intentionally give it tomorrow and notice how that feels. Thanks for being with me today. 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 it.