How To Stop Feeling Self-Conscious In Public

If you feel self conscious in public or certain situations, you're absolutely going to want to watch this video because you're going to discover exactly why and most importantly how to shift it. I'm Dr. Aziz, I'm the founder of the center for Social Confidence and I've been helping people overcome social anxiety, which self consciousness is a symptom of social anxiety. It's the feeling that other people are watching you, observing you and picking at you, noticing things, disliking things about you. And the essence of the judgment that you imagine is coming your way is one that they're noticing you. And then they're, they're kind of thinking this, this person's really weird or off or different or other. And it's almost like they are viewing you as some sort of some intruder or some repulsive thing, like some bad smell or someone's like, oh, what's happened? Why is this here? Why is this thing here? It can get so intense that we start to hyper observe ourselves, right? And we all have this capacity of self observation which can actually be really useful, could even be liberating. But self consciousness is not self awareness. Self consciousness is this hyper focus through fear, through the lens of fear and kind of a distorted proportion or magnification, almost like a fun house mirror of how you might look. So then what you do with your hands, what you do with your voice, what you do with your eye contact, what you're wearing, everything gets more and more of this sense of glaringly, obviously, clearly, repulsively bad to everybody, you know what I'm talking about? And it can get really overwhelming. And most importantly, it can be really hard to just talk to people because you have all this bandwidth in your head going to determine how am I coming across and is it okay and oh my God, it's too much. And people think this. And now you only have 10 bandwidth left for the actual conversation. Then it starts this negative cycle because only 10% of you is present into the conversation. The other person is kind of like, why are you acting weird? You're like, oh my God, I am acting weird. Oh, I knew it, they're all watching me, right? And it can be really painful. How do we shift this? Well, first you have to understand what you're doing here and that's a key way to start what you are doing. Self consciousness is not about anyone else or anyone outside of you. Even if someone is observing you, hyper observing you, even if someone is judging you, it's still not about them. It's about what you are Doing with all of that, what you're doing in your own awareness and consciousness. And the first thing that you are doing is you're freaking yourself out. We can do this. We can psych ourselves out. And so we. You know, here's another example of this. It's another form of anxiety, which is catastrophizing. You ever done that? That's a term from cognitive behavioral therapy where you imagine something in the future. Maybe there is a challenge like, oh, that thing's not working. Oh, there's a leak up there. Okay. Oh, my gosh. There's a leak up there. That's probably been going on for a long time. Oh, no, there's prob mold up there. Not just any kind of mold, but black mold. And that black mold is already probably in all of our lungs. And once that get in your lungs, you can't get it out. And we're probably going to get cancers and we're probably going to have to move, but we don't have the money to move. And we're not going to be able to fix it, because you can't fix black molds. Probably spread all throughout the walls of this whole house. We've been breathing it for years. My kids are going to get sick. They're probably going to die. That's just an example. You know, I'm talking about. We can catastrophize about anything. Work situations, family situations, health, all that stuff. That is what self consciousness turned up is like, it's a catastrophizing. And so the first thing you do is label it as that. Right? Because if we get sucked into like, yeah, that is what's happening with the black mold. It's really hard to slow that train down. Right. If we really buy into it. So the first thing you do is nip it in the bud and label it and say, okay, catastrophizing, or I'm magnifying this right now. Just naming that will help you. The next thing you want to do is literally, this one's so kind of feels too basic. So don't roll your eyes, but stick with me here is you're going to take several breaths now. People hear that and they roll their eyes like, give me the real tips disease. But what's happening is you have to regul nervous system because the mind starts racing, the body's going to start physiologically responding. And at that point, trying to talk yourself down gets way harder. So even in public, even in these situations, you're going to label it like, oh, that's what's happening? Think of it as a little warning light on your dash. Oh, I'm catastrophizing here about everyone looking at me. And then one simple way to regulate your breathing is just a count of five in and a count of five out, right? And you don't have to get super distracted by that. If you get too hung up on the number, just slow in, pay attention to it, slow out, maybe do that several times. And this is part of a training of your nervous system. It's basically saying, hey, this is actually safe, even though I'm telling myself that it's dangerous. The next thing that we want to do is not in the moment, because these are things to work with it in the moment, but to really free yourself is you need to see through the root of it. And the root of it is what am I so afraid of in other people's perceptions? And this is a core part of the confidence transformation that I do with people. People. I have a 12 month mastermind program called the Unstoppable Confidence Mastermind. And that's the essence of what we're doing. I mean, we're helping people achieve a lot of different goals, social goals, friendships, career, speaking up for themselves, more assertiveness, all that stuff happens. But the essence of what I'm doing with them, from my perspective, is we're helping them truly transform this raw fear of what they are going to think of me. Because if you try to tell yourself like, hey, no one's thinking bad about me. Look, no one's even noticing you, Aziz. Because I used to feel so self conscious all the time. My posture, my clothes, everything, my face, all these ways I was hyper aware of my body, especially if I got around someone I found attractive, it would get really bad. And if I told myself, hey, she's not really noticing those things, or they don't really care about those things, I didn't buy it. Liberation for me didn't start to happen until we face our fear. We face our fear and we say, well, what is it that they're going to think about me? Maybe sit down with a pen and paper. What are they going to think about? Well, they're going to think you look awkward. They're going to think you're stupid. They're going to think your clothes don't fit you well. They're going to think you're, you move weird. They're going to think your eye contact is strange. You're creeping them out. Well, let's say someone says you're strange and you're creeping me out. Let me face that. Let me sit with that with a pen and paper in my hand and work with like the the discomfort that arises and journal about it and explore solutions. I have way more videos about how to just be with this, face this fear. Talk yourself through this until you can get to a place of it's okay, it's okay. And if you want a guided process for this, go to not nice book.com Enter your email there. And there's a bunch of resources that come with that book. If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it. And then at the bottom there's something called the Guided Peace process. There's a 22ish minute audio that will guide you through a process of how to calm your nervous system. So you could do that at home, in the safety of your home, no one's around. But if you do that several times there, all of a sudden when you step out in the world, it's more okay. There's nothing to protect against because someone's passing, thought or judgment is not a threat. And when you really get that, everything changes in your life. So I hope this serves you. Make sure you check out notnicebook.com Enter your email. It's absolutely free. You get access to all the resources the book, including the peace process and I hope that serves you until we speak again. May of courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.