Marwa wants to travel abroad for a month of training but feels too scared. Dr. Aziz explains the difference between avoidance and self-care, suggests scaling down the challenge, and recommends starting with one small action right now instead of waiting to feel ready.
Hey, Dr. Aziz, here. Here's another Q and A video. This one comes from Marwa, who says, thank you for your articles and podcast. I listen to them regularly and they're a great help. Here's my problem. I was about to do something that is really challenging for me. Traveling abroad for a month for training. And then I felt so scared, stressed, and overwhelmed. So I decided not to do it. Now I'm feeling bad and guilty for not taking this step, but at the same time, I feel like it was beyond my ability to handle this right now. It was like I had to jump from the top of the stairs to the bottom instead of taking one step at a time. Now my questions are how to deal with the negative feelings. Afterwards, I felt like a failure and that my life is ruined and there was no hope for me. And I kept comparing myself to everyone around me who could take the risk. Two, when you expose yourself to challenges, how to know if you're not ready for that yet or if you're just stopping yourself from anxiety. Can you please talk about this? And then he also, she, he, Marwa, feels shame as well. How do I deal with the shame that I feel about this? So this is a great question. And the sun is gonna highlight my forehead, my face. There we go. I get it, man, this stuff is tricky. The general teaching is push our edge. We have to get on our own side and face our fear and ultimately challenge all the fears in our head. And at the same time, sometimes we can do it and sometimes we can't. In a lot of ways, building our social confidence is like building fitness. That's why some people call it social fitness. Lynn Henderson was a psychologist that coined that term, I believe. And it makes a lot of sense, right? Same thing with working a workout or a run or whatever. Like, can I do a long run today or can I push it in the gym today or not? I don't know. I don't know. Because sometimes you say, I can't. Your mind's like, I can't, I can't, I can't. Ever had that with a workout? Like, I can't do it today. I'm too tired. And then you dig deep and you find the energy and you do it. It's the same thing with facing our fear in general. You can do it. You can just your mind saying, you can't go and talk to those people. Oh, my God, I'm not ready for that. Okay. You probably could, though, right now. Go on this big trip. Go on this training, traveling abroad. You probably Could. And if you talk yourself out of it and you don't, that's okay too. Here's the thing though. You want to know if is this anxiety or is this avoidance or is this a true taking care of myself? Well, it's true. Taking care of yourself is if you scale it back but still take action. Cause if you say that one's too scary, whatever that is for you watching, maybe it's that trigger go off on doing something big like Marwa, but maybe it's just going over, talking to those people, approaching someone you're attracted to, taking a risk in your career and your work, speaking up, whatever. If you say, look, that's too much, that's okay, own that. But then what is your step back? How are you scaling it down? And are you going to take immediate action on that scaled down version? Because if you don't and you say, oh, that's too much, I'm not going to do anything, then that's probably just avoidance. So I would say scale it back and take immediate action on the next best thing or even a small baby step in the direction of the thing that you want to do. So at least you're making progress. At least you can feel better about yourself. In terms of the shame, looking over there, make sure my kids aren't running out here into the yard, they're running hide in my studio, they're going to get me how to deal with the negative feelings afterwards. And that's the shame that you're talking about. It's like, look, you're never going to beat yourself into being more confident. It doesn't work. It's just pouring more of the same toxic sludge poison that led to our low self esteem and low confidence in the first place. So adding more of that is not going to work. And that's why being on your own side truly is one of the most powerful things you can do. And making a discipline of that. In fact, I often talk with clients about this where they want to do X and Y and achieve X and the relationships and the career and the business be able to push through their fear and do it. And I say that's awesome. I want you to have all those things. But to me, it's more important for you to be on your own side than it is to go take action in the world. Because if you take action, and I know this firsthand, I forced myself to go talk to women when I was really scared and if it went well, then I was okay. I was great, sort of, I was okay. I passed. But I had to prove it again the next day. Or if it didn't go well, I wasn't on, or she didn't like me for whatever reason. This, that energy towards myself, this disgust, rage, impatience, anger, frustration. And we just turn into this like angry parent. And maybe you got that parenting, maybe you got that training as a young kid. Like, this is how you grow is you. God damn it. And if that's how your parents treated you or whoever treated you, it's time to upgrade. You gotta upgrade. And as long as you don't, your progress is gonna be slow or non existent. So you need to commit to being on your own side. So when that voice comes in, oh, you're a failure. You didn't do it. You suck. Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'll even put my hand up sometimes and talk out loud. Whoa, whoa. That's not helpful. That's self attack. I don't do self attack. Let me find a better way to be on my own side here. And if you're worried about letting yourself off the hook, like, oh, I'm just gonna be all compassionate with myself and just do nothing. That's not how love works. That's not how humans work. You're kind to yourself, you're patient with yourself. You're compassionate to yourself. You're going to want to grow. You're going to want to go do this training. You're going to want to go put yourself out there in some way and grow. So you just got to give yourself the right fuel and then that's why you scale it back and take that small action. So those are my suggestions for that. And good luck, Marwa, and everyone else who wants to go out there, take action, face your fear and crush it until we speak again. May you have the courage to be who you are, to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Talk to you soon.
