How To Stop Hating Yourself

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 the show. I know, I know, it's a pretty heavy title. I thought about titling it something a little lighter like three Keys to Self Esteem, which is really, I mean, that's what self esteem is about, is how to stop disliking yourself. But really, when you get down to it, most people, especially people I work with, social anxiety, niceness, they don't just dislike themselves, they kind of sort of hate themselves sometimes. Or maybe a more accurate way to say it is they hate a part of themselves or qualities about themselves. Or maybe an even more accurate way to say that is part of them. Maybe part of you dislikes or hates other parts of you. Which might sound really confusing, but not that much when you think about it like we're all a collection of parts, aren't we? You know, you got the classic example I use. You got the part that wants to wake up early in the morning and hit it. Whatever you're hitting it is a morning meditation routine, a workout, reading a book, snorting some cocaine, I don't know, whatever you want to do in the morning. But you have your you think is optimal for your health. It's probably not. Stay up till midnight doom scrolling and then hit snooze 12 times on your alarm and show up late to work. Right. That's probably not your ideal scenario. So you have whatever you think is healthy. Same thing goes for food and whatever your diet you think is healthy for you. And then you have another part of you is like, I don't want to do all that stuff. I just want to stay in bed. It's cozy. I don't want to get up and do anything uncomfortable. Or the part's like, I don't want to eat that healthy. Whatever. I want the tater tots dipped in ranch with the burger. Yeah, right. So we have different parts. And similarly you have different parts of you that maybe a part of you wants to speak up or be more bold or be more connected or more courageous. And another part that wants to hide or wants to avoid or not have the difficult conversations. And now we're. We're living our lives and these parts are operating all the time. And usually it's not whether you have these parts, it's which one's driving the bus. And so there is a part inside of you that is very, very critical. Right. And we might call it almost euphemistic terms like the inner critic or self critic or low self esteem, which there's nothing wrong with all those. They're all accurate descriptions, but they're also. They're a bit toned down. And I remember I came across a powerful book by Theodore Rubin called Compassion and Self Hate that really impacted me, and I would highly recommend it. I have not followed up on this, but I would like this. So, I mean, who knows, this could just be a total shot in the dark. But I value that book so much. And Theodore Rubin is now dead, I believe. But I have a plan in the back of my pocket that I haven't executed on to actually contact the company that has published his book and see if I can have them hire me as a narrator to audio record his book. Not sure if there's a market for it, if they want to do that, but I'd be really. I would love to record that in audio format so it gets out to more people. Because a lot of people don't necessarily listen to the books or read books if they can't. If they can't get them on audible and listen to them. In any case, if you want to check it out, it's a. It's a powerful read. Compassion and Self Hate by Theodore Rubin. And I just love how he talks a lot about it in that term. Self hatred, the machinery of self hatred is what he often talks about. Because in my personal experience, that's what it was. And I didn't want. I don't want to, like, tone it down and, you know, euphemize it a little bit. It's. It was. I'd be sitting at my kitchen table with my head in my, my. In my hands, you know, ringing through my hair, dealing with what felt like an unstoppable juggernaut of pain that I couldn't stop. I didn't have any power to deal with this inner critic. And maybe it's not that bad for you. Maybe it is more mild, but okay. In any case, it's probably not doing wonders for your confidence because this Is no surprise to you. I was actually working with a client recently about this in my mastermind program, and she was asking about, you know, building her self esteem and different ways to do it. And she's like, is positive self talk the answer? And I was like, yeah, that's. That's helpful for sure. But let's just look at the basics of it here and think about this. If you were in a romantic relationship and she was single. But imagine yourself in a romantic relationship and you're with a partner and he looks at you and you're changing or whatever, and he's like, ugh, your belly is disgusting. It's gross. Whoa, whoa. Okay, that's. I don't know how far you enter this dating relationship. That's a red flag. That's pretty freaking intense, isn't it? But what if that was no big deal? That was just. We're just getting started. Then after you're driving home from a dinner party, he's in the passenger seat and just shaking his head like, why did you say that? That was stupid. Ugh, my God, how embarrassing. And just picks at you and points out all the things you did wrong and how people probably don't like you and how your stories were boring and like, whoa, holy. You know, excuse me. Pull off at the next stoplight, get the F out of my car, we're done. Right? I mean, hopefully you'd have maybe not that dramatic of a breakup, but you would, as soon as you get home, instigate the breakup. Because that's messed up. That is verbal abuse. And it might be very obvious hearing that. And yet when it's happening between a parts of you, it's normal. You kind of habituate. You're like the person in the relationship, the abusive relationship, who just puts their head down and takes it. Yes, dear. Okay, you're right. I'm sorry. Or maybe you say like, no, that's not true. I didn't, you know, I'm not boring. And then that part just like, come on, who do you think you are? And you collapse, right? So there's like maybe a feeble attempt to defend yourself, but it doesn't really hold weight against a counter attack. And so when I was talking with this client, I said, we. If that is happening, all the positive self talk in the world is not going to change much. You are hemorrhaging self esteem when you attack yourself this way. And I'm not just talking to my client here. I'm talking to you. I'm talking to me. I'm talking to all of us, this is like a fact of human psychological nature. No one can sort of withstand that abuse without having a toxic effect. And the closer the abuse is coming from, the more destabilizing is to your own sense of self, right? So if you read some troll on the Internet who leaves a comment on something and says you're an idiot, you know, maybe that bothers you, maybe ruins your day. Depends on how nice you are and how much you need everybody to like everything you do everywhere. But if you know that's coming from your partner, close friend, it's like, whoa, boom. That's a. That's going to kind of create a lot of ripples in the relationship. And if it doesn't, if that's just kind of normal, then oof, you're already pretty far gone there, right? And so this is coming from not a close partner or a close friend. This is coming from within your own mind. And the worst part about it is if it came from the outside, you might, you know, be beaten down in the worst case scenario in an abusive relationship, but you might still have a part of you that's like f you or is hurt or is angry or child. But when it comes from your own mind, it almost bypasses all that. And it's just like, well, that's, that's a fact. I talk about this in my book on my own side Omos. If you haven't read that and you're listening to this episode, I would highly recommend that book. There's definitely some ideas drawn from all kinds of different approaches and my psychological training around self esteem and stuff I discover with self confidence in my own life and with clients. But there's some of the themes and ideas from Theodore Rubin's work as well, which I think is sort of in tribute or honor to him. And some of the most powerful concepts from his materials, not just compassion and self hate, but other books of his that I read that were powerfully liberating for me, that I wanted to share with you. So you can obviously go straight to the source on that with his book, or you can get some of the key ideas in Omos. But in Omos, I have a little section there that kind of gives a window into what might be your inner monologue, that thought stream where we kind of are just talking to ourselves and narrating the world to ourselves, which is a fascinating phenomenon if you ever slow down to observe it, do any mindfulness exercises or meditation or whatever. And then you're like, wow, why do I need to narrate the world. And if you think about it, it's actually. It's like a radio. It's like a broadcaster for a sporting event or something. But the broadcaster is kind of terrible because sometimes the broadcaster is narrating what's happening, right? So in the example of a sporting event, the broadcaster's like, you know, whatever the sport, let's pick football. You know, the quarterback snaps the ball, hikes, hikes it. Does his quarterback snap it? I don't. God, I don't even know the dude who snaps the ball to the quarterback. Is it the center? Center. So it's a good thing I'm not a broadcaster in football. Anyway, the quarterback has the ball and, you know, he looks to the right and throws the ball. Whatever. He's narrating what's happening. And we do that in our own life, right? So you're narrating about that person said that. And then he's going to do this, and I got to do this over here. We also though, that that broadcaster can just kind of go off the rails and start narrating something random. Like imagine you're watching a football game, and he's like, the quarterback looks to the right. And, you know, I remember when I was nine and my dad told me, son, you have beautiful green eyes. And you're just like, what does this have to do with the football game? Right? But that's what our mind's doing. It's just random stuff and maybe fearful. I think about this problem over here has nothing to do with what's happening right now. So that's going on, and not only is it just kind of all over the place and kind of unnecessary, like, why do I need to narrate every moment of my life? But on top of that, it will interject it into what might seem like very benign narration. Like, okay, I got this meeting at 3. It's 1:45. Okay, I'm gonna get some lunch. I gotta run in this morning, so I don't need to do that this afternoon. That's great. I mean, God, I'm a loser, and no one's ever want to be with me. That's why I'm single for life. Oh, I gotta get back to Arthur about that email he sent me. Right? And that's just interjected in there. And you might say, I don't say that to myself, Aziz. Well, you do. There's different ways to think about it. In the cognitive therapy world, they might call them automatic negative thoughts, which are kind of right on the cusp of Conscious and subconscious. So if you really slow down and bring your attention to it, you will notice that you are saying stuff like that. But unless you've trained your awareness, you don't actually know it. Also, though, in my own observation, thoughts, there's verbal thoughts which are like constructing sentences, and those are kind of your slower thoughts. Then there's images, which can communicate a lot really quickly or like little mini movies. And then there's something else that the best way to describe it would be called perspectives. And a perspective might be a word or two combined with an image, combined with the whole way of seeing the situation. So if you've ever been embarrassed, which if you're of social anxiety, you might experience all the time, even in situations where you're fine, you didn't do anything, you still could feel embarrassed, but. And you leave a situation and there's a moment, you know, someone said something and you made a comment and it seemed like your joke didn't land or whatever, you know, that you're driving home and your inner critic is going to abuse you now. But what might just happen is not a whole string of words. You might just see that moment, and in the image and embedded in the whole meaning of the image, the perspective is you might see the moment, you might see someone's face, and then the perspective is, fool, who made a fool of yourself? And you might not be verbally saying, oh, I made a fool of myself. But that's instantly transmitted. And you know that. And that's exactly how you interpret it. And that's all delivered in, you know, sub half a second, right? Fractions of a second. And that can be embedded into your thought stream, which may be perhaps mostly unnecessary narration of what's happening in our lives. And it's toxic and it's brutal. You might say, okay, Aziz, I'm with you, I'm with you. I get it. It's not just being hard on myself or my own worst critic, another weird euphemism that people use to try to soften the terribleness of it all. But how? Okay, I'm with you. How do I stop hating myself? Fine, I'm hating myself. I get it. How do I stop it? Which is a question I get all the time. Because we kind of illuminated with people and they're like, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. How do I make it stop? And that's a great question, great question to be asking. And maybe a more important starting question is, why not? Why are you doing it? Because a lot of people say, I don't know. Maybe it's to make myself better. Maybe it just happens. It's like a habit. I don't know. It just seems like it's kind of coming out of nowhere. So why are you doing it? Might not lead to fruitful results, but here's the version I would ask you. Why are you choosing to buy into that part's messages? That part being the hyper critical or abusive part. So I'm not saying why is that part there? I have all different theories about that. There's all kinds of psychological theories about that. You could have your own theories about that. You can learn about, you know, my ideas and omos. Great, great, great. But we're not going there right now in this episode. Instead, we're focusing on. It's there for whatever reasons, and it's saying stuff to you through these perspectives or verbally or images, right? It's communicating to you. Fine, there it is. That's just the facts. Now, what comes next is why do you. You can feel like you're distinct from it, right? I know you might say, you might use the language, I'm such an idiot, but who's saying that? So when I do this with clients, they can pretty quickly tell that there is some sort of critical part of them inside of there. So the question is, why are you jumping on the bandwagon? Why are you aligning with that critical part? Why are you the full comprehensive you, the observer inside of you, however you wanna think about it, your consciousness, why is it when that thought comes in, instead of saying, whoa, okay, just like, if you had a thought, you know, I could jump off? I don't know. If you do this, I, you know, if I'm ever somewhere high, like a balcony or something, I'll, you know, typically want to look over the edge for whatever reason, and then I'll kind of analyze what would happen if I jumped. Now, don't worry. This isn't some death wish. I don't know if it's some primal survival strategy or something where I look, if I had to escape this building, what would I do? And I kind of look down like. Well, I try to jump for those trees. I've done it. My office is on the. The third floor of our house, top floor. And, you know, it's got a deck outside of it. And to one side, about 25ft down, is concrete. The other side, about 25ft down, IS bamboo. So you better believe I've analyzed. You know, I'm like pacing around there doing a phone call with a client or something. I look down at the bamboo, being like, I would definitely jump into the bamboo. There's a pretty good chance I won't even break a bone if I, if I landed right, could impale myself though. So, you know, you gotta. Anyway, my mind comes up with this weirdo stuff like that all the time. You could, you could drive off of this or what happens if you jumped out of there? I, I'm not gonna do any of it. I also give it a ton of thought. I'm like, that's a weird thought, right? Whatever. And that's it. And I'm sure your mind has some weirdo thoughts too. So what? Why do you buy the harsh, negative, critical, self hating thoughts and give them tons of validity? Like, yeah, that's right, I was a fool at that party. Damn. Good, good information. Thank you. Thank you. I am gonna tell me more. I want to subscribe to your newsletter. Why are you doing that? That. That is the question to answer. And you might want to answer. You might want to think about that beyond this episode. Study it, ponder it. Why? Why? And you might say, well, I, you know, and if you've read Omos, then you'll discover that it actually has a self protective quality that it's designed to prevent you from stepping fully into life and keeping you in a, defended, partially defended way of living. Because if you believe that you're dirt or that you're unlovable, or that you're unworthy, you're ugly, you're a loser, you're boring, whatever, then you will minimize your risks, particularly your social risks, particularly your connection with others. And so it keeps you small and safe and downsized. Now, you might have other interpretations as to why, and I want you to investigate for yourself, but that's kind of what I've seen when we really get to the bottom of it with people. And so the real how here. So how do you shift this? And I'm going to share that. In fact, the how is going to be your action step. Time for action. Action, action. The how to shift this is for you to choose. I call this the decision of a lifetime in the book. You know, to be on your own side. Right? Is the decision of lifetime. But what does that really mean? Does that mean you, you talk positively yourself? Does that mean you intervene when the critic is attacking you? Sure, yes to all those things. But ultimately what it means is that you become willing to step more into your own life. Because that's the purpose of the critic's agenda, is to prevent you from stepping into your life fully to Keep you protected, or at least the illusion of it. Right. By being isolated in many ways. So you must become willing to experience life more fully and some of the bumps and challenges and pains that come with that. So from my own experience, I told myself I was ugly. For many years, my critic used to go on long campaigns about how ugly and unattractive I was. Sure enough, I didn't do wonders for my dating confidence and dating self esteem, so I didn't date. Now, was it because I was too ugly to date? Well, yes, at the time, I believe that was the case. Now, when I look back. No, no, no, no, no. I was scared. Scared of connection, scared of vulnerability, scared of getting rejected, scared of all of it. And so I could keep my world really small by I'm too ugly. So what's the point? And so, in order to end that self criticism, I don't believe we can just say, I love you. I love you. I love you. You're great, Aziz, you're so beautiful. It just falls flat because we're not. Ultimately, then it becomes a big debate. I am beautiful. No, I'm ugly. Oh, I'm lovable. No, I'm not. I'm gonna try. I'm gonna wrestle for the next nine years to try to get this critic to go away. But as long as a critic has got you in a big debate, guess what you're not doing. You're not defying it. So the only way, I believe, to really transform this is to do the things that it's trying to protect you from, which, in my case, was to start to put myself out there, to approach. And of course, it acts up then, like, oh, that approach was so terrible. You're so awkward. You're so awful. And then you can really, you know, this is where you get the critic on its heels. I show you how to do this in Omos, where it's, like, you start to call it out, like, oh, I know you're scared right now. I get it. It's uncomfortable to put ourselves out there. Boom. Now who's the authority? Now who's the inner parent? Now who's in charge? It's you. And it's a whole new world. So thanks for being with me today. I hope this serves you. And if you're inspired, definitely check out Omos. You'll get a ton out of that book. On my own side. You can find it on Amazon or audible. And I hope this really serves you. So 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 that you're awesome.

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