How To Stop Replaying Conversations In Your Head

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 Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz. And. And do you play conversations in your head again and again and again after they happen? That's a very specific pattern, and it's different, actually, than playing conversations before they happen. It might seem like, well, that's kind of the same thing, right? Before and after. No, actually, one. I mean, they're both forms of anxiety, so they share that in common. But playing conversations before is usually a form of preparation in which you're trying to make. Make sure that you impress people that you come across in the right way, that you show up in the way that you think is going to be the most desirable and attractive to get whatever it is that you want from that situation. It's a form of rehearsal, and that's a strategy to try to overcome anxiety, reduce anxiety, and make sure that the threat of disapproval is avoided. Replaying conversations afterwards is really different because the moment has already happened right beforehand. There's an illusion of control of like, well, if I just make sure I sound like this and say it like this, it's going to be so funny, and everyone's going to think I'm so great. Okay. Okay. Do it just like that. Don't mess it up now. Okay. What was that other person saying? I don't know. I don't care about other people. I got to make sure that I'm okay right now. Right, but afterwards, you've already said whatever you're going to say. The moment is already done, so why are you replaying it? Have you ever thought about that? Well, that's. We're going to investigate in today's episode why you do it, what purpose it serves, and then how to shift that pattern so you stop doing it. Interestingly enough, knowing what purpose it serves actually is part of the process of unhooking yourself, because, interestingly enough, worry. So when I was back in my graduate Training back in ye olden times, I, I ended up having a few clients who had what we call generalized anxiety disorder. So what that is is not just a specific place that they get anxious. Like social anxiety. You get anxious in social situations, right? Generalized anxiety disorders. You're just anxious all the time. It's terrible. And you might have experienced a period in your life like that, right? But it's very unpleasant. And one of the things I discovered when I was learning about this, to help clients with it, is that part of what keeps that whole ball of suffering going, all the worry machinery going, is a belief, usually subconscious for clients, that the worrying is somehow beneficial. It's preparation, it's defense, it's serving a function. And so part of the liberation from generalized anxiety disorder is to discover and see really deep down for the clients to see this themselves, that the worry actually isn't helping them. And that when that belief changes, something starts to shift. And it's actually very similar for this situation. When you really see that replaying the conversations isn't helping you in any way, then it's going to be way easier to let it go. All right, so I'm excited. Let's dive into this. By the way, if you've been listening to this show and you're benefiting from it and you think, wow, this is really useful and you want to take things further and you've not dove into Confidence University yet, I highly recommend that. This show has got tons of useful strategies that I'm sharing real time that I'm working with clients. I'll have a great session or group session and I'll record episode right after that. So you're getting the best stuff I got. And by the nature of it being a podcast, it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a variety of topics. If you want a systematic step by step process to build gradual exposure, build your boldness muscle, build confidence in your social life, your dating relationships, your career. Each area is categorized. You definitely want to check out Confidence University. It comes with four full length in depth courses. You have lifetime access to those courses, tons of bonuses, and it's really going to set you on a path rather than trying to piece me all this stuff together. So go to TheConfidenceUniversity.com to check that out or just go to my website. You can go to draziz.com,/a z I z.com and check under programs. I think it's under that tab. And you can learn more about Confidence University in terms of you being able to short circuit that replay pattern. I'm gonna share that now. Why do you do it though? What do you think is going on? And I've asked clients this and I'll pause. I'm not just gonna tell you the answer. Cause I really want you to start to reflect on it. Why are you, after you have a conversation, going through it, combing through it, what are you looking for? What are you doing? Isn't that. It's a really interesting use of your focus. The moment is gone, but you're looking, You're. You're peering, you're looking. What do you notice about? In fact, maybe when's the last time you did this? Maybe there's a conversation you're replaying recently, right now. Maybe you do it all the time. I certainly did. When I had a lot of social anxiety. I did it all the time. So what are you looking for when you do it? Usually when I ask clients this, they'll say, I'm looking for moments in which maybe I made a mistake, made a blunder. A moment where maybe I offended somebody or they didn't get my joke. Sometimes it's moments where it wasn't any of those, quote, mistakes. It was a moment maybe where you were sharing freely. I used to do this one a lot. If I got really excited and I was just in the moment and sharing freely and feeling really good, actually, when I leave, I'd start to replay that conversation and I would go to those moments and then I would imagine one of my friends or whoever was near me when I was in that excited state. And I would imagine them looking at me and just being repulsed. Like, oh, this guy's so excitable and self absorbed and talking too much. And it wasn't just like a little bit of mild annoyance. It was repelled. It was disgusted. It was very painful because not only was I running this replay pattern, that kind of projected or imagined view of me felt 100% replacement real. Like that's exactly what was happening inside of their mind. And it would kind of replay the scene like a movie. And. And just that's what was going on for the character. And then, you know, if you were watching a movie, that's almost like a. What's that show with the guy from Sign? Larry David. Right. I don't really watch his show that much called Curb youb Enthusiasm. I don't even know if it's still on. But what that show. But the bread and butter of that show is from the few episodes I've seen Is it's just a lot of really awkward social situations where the audience is watching and kind of cringing inside. Like, oh, don't go, oh, he's saying that thing to the person. Oh, my God, that's so uncomfortable. Right? And then everyone laughs. It's like, I don't. Maybe some people laugh. I just cringe and say, like, why am I watching this show? It's uncomfortable. It's not even good uncomfortable. It's not even like I'm doing something uncomfortable to liberate myself. It's just like, for my entertainment, I'm going to watch awkwardness that's uncomfortable. Like, yeah, I'll probably watch something else. Something with. With dragons and knights. All right, so that imagined judgment that. That it. It's almost like if someone was watching that. That scene, they would be cringing and saying, oh, Z's. Why are you going on and on? Can't you see that they don't really painful. What do you tend to replay? What moments do you replay? Was the joke that no one laughed at? Was it the time you're being kind of sarcastic and people thought you were being serious and real, and then you're like, oh, no, not how they think I'm a jerk. Is the time you forgot someone's name. Like, oh, my gosh, how did I forget you? And then how many times are you playing the fact that you forgot their name? Like, 77. I forgot his name. Oh, my gosh. Two minutes later. Not even two minutes, 20 seconds later, oh, you forgot his name. Now when you replay that mistake or that awkward moment, are you doing that same thing? Let's say you did forget so and so's name. Are you imagining so and so being, ugh, I'm so hurt by that. How could you not know my name? I mean, we already met before. Oh, you hurt me deep. You cut deep. Right? And they're. They're upset and offended and maybe you feel guilty. That's another replay result. People feel so guilty. Guilty. Oh, I said that thing when I was upset. Ooh. Right. And it's a lot of, like, if you are watching the video version of this, which, by the way, if you're unaware of this and you're listening to this on Apple podcasts or Spotify, check out YouTube drink for the shy guy. We got video versions of these episodes in which you could see all the cringy faces I'm making. Oh, yeah, but there's a lot of cringy faces going on. You can probably hear the cringe right now. So become really aware of what you're doing here because that is part of the path of liberation. Now, why the hell would you want to have a connecting conversation with someone and then afterwards just completely ruin the experience by imagining all this junk? Might say, I'm not imagining disease. That's exactly what happened. Right. Okay, well, why would you want to even focus on that? Because it serves a function. Dun, dun, dun, dun. What? Why? Why would you want to do that? No, it's actually part of you thinks this is a very necessary thing to do. Really? What is it? Hmm? What do you guess? What do you think? Why would someone want to replay these bad, quote bad moments and make them seem even worse than they are? What's the result of it? Well, let's investigate together. Instead of me just telling you, let's just say I talked a lot and then afterwards I felt really ashamed and embarrassed for doing that. Or you forgot someone's name and you felt really ashamed and embarrassed. What's the. What's the result of that? Well, on the surface, the result is to make you do better, quote, unquote, next time. Well, if I just feel really, really, really bad, then I'll for sure remember everyone's name next time. Swell strategy. I'm sure it's going to work there, right? Or oh my gosh, I was talking a lot and I was excited. You know, that's really bad. So now next time I'll be more cool and quiet, I guess is what I thought was better. So it's, quote, improving you. It's showing you what to do next time. Although have you noticed how that doesn't actually work? Do you really fix everything? So does that mean the next time you don't replay the conversation because you did great? Or do you replay the conversation and look for other things? Or do you do the same thing again because you didn't fix the problem? All you did is make yourself feel really anxious and uncomfortable. So what is going on there? It's not really about improving you. That's a lie. That's false. That's the front. That's why. Just like the person with general anxiety who thinks the worry is going to help me be prepared if something bad happens. It's not preparing you, it's just stressing you out. It's actually de preparing you, unpreparing you. It's making you less capable and resourceful to emotionally handle and make intelligent decisions when something bad happens. When you're worrying all the time, you're just burnt out and freaked out and your nervous system is frayed. And it's the same thing with the social anxiety thing. When you replay the interaction, it doesn't make you more confident the next time, More likely to remember people's name, more likely to connect with others. No, it's not about that at all. That's just a hook to get you to pay attention to it. What's it really about? It's really about separating you from others and keeping you quiet and small and in a cage and hopefully avoiding all contact in your life. That is the desired goal of the safety police. You may have heard me talk about this in this show. The safety police is your defense strategy from life that says I'm going to get hurt if I connect with others. You have some early conditioning that says if I really am just myself out there and I make friends and I connect and I meet people and I get dates and I'm just me in the world, I'm going to get rejected, I'm going to get hurt. I'm going to. Something bad is going to happen. My heart's going to break. I'm gonna get made fun of behind my back. I'm gonna get ostracized, something bad. So you know what the best thing to do is keep everyone at a distance and keep myself small and safe. And so even if you have friendships, you keep people at a distance. Even if you're in a relationship, you only let them get so close. And a lot of people, you don't even let them know you at all. And there's a lot of ways to hide. You can literally just not talk to people, keep relationships really minimal, be not that available. Or you can hide behind a front of niceness. And then they know the nice version of you. They don't really know the real you, and that's exhausting. But you keep doing it because you think you have to do you is not okay. And so this strategy of replaying what it's looking for, right, it's giving you the COVID story of, hey, I want to help you be better and make people like you more. It's totally legit. What it's really looking for is any way in which you could allow yourself to be seen and known for who you really are and to freak out and cut those parts off to make sure that you stuff all that way down. So when I'm really excited, like, do I sound excited when I'm talking to you right now? I am actually quite excited when you. When I pound on the table, you know, I'm very excited. My arms are Waving around. If you're watching the video version, my eyebrows are going crazy. My caterpillars just wiggling around, you know. Side note, I did a public speaking training a long time ago and one of the feedback pieces I got was that my. I moved my eyebrows too much. And I was trying, you know, I generally try to be curious about feedback. I don't just accept it all whole hog like I used to when I was younger. And so I thought about it for a little bit. I even thought about, is that something I should be aware of? You know, because I have gotten feedback at one point that I was using the word like too much and I listened to some of my stuff and I said, I am, I am. And so I consciously reduced that because I agreed with that feedback. Not moving the eyebrows. I thought about it for a little bit and I said, you know, no, I think I'm just gonna let my face do whatever my face wants to do. My eyebrows, I'm just thinking about my eyebrows right now. After this video, after this recording, I'm just gonna replay how much I move my eyebrows and feel. No, but being you, letting your eyebrows move, letting yourself be excited. When I was with my friends and I was sharing excitedly, I was. It wasn't just the content of whatever I was talking about. It was that I was excited, I was enthusiastic, I wasn't self conscious, I wasn't policing myself, my guard was down. I wasn't thinking about what I was going to say ahead of time to make sure it was cool and good enough, right? I was just letting me out, which was actually a beautiful thing. Actually, when I look back at those moments from a much more clear, confident place, I'm like, that's why they love me. That's a moment of beautiful connection. But back then I couldn't handle that. I was too scared. Even with my closest friends, I was too scared. And so there's this moment of connection and if you could just, ah, let it in. Ah, it's beautiful. And letting it in doesn't mean you were perfect and you didn't make any mistakes. And maybe you did forget someone's name, but I've not known someone's name that I've met before and just said, hey, I'm sorry I forget your name. Can you share what it is again? Oh, great, thanks. I'll even say two minutes into the conversation, you know what, I'm just gonna ask one more time because I really don't want to forget it. What was your name again? That'd be the third Time I'd ask him. And then what happens is I could have that whole experience and then have a beautiful moment of connection for 40 minutes with someone who maybe I'd only met once before, I didn't even really know. And I just got their name for the third time. And you walk away from that interaction, and you can spend a lot of time focusing on, you forgot their name and how bad that was, and now you should be ashamed. And the result of that, Forget the content. Pay attention to the result. The result is, are you more connected or less connected? Does your heart feel relaxed and open, or is it tight and scared? Right. You're disconnected, you're scared, you're tight. That's keeping. That's like a. It's like your tentacles are getting sucked back inside of you because it's too scary to remain connected to others. But if you really just let it be, there's a sweet connection there with you as an imperfect being and them as an imperfect being. And yes, it's vulnerable. There are things about you that they're gonna like and things that they might be annoyed by or disinterested in or not. Like they might have mixed thoughts when they leave, oh, I really like this, or, oh, he did talk too much there for me. Isn't that just reality? Don't people. Is there anyone who's just, I love so and so and I love everything about them, or is it more varied than that, more real than that? In that it's a mixed experience. But overall, if people want to continue to spend time with you, they're gonna like more than they dislike, Quite a bit more, actually. And do you really even have control over all that? And so part of this process to let go of replaying these interactions is to really let go of that false attempt to control that impossible attempt to control how people are gonna react by policing yourself, by filtering yourself. If anything, it always backfires because the people that I see are the most filtered, the most. Trying to make sure that they don't come across this way or that way and get people to like them actually become not very likable because they're all bottled up and all filtered and there's just not much to grab onto. And so people might not actively dislike them, but they're just kind of like, oh, yeah, so. And so it was a generally forgettable interaction, you know, it was okay, I guess. So instead of being okay, I guess what if you just fully allow yourself to be you? So how do you do that? Well, when you really see that this Is about keeping distance. Then when you leave an interaction, you start to replay it. You call it out. You say, ah, ah. That's my. That's my dog. Correction sound, by the way. I really use that with my own mind, too. Like, ah, ah. In fact, this just happened to me. So people ask, like, do you experience social anxiety anymore? And I'm like, yeah, I just. Anxiety will come up for me. I just have tools and strategies. That doesn't hook me at all. Or it's very short if it does. And so we had some friends over and seen them in a long time, and they spent, you know, four or five hours with us. We had dinner out here, spent time with our kids, walked around on our land. It was great. And then they left. And I was lying in bed, and I noticed this pattern of replay started to come up. I was like, oh, that moment when I said that, or, oh, it was like the same kind of stuff when I was a teenager. Like, oh, I was talking too much, and oh, this and that, Because I was excited to spend time with them there. I love them. They're great. And then I said, wait a minute, hold on a second. If I wasn't doing that, and this is a great question to ask yourself, if I wasn't replaying this interaction for the negative, what would I focus on? And then I just closed my eyes. My eyes were closed. I was lying in bed. I took a breath in, and I just started to see little moments from the evening. And I was no longer trying to control them or manipulate them or evaluate them. It was just, oh, there's this moment at dinner and this moment outside, and then this happened. And there's different feelings with different moments, right? Oh, I like that moment. Or, oh, I felt a little worried there. This or that, Or I'm just letting it be because there's nothing to fix. And also, can I let myself feel connected to this person Even after this interaction is over? Instead of retreating those little tentacles back inside and cutting off all connection, Can I soften and allow the connection to be there? That's what a lot of this about. And not just replaying conversations, but a lot of overcoming social anxiety is actually expanding your capacity to reside more in the unknown, reside more in connection. And the vulnerability of that. And that's what scares us. That's what causes us to go into our head and close things down. So let's talk about how you can put this into action in your life. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step for today is going to be to notice when you do a replay after interactions. It might even be just really minor one. And it might be a more major one where it feels really disturbing and you're all caught up in it. Either way, first things first. Interrupt it, give it the dog, correction, sound. Ah, ah. Hold on a second here. Because if you just feed the beast, you can do that for 20 minutes and then feel terrible afterwards. You got it right away. Like, ah, ah. Make a sound, make a clap, get up and move your body around. Say, wait, wait, wait. That's a replay. Hold on a second. And then think about what you learned in this episode. I know what's really going on here. It's not really about making me better. I should fix this or I need to do anything. It's just. Okay, I am scared right now. I feel vulnerable. Was there anything about how I was being that maybe was really alive and enthusiastic? And can I let myself be all of that? Can I let them have whatever experiences they had of me? Positive, negative, like this, didn't like that. Soften and allow them to have their full experience. You don't need to try to control them and how they see you through your actions. Like, come on, how long have you been doing that? You know, it doesn't really work, so you're ready for something else. And then just the third step is to breathe and soften your belly, soften your chest, soften your jaw, and just soften to allow the connection to be there. If I wasn't focusing on replaying this one awkward moment, what else could I be focused on right now? Can I allow myself to still feel connected to this person even though we're not with each other anymore? Can I let it be beautiful? Can I let myself feel love? And you just might find that something that you're picking on that seems so bad, all of a sudden, boom. You can feel this beautiful sweetness for that person, for your friendship, for that moment. And then you go on about your day, and it's just gone. You don't put any more energy on it. That is freedom. So thanks for being with me today. And until we speak again, may I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you are awesome.

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