Sneaky Stories That Sabotage Your Relationships

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, Dr. Aziz here. And welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about romantic relationships and your stories and beliefs about those and your sense of possibility to have an experience, something extraordinary in this area of your life. And so whether you're single and you want to be in a relationship and you question if you can, maybe you have not had a certain kind of relationship, a level of closeness or intimacy or passion or love, or maybe you have had an in depth or close relationship and it didn't work out. You know, you guys broke up or there's a divorce and now you're left with a sense of, you know, can I really do this? Is this really even possible for me? And maybe you're already in a relationship and before you turn this episode off and say it doesn't apply to me, well, what I found is that a lot of people in relationships are settling. It doesn't mean it's terrible, doesn't mean it's, you know, consciously less than what they want and awful and okay, I'm just gonna settle. I mean, some people are like that of course, too, but there's a lot of people that aren't consciously thinking that. And yet there is so much more. And they're settling without even knowing it. And that's because they have limiting stories and limiting ideas. So whether you're in a relationship or you want to be in a relationship, this episode will support you in opening up your mind to possibilities, to seeing not just life in a different way, but yourself in a different way. And this is very fitting as our theme this month seems to be circling around relationships. Coming up next month in November is my three day online immersion called Unlimited Dating and Relationship Confidence. So if this topic appeals to you and you're liking this episode and this focus, you know that you need confidence in your love life and your romantic life, come join me and all the people that are going to be coming together from all over the world. That's what I love about the virtual or remote events, is that you can be joining from anywhere. If you got the Internet, you can be there for three days. And don't let the fact that you're on a screen fool you into thinking like, oh, it's just some whatever zoom call that I jump in. It is a full production. We have exercises and games and activities and breakout rooms and music. And you will leave those three days with a completely new perspective. What's possible for you in your love life and skills and tools to make it happen. So to join that event, make sure you're part of my email list. You can do so by going to drz.com,/r a z I z.com and sign up for that by just getting the ebook on that page, which is called Five Steps to Unleash youh Confidence. And you'll get all the information about the early bird special and all the stuff that we're doing for the that event. And you can also go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and under this episode we'll have a link as well. So let me ask you this question. Are you experiencing an extraordinary relationship right now in your life? And you might be, you know, you could be experiencing social anxiety that's impacting you in other ways, maybe at the workplace or elsewhere. And you look at your relationship, though, and you're like, this is amazing. This is the best thing ever. You know, I'm so grateful for this and this is truly extraordinary. And if so, great, great, because you can use that success to look at other areas of your life and you can reverse engineer maybe how you got there and how you show up and what you do because your success leaves clues. If not, then what do you think is going on there? So just the other night, in one of my, the mastermind programs that I run, there was a woman who was sharing that she, you know, was not. She was single and she was dating but, you know, not really finding what she wanted. And she'd get into these short little relationships and they, they didn't feel very good and she just kind of stuck them out. And as we dug a little bit, I said, I wonder if there's any stories that you have about what's possible for you for dating, relationship, love and connection. She sat and she thought for a minute. She said, yeah, I think I have a story that says I'm not capable. It's not possible for me to have a great romantic relationship right so in her mind, what she was gonna get was mediocre dating experiences, people she didn't quite like. And if she did get into a relationship, it would be kind of like, oh, this is good enough. Let me see if I can make this work. And lo and behold, that's what she was experiencing. So it begs the question, what are you experiencing right now in your romantic life? Just take a moment. Is it what you want? Is it great? Is it challenging? Is it painful? Is it beautiful? Is it intimate? Is it open? Is it closed? Is it scared? Is it angry? Is it hurt? Is it anything? And when we examine this, this isn't about making it right or wrong or making yourself right or wrong or good or bad, because that does not serve you in any way. In fact, that's one of the biggest detriments to actual growth and transformation, is to observe what's happening and then implode into self criticism, which is in no way effective at creating change. So park that self criticism. Stop. Become the captain of your own ship, Claim being on your own side no matter what, and look with the light of truth. Sometimes the sword of truth, you know, cuts through things and it stings. It's a bitter medicine, but it's liberating, and it's worth it. So what do you see there? Maybe you're more isolated than you want. Maybe you have a hard time letting people get close to you. Maybe you see people you'd want to talk to and you hold back, you avoid them, or if you do go talk to them, it's like a fraction of you that comes out. It's mostly the pleasing, nice version of you that holds back and does what you think the other person's gonna want. Maybe you keep attracting a certain kind of person, which does not what you want or doesn't treat you right. Whatever you see. Let me ask you this question. What story do you have that might be leading to that experience? What story do you have about yourself, about what you deserve, about other people, about what men are like or women are like, about what men want or what women want or what you need to be like for the people that you want to be with? Some of the most common stories I hear when I work with people, I mean, are identity stories. Identity stories of I am capable of this or I am not capable of that, I am worthy or I am not worthy, I am attractive or I am not attractive. Now, obviously, there's a gradient in there. It's a spectrum. It's not A or B, it's not attractive or Unattractive. But there's kind of a spectrum in there and people tend to see themselves somewhere on that. You see yourself somewhere on that spectrum and you're not necessarily walking around in your mind saying I'm attractive or I'm ugly, although you might be. You know, often this stuff is non verbal. It's a perception of yourself. That's what your identity is. It is a perception of yourself from which you approach the world. Your behaviors come out of your identity, of how you see yourself. So for many years I saw myself as unattractive. And so what behaviors? In romantic dating, relationships, that side of life, what behaviors do you think came out of me when I saw myself, when I believed, when I had the story I'm not attractive? What do you think? That's right. A whole lot of avoidance. Right. I didn't date much, I didn't put myself out there, I didn't take risks, I didn't go in for the kiss, I didn't anything. It was just like on the sidelines, watching life pass me by. So the behaviors come out of the story and sometimes the behaviors are avoidance and sometimes they're patterns of subtly pushing people away or blocking intimacy. And people, you can block intimacy without like, you know, running away and locking up the doors and telling the person to get away from you. You can block intimacy without yelling at them and calling them names and pushing them away and saying I hate you. I mean, those are very obvious ways that people create space and distance and push others away. But there's a thousand and one subtle ways. You know, someone might be sharing with you and you might kind of give shorter responses that don't open them up. You might come off as slightly aloof when you're scared. You might ask them all the right questions and be really focused on them, but then reveal nothing about yourself. And they don't feel like they really know you. You might have a story that says, I'm boring, I'm not interesting. And so they therefore you don't share about your life and just simple stories about your day and your experiences. And so lo and behold, people don't feel much of you. All they get is a lot of silence or stares or even just focus on them, which might feel good for a little while, but then there's not much to hold onto to really connect with you around. So all those little subtle ways that block intimacy can be coming out of your story around relationship or your stories, I should say, your multiple perspectives, your identity, all the ways you see yourself when it comes to love. And you have an identity for yourself in anything. We're doing a whole other episode about identity upgrades coming up soon. But when it comes to love and relationship, what do you see? So back to that conversation I was having in the mastermind group. There was a woman who said, I'm not capable of having a relationship. And so I asked her a very powerful question that I invite you to ask yourself. Now, this question is powerful. It's like a Jedi lightsaber. And a lightsaber in their right hands can do much good in the galaxy. And a lightsaber in the wrong hands, say, of a Sith, can do much damage. Right? So with this question, you want to ask this question when you're conscious, when you're aware, when you are reflective. You don't want to ask this question kind of automatically when you're feeling crappy and kind of sitting in your car and like, life sucks. And you ask. If you ask that question, then it's going to not be very fruitful. It's going to lead to a lot of pain. But if you ask this question in the right way, it can be extremely liberating. And it's a very simple question. You want to know what it is? Why specifically? So whenever you start to bump up against your story, I want you to ask yourself, when you're in the right state, why specifically? And be real. The right state is curiosity. So I'm not capable of a romantic relationship. So I asked her, that's right. Why specifically are you not capable of a romantic relationship? Long pause. Why was there a long pause? Because your identity in this area and probably all areas of your life, your stories about yourself are often not consciously recited again and again. They're subconscious perceptions that filter how you see the whole world and yourself included. So she had to pause to think about it because she'd never maybe asked herself that question. She paused and she said, ah, because I don't deserve a good relationship. Interesting, huh? We're getting a little closer, but do you see how it's also pretty vague still, doesn't it just beg the question again? So I asked it again. Interesting. Why specifically don't you deserve to be in a great romantic relationship? Long pause again. Because I can sometimes get really angry, and when I do, I'm not a good person to be around. I said, ah, okay, now we're onto something here. Now we're onto something here. And she could have said anything. She said, because. And this is where you get to people's shame, right? So someone else might say, because I binge eat sometimes or because I watch weird porn or because I, you know, have fled from my last four relationships and broken their hearts, and I'm a bad person for doing that. Right. Whatever the. Whatever comes out here is valuable information. So hopefully you're going along with me and this client and investigating for yourself what is there for you. And this story is so universal and so relatable. Don't we all have something that we think if people got close to us and saw that, it would be unacceptable, unlovable? And so you might think that what I said to her then is, hey, listen, I'm the champion of being on your own side. I wrote a book called On My Own side How to Transform Self Criticism into Loving Yourself, Self Compassion. So isn't the solution for me to tell her and for her to tell herself, hey, listen, you don't have to be perfect. You can be great. You can be in a relationship just as you are? Well, I don't know that. I don't. And now is she not worthy? Does she not deserve. No, that we know. I know inherent human worth is. I mean, of course, everyone deserves love, connection, relationship. There's somebody for everybody out there. But the question is, is she running? Does she run a pattern that A, has her get angry frequently, or B, when she does get angry, is very suboptimal such that it really does push people away. My wife was in a relationship before she got together with me. She was married before, before we got together. And in that relationship, her husband was very charming and outgoing and warm and creative and skillful in business and building and art and leadership and physically strong. An athlete. Just a really, you know, amazing human. And he had a pattern where he would go into a certain state of, like Eckhart Tolle called the pain body, right? Like such a state of pain. And it would be kind of like a narcissistic rage, right? Because he was a little bit, you know, all these skills, such a great guy. And so there's a. There's also some narcissism around there. And so if that got threatened in some way, the shame was so unbearable. And this is kind of what narcissistic rage comes from, is like the shame is so unbearable that there's this, like, overwhelming rage. Just direct. It's like the insides are so painful that I have to attack the outsides. And what people with this rage often will do is attack those closest to them. So it would be Candace, and he would just, like, lay into her and it would be ferocious, you know, Scary, threatening, blaming, belittling. And she said he would not stop until I was, like, crying on the floor. And as soon as she, like, queen, unquote, broke and just cracked and lost it, then the pain, he'd, like, feel relief, and so he'd stop. And then he'd kind of come back to his senses and apologize, and they'd work through it and on and on. It was a cycle. And eventually that pattern was unbearable for her, and she left. So, you know, does he not deserve a relationship? No. Is he an unworthy human? No. Does he run a pattern that is toxic, that blocks intimacy? Yes. I don't know if he does now, but he did then, right? So Kenny, he might be able to have a relationship and someone would tolerate that, but an extraordinary partner like Candace, he might not have the level of relationship as possible until he changes that pattern. And so back to the case of this client. She might be able to get into a relationship or someone who tolerates if she runs this pattern, and if she wants a higher level of extraordinary or even a better level of relationship that's entering into the realm of extraordinary, which means she can increase her capacity to give and receive love, increase her capacity for intimacy, which is what it takes to have an extraordinary relationship, then she's gonna need to grow. She's gonna need to get really curious about this pattern. She's gonna take total ownership for this. Why do I get angry? What's happening for me? What perceptions do I have? What are the payoffs from my anger? What does it give me? Does it give me a sense of significance? Does it give me a sense of certainty? Am I addicted to certainty? Am I overly critical because I'm insecure? Because I'm afraid? Because I want certainty? How do I block intimacy? Why am I blocking intimacy? What am I afraid of? What feelings do I not want to feel? What? Vulnerable? Sensitive? Raw. Crying on the kitchen floor? Shame? Embarrassment? Hurt? Trauma, Sadness. Grief. What's there that has this shell of anger and constriction and pushing others away over it? And am I willing to go there? Am I willing to feel there and investigate there and let my heart break open and listen to audios about it, like Steven Levine's the Grief Process, which I highly recommend on Audible. Stephen Levine is a fantastic author. L E V I N E. I learned a lot from him about feeling, about grief, about loss, about opening your heart. The relationship I have with Candace would not have been possible for me if I had not continually grown. Now, I didn't, and I did run patterns. I Was gonna say, I don't run patterns that would prevent me from having a deep relationship. That's not true. I did do that for many years. Now. Mine wasn't to get real angry and push people away that way. Because, hey, I'm the quintessential nice guy, right? I'm just too nice to get angry. So what do I do? I would be really avoidant. We'd get close together and then I'd be like, I gotta go. And if I got away soon enough, then I wouldn't feel that much at all. I just have some fun, excitement, connection, and then I gotta go. If I tried to stay in it, I would feel an increasing to the point of being unbearable. Sense of anxiety. And I talk about this, if you read my book, not nice. I talk about having a panic attack in a park in San Francisco with a beautiful, sweet, open hearted, bright, intelligent, amazing woman who has no idea what's going on. For me, she's just lazing in the park, in the sunshine. I'm like, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. And the bathroom's like this stone building across 200 yards away. So I start walking there and I just like have a full on panic attack. And it's like, I can't go back. What do you mean you can't go back? I'm like literally pacing outside of the bathroom on this green hillside, near a little bit of trees in this stone bathroom. And I'm like, I just can't go back. What do you mean you can't go back? I don't know, I feel too much fear. Well, you gotta go back. I mean, you guys drove to the park together. You gotta drop her off at her house at least. You can't just turn off and run the other direction, right? I was just so terrified. So I did run patterns. I did go back, by the way. I didn't just leave. And guess what? When I got back, I didn't tell her a damn thing. The story of my relationship, the stage of my life. I didn't reveal much, I didn't share much. I wasn't open. I was playing roles, all kinds of roles. What I needed to be, I thought, in order to be attractive. I didn't know at that age that authenticity is the most attractive thing, hands down, that you can do. Authenticity is real. Authenticity is sexy. Authenticity is interesting. But I didn't know any of that. And I didn't have the skills and the capacity and the muscle and the practice to be able to actually do that. Because you can know that in theory you can think that as a philosophy, but if you don't live it, then you don't get the results of that. So what's this client need to do? What do you maybe need to do? Need to grow, need to face those patterns. And here's the good news. She doesn't need to perfect herself. She doesn't need to never get angry ever again. That's not even human. That's unhealthy. Actually, anger can be a very useful emotion. She might, I don't know exactly what things she'll need to discover and changes will need to unfold. But I do know she'll need to take total ownership of that process. Because if you rest on, it's just not possible for me. That's lazy brain. That's the lazy way out. It's settling, it's giving up, it's buying into the story. It's the safety police owning your life. And then you get to the end of your life and you experience the number one regret of the dying, which is I lived a life that was not my own. I did what other people thought I was, who, what other people wanted me to be. And that's not bad. It's not like you're a bad human. That's just. To me, it's just sad. It's a wasted opportunity. So there is so much possibility and so much potential when you say, you know what, I'm going to change this. And as you take ownership for that and start to change, things will open up and you don't even have to totally have solved things before you can enter into a new level of relationship. That's amazing because you are in the process. I remember there was a client that I worked with who did have a problem with anger and he would push people away in that way. And it did cause problems in his relationships and he lost a number of relationships for it. And then after, you know, one more relationship that went south, he's like, that's it, that's it. I'm gonna do something about this. And it's like he hadn't been, you know, he'd been in therapy, he was in one of my group programs. Not like he was not doing anything, but he was like, no, I'm gonna like, like there's a state that I go into when I get angry, which is like unhealthy. And I see that's not gonna work in relationships. So I'm gonna get an additional support for that. So he went and he did a year long DBT program. If you're familiar with dbt, DBT stands for Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. It was developed by Marsha Linehan. It was originally designed to help patients with what's called borderline personality disorder, which is a long explanation I'm not going to get into here, but long standing, typically multi decade, very challenging behavior and emotional patterns. Strong emotions that are overwhelming to them that lead to acting out in dramatic or maladaptive ways. Whether it's threatening, retreating, cutting, suicidal attempts. It can appear manipulative to others because maybe they are. And it's from the state of desperation. So it's a lot the kind of thing where you might be like, whoa, that person's really intense or that person's crazy to be around, right? It's kind of like that. So it's designed to give skill, skills and tools to a very, you know, people that are dealing with a very high level of emotion that's very hard to regulate. And so of course it's now it's spread and they, you know, have used DBT for all kinds of things, for depression, for anxiety, for whatever. So it's not just used for sort of more intensive challenges. So he goes to this year long training, it's like a group every week and then a one on one counseling session every week. A lot. He does it for a whole year and he learns tons of skills and he really does start to develop a whole new level, a whole new repertoire. And he's able to choose differently in the moment. He's able to open differently in relationships. So the question I have for you is if you come across a why specifically you can't have the relationship that you want and you discover something that's worth addressing, upgrading, changing. Are you willing to do it? Are you willing to play at level five, which is do whatever it takes? Because anything less will lead to a regression back to that story, to the comfort of the story. It's not my fault I'm a victim of life. It's my parents, it's my upbringing, it's my genes. It's something mysterious that I can't even put my finger on. It's just a vague sense. All of those are. It's victim land. And it's comfortable and it's protected and it's easier, but it's isolated. That is not what you're here for. So let's talk about how to turn this into action. Time for action. Action. Action. Your action step. I mean, there's so many things in this episode that you could draw from. So my question for you is what do you want your action step to be? Have you identified some of the stories? And that would be a great one. If you haven't, if you're listening and you have not identified a key story that's that's negatively impacting you in your love life, then that's going to be your first action step. You can also use the why specifically question and ask yourself and dig a little bit. And then if you came across something that you might want to change or upgrade or improve or enhance or outgrow, then your action step might be to discover how you might do that. And it could be something I mentioned. Kind of the dramatic story of this guy going to this year long training. It doesn't have to be like that. One client I did this with recently said one of his stories was like I'm not interesting or engaging. And so one of the behaviors he was going to practice was to practice just opening up and telling some stories and, and sharing about himself and his life with people, with friends, with co workers, with family. I mean that's not a huge daunting commitment. That's just a slight course correction, a slight tweak that he can integrate into his daily life. And he did. And it has a powerful effect. So don't get hung up on it having to be this really dramatic gesture. It can be really small stuff just done consistently and you get to discover and choose what that is. Fantastic. So thanks for being with me today. Again, if you, if you like this, we are just getting started in dating relationships and if you know this area of your life needs an upgrade, then absolutely come to that virtual event. Get on my email list. If you're not@drz.com go to stringforthshyguy.com and check out under this episode for a link to the event page. And I would love to spend those three days with you. Fantastic. Until we speak again, May you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. We'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 socialconfidencecenter.com.