Regression Is Inevitable

How do you handle setbacks when something challenging happens in your life and it's not going your way and you feel that you're sliding backwards, like you're losing what you've gained, Perhaps you're losing some of the confidence that you've built up in yourself? How do you deal with that? How do you handle that? Because not only is that part of life that is an essential, inevitable part of life, it's going to happen to each of us many times throughout our lives. So the question is, how do you handle it? And in today's episode, you're gonna learn how to handle that backslide completely differently in a way that's not only gonna help you get through it, but actually make you stronger, actually help serve you to step up to an even higher level of confidence, strength, belief, growth in yourself. So stay tuned to find out exactly how to do that.

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Eye, helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Welcome. Today's episode of the show. Today's episode is called regression is inevitable. Regression is inevitable. We're going to get into that. It's going to teach you how to deal with those setbacks, how to deal with those times where you feel down or depressed or like shit's not working and you just want to give up. You're going to learn how to work with that. You're also going to learn how to deal with it maybe with the fear of as you do grow and get that strength, that confidence, that belief in yourself, a real common fear that I hear is, oh, my God, is this going to last? I mean, am I going to lose this? And so you're going to learn about how to deal with all of that. And just by the end of the show, you're going to have a much more relaxed sense of trust and confidence that you can handle anything that life throws your way. So thanks for joining me today. If you'd like to jump into the conversation, go to facebook.com SocialConfidence like the page there, and you can find out about all the future episodes and share your comments, etc. Etc. And you can also go to shrinkforthshyguy.com that's shrinkforthyguy.com and join in, send me a message, ask me your questions there, and I can roll them into future episodes. So let's talk about regression. What does that even mean? I mean, regression is kind of a. It's a fancy psychobabble word. And all regression means is to go backwards, right? It's the opposite of progress. Progress. Progress is to move forward, to progress, to overcome a challenge, to do something you haven't done before, to grow, to earn more, to have more success, whatever that's. Progress is for you. Regress is to go back, to move backwards, to slide backwards. And there's this interesting thing where we all want perpetual progress and no regress. We only want to move forward. We don't want to move back. We only want success, we don't want failure. We only want yeses. We don't want no's. We only want increases in our income, not decreases. We only want more dates, not no dates, More love, not less love, right? So we want more progress, America, right? But that's not how life is. Nothing is. I mean, everything is cyclical. Everything has ebbs and flows. Your breath comes in and goes out. In fact, remember that you're breathing right now. Maybe just take a moment, feel your breath. In fact, let's do that together. Let's breathe in for a count of four, like 1, 2, 3, 4. And then breathe out for a count of six. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Let's do that one more time. Breathe in to a count of 4, 2, 3, 4. And breathe out to a count of 6. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Just remember that you're doing that all day, all life, your entire life. As you're listening to me, as you're going to work, as you're talking to people, as you're ordering your burrito, whatever it is you're breathing, and the more you can stay in touch with that, the more confident you're going to feel, the better you're going to feel in your life. I mean, that's what every person who's got an ounce of wisdom, who's from the Buddhists to peak performance people, it's all about being, being able to stay in the moment with your breath. So just thought I'd sneak that one in there for you. A little bit of bonus coaching, but regression is inevitable and regression means going back. So the first thing that's going to help set you up to not collapse and feel so terrible if stuff's not going your way, is to know that it's inevitable, it's part of life, it's going to happen. In fact, the Buddhists had a great idea about this. They call it the eight vicissitudes of life. These are things, eight things that are going to happen over the course of your life, over the course of A few years, maybe even a few months or weeks that these things are going to come and go. And it's gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, happiness and suffering. So we want to only gain, have fame and praise and happiness and we don't want loss, disrepute, blame or suffering. But you know what they're pointing out? The Buddhists are saying, hey, these things are inevitable and you can think about it. Regression is kind of like a loss, right? It's like you have these gains and then you lose it. So that's just one of the vicissitudes, which means it's going to happen. And the question is how? Not if it's going to happen or how do I stop it from happening, it's how am I going to deal with it when it happens? That's the real question. That's the only question we need to ask ourselves. How am I going to deal with this when it happens? Because that will determine everything. Some of the more common ways of dealing with regression is fear is a big one. Oh my God, oh my God, I'm losing everything. Everything's falling apart. We go to catastrophe mode. I'm going to. If you have a regression in your income, for example, maybe you have a business and it doesn't do as well one month or, or you work for a company and your hours are shifted or something, there's this like oh my God, oh God, I'm gonna end up in a gutter, I'm gonna lose my house, right? We go to this catastrophe mode. So fear is one way we respond to regression. Another way we respond to regression typically is this kind of hopeless, discouraged. Nothing's Eeyore right? Nothing's gonna work out for me. I knew it. I knew it was too good to be true. And it's this kind of self pitying, depressed, discouraged, I knew I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up kind of response and shit, man, I do it too. I'm not saying this is you're bad for having this, but we just want to call a spade a spade. We want to call ourselves out and say, wow, I'm going into that depressed state around regressing. That's one of the biggest triggers for people to feel more depressed is they have a backslide of some sort. So how do you deal with regression so far in the past? When you look back, how have you dealt with it and has it been optimal? Suboptimal, sub, sub optimal, Real bad? I mean, what is it? Just notice it. There's Nothing wrong with it because it's great. If you're listening to this, then you're, you're gonna find a better way to deal with it because it's gonna happen. That's what I really wanna hammer home in this first segment. It's gonna happen. So let's find a way to deal with it. In fact, we're gonna take a quick break, and when we get back, I have a great question from a listener that I'm gonna get to that's gonna talk a little more about this and we'll dive into how to work with it, how to handle it, how to overcome it so we can get back into progress and feel better about ourselves. So stay tuned. We'll be right back.

Have you ever been stuck in limbo? You know that awkward situation where there are several groups of people talking around you and you aren't part of any of them? You want to jump in, but you're not sure how to do it or what to say, so you slink into the corner, grab a drink at the bar, and pretend to look busy on your cell phone. Tired of this less than optimal strategy? Get yourself a copy of the Confidence code today and discover how to dominate in any group situation, casually join into existing groups and even enjoy being the center of attention. Go to YourConfidenceCode.com now to get started. And now it's time to ask the shrink.

Today's question is from. Ooh, it's from a lady. You guys seen that segment? It's old school. Now, maybe people haven't watched it, but look up ladies man, snl. Actually, SNL stuff is pretty restricted on the Internet, but maybe it's old enough that you can find it. But ladies man, snl. He answers a bunch of questions, absurd answers, but whenever a woman writes in, he says, ooh, it's a lady. So this is from a lady. She says, hi, Dr. Aziz. I doubt I'll get a reply, but here goes. Well, here's. Here's your reply. I think I replied by email, too. But anyway, I'm 26, a beautiful young woman. Not to praise myself, but that's what everyone says. I am the youngest in my family and I've always been protected by my parents until it hit me that I'm 26 and I have no recollection of what I know for living for the past 25, 26 years of my life. I can't even handle simple social situations and I feel like running away from everyone and being alone. I don't want to mingle anymore because I feel that I have nothing great to share and my memory is bad. I forget everything. I feel very stupid. I've been in my job for the past three years and recently something happened and I totally became depressed and forgot about everything I have ever learnt before. I feel like I'm a baby in a 26 year old body and I don't dare ask because I'm 26 and I'm supposed to know, but I don't. I feel like I'm dying. I'm not worthy of anything. I read your ebook, I watched your videos, but I don't know how to do it and I know only I can help myself. What should I do? And we'll just call her S. All right, well S, thanks for. Thanks for sharing. And it sounds like I mean this to me sounds like regression. This to me sounds like she's in a place of suffering. So first of all, my heart goes out to you and I'm sorry to hear that you're struggling. And I think we've. We've all been in a place where on some level it feels too much. We feel like dying, we feel like we're not worthy, we feel like we're not a grown up. I think we all on some level can relate. So you're not alone. And to me it sounds like you're experiencing regression, which just means, as I said before, going back and maybe you experienced something that was tough. That's usually a trigger for regression, right? Like a fight, a mistake, a loss, even a memory of a bad past event, whatever it is can cause this regression. And when we regress, it feels like we fall back to a much younger time in our lives. We don't feel confident or capable, we forget things, we feel like a failure, we feel small and insecure and want to hide. Those are all signals that we're regressing. That's why I wanted to share S's question with you. And we'll just call her Sarah. That's not her name, but S is weird to say a lot. So call her Sarah. That's why I wanted to include Sarah's question because then you can have better insight as you're listening. When do I know that I'm regressing? Because you want to be able to identify it and be like, oh, this is regression. And so for me, a great place that I know that I tend to regress is if I hang out with my parents for an extended period of time. It's funny because when I'm recording this, they're Actually visiting this weekend. But I usually when they first get there, I'm excited on top of it. It's great to see them, I love them. And then over the course of a number of days, especially if we spend a lot of time together, I will find that I'll regress. Old patterns will kick in. I'll be less assertive because I'm pretty assertive in my life, everywhere. All of a sudden I put around my dad for a few days and I start to get less assertive. I start to get more quiet. I start to, I don't know, I'll share something and he doesn't seem like he's really listening. And I'll be like, no one. I'm not worth listening to, right? And then I get kind of pouty. It's actually something I've been perpetually working on and making a lot of progress in. But it still happens because, hey, regression is inevitable. And that's a place that most of us, or a lot of people will regress, is around family. But anything can trigger it. And that's all that you're experiencing, Sarah, is a regression. It's not who you are at your core, it's not permanent, and it's actually a very important part of your growth. I'm going to get into that in a few minutes. But when you're in it, when you're in this moment of suffering and regression, can you treat yourself with kindness and compassion? Can you take care of yourself? That is the first and most important thing to do is we have to say when you first thing is like, whoa, this is regression. And hopefully you're starting to notice some of the signs and signals of it. And then you gotta say the first thing you wanna do follow that up with is, whoa, how can I take care of myself right now? It's like a storm has hit and you gotta kinda hunker down and make it through the storm, right? And beating yourself up saying, oh my God, how could you do this? You're a loser. That's not gonna help. Catastrophizing going into, oh my God, this means the worst is gonna happen and the sky is falling, that's not gonna help. Taking care of yourself, that's what's gonna help. And Sarah's right. No one can do it for you. I can't do it for you. I can only point the way and suggest and share. You have to do it. You have to take care of yourself. You have to say, how can I take care of myself? How can I treat myself with more compassion right now, how could I, if I love myself, what would I say to myself right now? And that's gonna be a key step is to be able to take care of yourself in that way. And then once you've asked those questions and then done whatever the thing is to take care of yourself, then you wanna see how to uncover what's happening here because that's sort of the next step. One is to take care of ourselves during the regression and then two is how do we use the regression? So a really powerful transformation is when you can say regression is not only inevitable, it's necessary and it's good and I want it. Now I know I might be losing you here. That's a bit of a stretch. You might be like, dude, I don't want to feel hopeless. Shut up. But stick with me. In fact, we're take a quick break and I'm going to share with you why I personally think regression not only is inevitable, but it's necessary and it's awesome. So stay tuned. We'll be right back right after this.

Have you ever heard the phrase feel the fear and do it anyway? Have you ever tried it in your life? While it is a key part of building confidence, it leaves out the most important secret of creating powerful confidence in every area of your life. Do you want to know that secret? It's self compassion, the skill of being on your own side no matter what. It's so important. Confidence unleashed has an entire module on it. Go to confidenceunleashednow.com to find out more.

Welcome back. So let's talk more about how regression can actually benefit us. Oh, and I also want to say one other thing to Sarah. Sarah. So as you're listening to this, hopefully you'll be able to take care of yourself with more compassion. Then you're also going to learn in this little bit here about how to use regression. But also I want to say, you know, it sounds like you have a lot of really good things going for you. You have a job, you have beauty on the outside. And I can just tell from your email you have a thoughtfulness and a sweetness and a beauty on the inside. And you sound very, very, very aware of all your flaws and shortcomings. And I think the key for you is going to be start focusing on your strengths more and taking care of yourself when you make mistakes or have painful interactions. And I think a really great place for you, Sarah, would be to start would be the confidence code because that program has an entire the whole first half of it the first three modules are dedicated to optimal self coaching, how to take care of yourself, how to treat yourself better, and some of the things you're saying like I'm not worthy, I should know this by now. I just hear a lot of self criticism and self attack. And I think the confidence code is going to be the best place for you to start to really make that progress that you want. And it's going to give you a lot of tools to start taking care of yourself. So my heart goes out to you. You sound awesome. And who knows, by the time you hear this, you might have even kind of broken through the challenge that you were facing. So how do we use regression? Because my philosophy is anything that's going to happen in life, anything that's inevitable, I want to be at peace with it or ready to use it. And that ranges from anything like death is going to happen. So I don't want to live my life terrified of death or loss is going to happen. So I don't want to live my life pretending it's not going to happen and terrified. It's like, let me deal with that. Let me be able to face that when it happens. And it's the same thing with regression. If this is going to be inevitable, how can I use this? Here's how. Regression is incredibly valuable, is because it's a time of going inwards and looking what's happening here. So if the trigger is you lose something in your job or you get rejected, when you try to put yourself out there in a situation, or a woman says no to you and she breaks up with you, that's a time to look at what's going on. How am I attached to something from the outside to try to give me happiness? That's a big thing. Where do I feel like I need something outside of me that's going to give me that happiness? What beliefs might I have that really cause me suffering and how do I work on that? So, for example, if I'm regressing around my family, around my dad, then that means that's teaching me something. There's something to discover there. If I dig into it and I look, what is it teaching me? Well, it's teaching me well. What do I want from him? What would I need to say to him? How could I be more assertive? What questions could I ask him? What could I say? So then I start to look at, wow, this is actually beyond my dad. This is about assertiveness in life in general. Huh. So you'll discover a toxic belief that you need to let go of. You'll discover a new way of being that you might want to show up as in the world. You'll discover something, and then you put it into practice. Then you take the action, then you go do the thing. And now regression has been the most valuable thing for you because it's led to the next level of your growth. So you can really think about regression as an inevitable part of growth. It's like this. We expand and we feel great and big, and then we contract a little bit, and it's a time to regroup, to look, to examine, to explore, and then we expand out again. So you can think of it as this kind of like the flapping of the wings of a butterfly or the going in and out of the tide. It's this process of expansion that goes in and out, and that's what your growth is going to be like. And if you hold it that way, then you can use the regression. And then, man, when you know that you can use regression, then you're not so scared of, like, a setback or a no or a failure or something, not going your way. Because it's like, oh, okay, I'm gonna learn from this. And you stop being so scared of negative feelings or painful emotions. You know that you can handle them, you can work with them. You don't have to spiral out into them, but you can just feel them, let them pass through. You see what you need to learn and continue to move forward, to continue to progress. And. And the only thing that's gonna stop you from doing that is stopping, is taking the regression and saying, oh, my God, this means that I lost everything, that nothing that I did worked, and it's all over and it's hopeless, and I quit, and now I'm gonna stop. And the sad truth is, a lot of people do that. And you might have done that in the past. I know I have. But when we learn this stuff, the beauty of the human mind is once we learn something, we can't unlearn it. And if you've been listening to these shows, you're learning stuff that you can't unlearn. So even if you do tell yourself it's hopeless, even if you do say you're gonna quit, it's not gonna last, you know, Might be a week, might be a month. Shit, it might be a year. But you'll be back. You'll be like, wait a minute. Oh, man. I know, I know. I'm responsible for my confidence in my life, damn it. Right? So once you know this, you can't go back. And that's a beautiful thing because it puts you into the driver's seat of your life. So that brings us to the end of our show. But before the end of the show, we can't leave without your action step. Time for action. The action step for today is to look back. Look back to the last time in your life and identify when you regressed. Just think back, it could be a week ago, it could be shit. You could be in one right now, could be a year ago, whatever. And just. And just look at it and say, what was the lesson there? What was it that I needed to learn in order to grow more? What was the discovery there? Dig and find it. Find something. Find how the regression actually benefited you by teaching you something, how you used it to grow and become more. Because when you can see the truth of that, then you'll have trust of that. The next time you have a phase of regressing, of losing something, you see what I'm saying there? So go back and find that. And that will build that trust for you to help you move forward further and faster in your life. So thanks for joining me today and this one, I really think if you take this in, can ease your suffering quite a bit life and help you feel a lot more trust, a lot more confidence in yourself. So thanks for joining me today and I look forward to speaking with you again in the future. Until we do, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. I'll talk to you soon.

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 social confidencecenter.com. Sam.