Dr. Aziz breaks social anxiety into three steps: know yourself through self-awareness, accept yourself with compassion, then take bold action through vulnerability and practice. He defines social anxiety as deep self-doubt and fear of rejection, offering exercises and personal stories to show how repeated practice rewires your confidence.
So I titled this book the Solution to Social Anxiety. And that's because I see it just as that it's a solution, it's a map. It's a way to get out of the problem, which is social anxiety, which is doubting yourself, feeling like you don't have much to offer, assuming that others are going to reject you, feeling tight and tense in your body and really on a deep level, feeling like you're not worthwhile, that you're not lovable, that if people saw the real you, that they'd be turned off and they couldn't possibly be around you. And that's the problem, Social anxiety. And it's a problem that I've been working with guys on for the last 10 years. But really most of my understanding of it originally came from my own experience. And I had an incredible difficult time with shyness and social anxiety and all those things. Self doubt, self criticism, really disliking myself, my body, my appearance, really feeling like I wasn't good enough and having this, like, absolute, unwavering certainty that if someone really got to know me, really got to see the real me and all my flaws, that they would be repulsed and they couldn't possibly love me. And that's the problem. And that's the cage that we construct. And it's a cage of our own thoughts and perspectives and feelings, but it's a cage nonetheless. Maybe the bars aren't real, but it restricts us in the same way that a real prison would. And I wanted to create something that would help men break free of that prison, like get a key to be able to open the door and walk out. And that's what the second half of the book is. The first half is describing the problem in detail. Because if you don't know where you are, if you don't know why you're in that prison or what it's made out of, then it's going to be hard to get out. So that's the first part of the book. The second part of the book is a description of what's the way out, what's the solution to this problem, to social anxiety, how do we get out of this? And I break it down into three major steps that I believe are ongoing practices. And the first is we have to know who we are on a deep level. And I think that the problem with social anxiety is that we get really externally focused. We're so worried about being judged, so convinced that we're not good enough that we have all these strategies to try to make sure that people like us make sure we're acceptable, make sure no one knows. And hiding our flaws and all this strategizing in our minds. And what that leads to is a lack of really knowing who we are. What do I want, what really matters to me, how do I express that? How do I share my opinions and my thoughts and my feelings? And that we have to know what's going on inside of ourselves as a first step to breaking out of this prison of social anxiety. The second step, though, is the first step is not enough because we can start looking inwards, but we can do it in a horribly critical way. So the second step is we have to learn how to have a deep sense of acceptance for ourselves, complete acceptance for ourselves, accepting all of our thoughts and feelings and desires and actions and choices. This is a tall order. I'm not saying this is easy, but this is. What's required is a practice of forgiving ourselves and loving ourselves. There's dozens of techniques and exercises and transcripts from sessions I've done and everything I could combine to really help someone reading the book feel a sense of relaxing into who they are and loving themselves more. That's what this book is intended to be. It's not just a list of, you know, do these 500 exercises. I've read a lot of books like that, workbooks. It's much more that through the process of reading, through the process of engaging with me in this book, you just naturally feel a sense of relaxing and accepting yourself. And then the third step, though, is the first one is like getting familiar with the bars. What is this prison made out of? And the next step of accepting ourselves is like being able to reach out and have a key to open up the door. And the door swings wide open. But we still need the third step. We have to step through that door. We have to take risks in our lives. We have to take action. We have to take bold action in the world. We have to try that thing. We have to take that risk that we're worried about. We have to be vulnerable and share that thing. We have to go after and apply for that job. We have to go talk to that person or ask that person out for a date, even if they might say no. And it's only in doing that that we find that a lot of our fears and expectations and predictions about how badly it's going to go are false and that we are lovable and that people do want to connect with us. And then the off chance that we do get rejected or something doesn't Work out that we survive and that we're okay and we know that we're not a terrible person. It just didn't work out. And that only comes through repetitive practice of taking bold action. So that third section is all about generating that courage and that willingness to just put ourselves out there. Because time and time again I've been working with someone one on one. When I see that they're willing to do that and able to do that, that's when everything shifts. And that's when everything shifted for me in my life is when I decided, you know what? Yeah, I'm scared, but I'm going to try this anyway. And even to this day, just the other night, I was recording some stuff for a podcast. I was gonna share it with my wife and I felt so embarrassed and nervous before I did and I'd listened to it and I was just like, this isn't good enough. And all that self criticism came in and I felt this shrinking feeling like I can't put this out there, I can't let people see this. People are gonna judge me. It's not good enough. All that social anxiety stuff still there. And I just really checked in with myself, you know, who am I? What am I about? There's a section in the book about finding your purpose and going after it that's an incredibly grounding thing to do and overcomes a lot of anxiety in itself. And then I did a lot of self compassion exercises, showering myself with just acceptance and approval. It's okay, you're scared. Don't worry about it. I love you anyway. And then took bold action putting it together, sharing with my wife. I'm going to put this out in the world and doing it in spite of that nervousness. And so this isn't like you read this and you never feel this stuff again. You just know how to deal with it and how to not be held back by it. And that's my intention for you must be able to break free from this social anxiety and start living your life fully with full confidence in yourself and who you are. I strongly encourage you to check out a copy of the book. You can get it on Amazon.com, you can get it on Kindle and they're going to have an audio version out there soon. And there's many ways to find your way to that freedom. That's what I hope for you. That's my intention. So thanks for listening and I look forward to speaking with you in the book.
