Social Anxiety And Your Family

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, welcome. Today's episode of the show, and this is a special holiday episode. It's going to be a bit shorter and I know you probably have a lot going on and you might be celebrating like today is Christmas. You might not be celebrating Christmas. You may be with family, you may not be with family. And there's just a lot that can get stirred up in this time of year. So I want to take just a few minutes to be with you here to give you the support and encouragement and love and connection that you need to be you, whether you're alone or whether you're with family or whatever's happening for you. So let's look at a few of the different scenarios and see it help you thrive during this particular day, in this particular, this little holiday season that we're in right now. So some of the biggest challenges that might arise might be that you are with family. Well, let me just take a step back. Sometimes when we're alone, maybe you feel lonely right now. You're not with family, maybe you're missing. There's pain that can get stirred up and then there can be this sense of like, ah, man, I just wish I was with family. And then we are with family. And then we're like, oh, man, I just wish I was alone. Right? You know what I'm talking about. It can be kind of a little bit of a push, pull back and forth there. So first things first, no matter what's happening, and who knows, maybe you're feeling just fantastic right now, right? Maybe you're feeling like, I love the holidays. I love spending time with people. I'm so excited about the next year and if so, awesome, let's build on that. But if you're experiencing something challenging right now, first things first. First things first. Always the first thing to do is to get on your own side. I've been doing a lot of recording recently of the audio version of my forthcoming book On My own side, which is coming out in February of next year. Oh, yeah, you'll be hearing more, a lot more about that in this podcast as it gets closer. But so I'm really immersed in that topic right now and just reading, I'm doing the audio, kind of a slamming through it, reading many hours of it a day for recording purposes, and really immersing and reinforcing those lessons in myself and man, the essentialness of getting on your own side. And one of the chapters I was just reading was about not about ending the habit of invalidating your own feelings and instead validating your own feelings. And validating just means to make it true, to make it real and invalidating saying it's not real, it's not true, it shouldn't exist, I shouldn't have it. And we just do this so habitually with our feelings. So first things first, right now, with whatever you're feeling, whether you're in another room and you got some family members in the other room and you're like, I don't want to go out there, or you're alone and you're hurting in your heart or anything challenging that's coming up, just notice that. And are you fighting it? Are you making yourself wrong for having it? You know, if I just had a different mindset or I shouldn't be this way, or I'm always so anxious, or why am I so sensitive, or, I mean, we can invalidate our feelings in a million and one different ways, but what's most important is to decide right now that you're not gonna do that, that you're gonna be on your own side. So let's do that right now. Decide you're gonna get on your own side and say, look, whatever's happening right now, whatever feelings I'm feeling, I'm gonna go into them. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna work with myself. I'm not gonna turn on myself. I mean, life can be challenging enough. Maybe you're going through a challenging situation in your family. Maybe there's a divorce, maybe someone is sick, maybe there's a family member who's always critical or angry or hard to be around. I mean, that's hard enough. All these scenarios, the last thing we need to do is also turn on ourselves and attack ourselves for having feelings. So let's end the insanity of self judgment and self criticism and get on our own sides. Now from that place, let's talk a little bit about being around your family. Now, there's kind of two ways that we can Talk about family. There's what you might be called your family of origin. And then there's the family that you create. And so if you, you know, family of origin is people, people you grew up with, parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, that sort of thing, then there's the family that you create, which is you have children with somebody and then you have a dynamic with that person, whether it's a partner or a spouse, and then your children. And oftentimes people tend to have more challenge with their family of origin than with their family they've created. They have more influence over the culture of the family they created. And they also didn't grow up in that environment. So they started that family from a full adult, mostly an adult, right? Still getting there, still working on being an adult, but mostly an adult. And then, whereas your family of origin, you came from an infant, you came into this world in that environment. And so we can have a lot more memories, a lot more old patterns. A lot of the conditioning that we're trying to free ourselves from and upgrade got instilled, stalled there. So you can just have a look from a parent or someone could say something and all of a sudden inside you're like. And you go from being a 35 year old adult or whatever to feeling like you're six years old again. So there's a lot of emotional impact that can happen in our family of origin. And you might be spending time with those people at this time of year. And so how do you work with that? How do you deal with that? Well, obviously step one is getting on your own side, which we've been talking about. The next thing you want to do is you want to become like an anthropologist, you know, stop being so in it. We're just so in it when we're with our family and we fall into our own patterns and perspectives. Like you have a story like, oh, my dad is always like this, or oh, my brother is too much like that and she needs to be like this, or my sister is always hard on me or whatever. And we have these stories and then we react to it, right? Like, I don't like my sister being all hard on me. Geez, she's such a bitch, right? And we, and we're in it. See if you can take a step back and observe it. And this is hard. I mean, we get hooked pretty easily, right? But like, study the people. What is my sister really like? What does she say that's kind of mean or jarring or critical? Does she say that to other people? In the family too, or just me? Does she do it to. And then how do they react when she says those things to them? I wonder why she's doing what she's doing. What needs is she trying to meet? Is she trying to feel significant and special and better than me or others? Is she trying to feel in control or powerful or certain? Is she trying to impress somebody to maybe get love, impress a parent? Like really study it. Get so curious, almost as if you're watching a family scene in a movie or you're watching another family. Because when you can observe it more from that perspective, you just get such a refreshing space, like ah, a little bit of a breath of fresh air and you can realize it's not really that much about you. Like how your dad interacts with somebody or if your mom drinks too much or whatever's going on. Like it's not about you, it's about them. Even when they relate to you in a certain way, it's not about you. These are dynamics, these are patterns that probably have been in place for many years. Probably even before you were born. Your parent was like that or sibling or something has been like that with their whole life. So what we can do is when we are able to observe it more, we get less caught in those patterns. And those patterns can relate to, can create more of that reactivity or inferiority or social anxiety. So to be free of that, become a lot more of an observer of the scene and of the situation. And then the third thing to do that I think is extremely helpful is to give yourself 100% permission to be fucking different. To reinvent yourself. I mean this doesn't just apply to family and you know, holidays and stuff. This is in everything in life. But with family and holidays tends to be one of the harder places we have to reinvent ourselves. We're like, well, I gotta conform to how I was the last time I saw them. Or else they might comment, yeah, so what, you know, like how much do we diminish ourselves? How much do we not our authentic selves? How much are we not revealing how much we're changing and growing? Because here's the thing. Are you different now than when you were a five year old kid in your house? I venture to say yes, unless you're a five year old listening to this right now, which would be odd. You are hyper intelligent young man or lady, right? No, you're whatever, you're 25 years old, you're 45 years old, you're 75 years old. You are different than you were as a five year old growing up with your parents. Let me ask you this. Are you different now than you were three years ago? And if you're growing and you're listening to this podcast and you're going through my materials and you're reading books and you're taking bold action in the world, and you're getting your butt out to my live events, which I highly recommend we have our Maximize youe Money and Career Confidence event at the end of January 2020. But you're taking bold action in the world. You're changing. You're upgrading your way of approaching the world. You're being more assertive. You're being less nice. You are changing like crazy. You're growing. You're different. So why are you gonna hide that? Why are you gonna pretend that's not the case? Cause that's what often happens. We're like, why is it hard to be around family? Why do I feel more anxious? It's like, well, you're going home and smashing yourself back into this little box where you're like, I gotta be just like how I was. And so, you know. And it's not just your family. Maybe you're with some old friends or some high school buddies or people you grew up with, and they're like, hey, let's go to the bowling alley and drink. Cause that's what you used to do in high school. And you don't want to go to the bowling alley and drink. You want to, like, talk about, you know, personal development, or you want to go for a run together, or you want to do something. You want to cook a healthy meal and then share it for, you know, an evening when you're together. But you don't bring any of that up because you're like, oh, my gosh, what if they judge me? What if they're like, cook a healthy meal. What the hell's wrong with you, man? Right? Instead of showing up boldly, authentically, unapologetically as you, that's what we want to do. That's how we want to let ourselves show up. And that will help dissolve a lot of the anxiety and tension we feel. Because a lot of that's from jamming ourselves back into the old box and telling ourselves it's not safe and we're gonna get rejected and lose love if we reveal how we're changing, growing and evolving. So how do we deal with that? Not only say the thing that you want, instead own it. Like, own it fully, with enthusiasm and unapologetically, but also without making Anyone else? Wrong. So if someone's like, hey, come to the bowling alley to get drunk. And you know, it'd be like the bowling alley to get drunk. Charles, you are so immature. You know what I like to do instead and why I'm better than you, right? That's not going to work. Whether it's with a family member or a friend or something, you just say no to what they're suggesting and say what you want instead. Bowling alley. Your friend's like, come to the bowling alley and we're going to drink. It's going to be great. Hey, Charles, thanks for the invite. That sounds. Don't say, that sounds fun, because it isn't. Right? But you might say, hey, Charles, thanks for the invite. You know, the bowling alley, we could do that. But you know what sounds better for me? I would love to hang out at your house or my house. Like, get some. We can go to the store, get some food, or I can bring some ingredients. Let's make a meal and just have a chance to really chill out and talk and connect and then see what the person says and be ready. If they're like, what? Oh, my God, that's stupid or something, then, okay, persist. Be you. Isn't that how you are with your friends outside of being with family? So why settle? Why shrink? To what, Avoid Charles Disapproval? Is he the determiner of your life? Do you want to give your power to that person? And this is, of course, a hypothetical person. Unless you are literally dealing with a Charles, and that's some sort of weird Twilight Zone. I'm speaking to you. So here's what you got to go tell Charles. No. Okay, so those are the steps, recommendations, tips that I have for really approaching the holidays with more confidence and really all of life with more confidence, but to bring more of you into all of these relationships. So the first things first, let's remember those key three tips. One is OMOs. Getting on your own side. OMOs stands for on my own side. And how to relate to whatever you're feeling by validating it. Supporting yourself, loving yourself. Like, it's okay to feel however I feel about family, because here's one other tip about that. You might feel a lot of stuff that you don't know why you feel it. I mean, so many of our experiences with our parents growing up are unconscious. You don't remember every moment that happened between age 0 and 6. In fact, you don't remember most of those moments. Like, 95% of that stuff is gonna be unconscious. Maybe even 99% of it thousands of interactions, thousands of days of your life, each with thousands of moments in them, unaware, just in your body, in your deep nervous system, in the parts of your brain that you can't access verbally or consciously. And so you might feel some stuff. You might feel sad about something or angry about something, or hurting about something. Not 100% of the time, but just notice it. And maybe as you notice it, it might become a little more conscious and that's good. That's how we let go. That's how we heal. That's how we grow. But just as a reminder for validating your own feelings, it's a lot of stuff's unconscious. You don't need to know it all. Just let yourself feel it, acknowledge it, Be like, yeah, I'm a little anxious right now, or I'm very sad right now. Okay, that's okay. So that's the first part is acknowledging how you're feeling. The next suggestion is to observe the people that you're around, your family or others during the holiday season from the outside, as if you're an anthropologist, studying how the dynamics work and being a little less in it and not taking everything so much about you or through your own fixed perspective of this is right and that's wrong and this is how so and so should be. And just like, what is so and so? Like, what is my sister like? Why do they do that? Really getting more and more curious about their underlying motives, patterns. And again, not making that all bad or wrong. You might be like, yeah, the way that that person asks for things is unpleasant. It doesn't work, it's abrasive. But that's okay. You're just noticing that, like, hmm, that's an ineffective way of asking. I bet that doesn't work so well in their lives. And that's it. Just noticing it and noticing how it's abrasive and makes you feel a little aversion inside and that's all okay, without getting stuck into, like, that's how they should be. Why are they so wrong and bad? So letting that go and just really studying. And then the third thing, which we were just talking about is don't, like, you have control over what you say, what you would suggest. Don't just fall back into old patterns. This is what we do. I don't speak up at the dinner table. I'll just go where they want to go. Okay, you want to spend, you know, all day at whatever Walmart and going to all the stores. Okay, I'll just go with you. Like, I did when I was seven. Like no, if you want to do something different, say it. Hey, let's go for a walk instead. Or why don't you go to Walmart? I'll meet up with you when you get back. We'll go for a hike or something like that. So you bring the new you into that situation. So I hope this serves you and I hope that you are able to find more capacity in yourself for self love, the capacity to love and forgive those close to you and your family, knowing that they're doing the best they can with the awareness that they have and that you're able to open more in this season and into 2020. And the next time I speak with you will be the day before 2020 and I can't wait so until you speak then may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.

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.