Social Anxiety + Avoidant Attachment = Good Times

Do you struggle to connect with others either initially or more deeply? A lot of your conversations might be a little more superficial. Maybe you have a hard time sustaining friendships and romantic relationships might be just like a total shit show for you. I'm speaking from experience here. I'm Dr. Aziz, the founder of the center for Social Confidence and former shit show relationship guy. Which was ironic in that I was studying psychology and actually starting to help clients. But if they knew anything about my own love life, it was depressing. Why is this the case? Well, I thought that I was broken and maybe you do too. Or crazy broken or crazy. Both very technical clinical terms and unfortunately doom you for life. But the good news is you're not broken and you're not crazy. And there's just some patterns that are happening and the patterns that get in the way the most of connecting with people and creating relationships are social anxiety on one hand and avoidant attachment style on the other. Don't worry, I'm going to break both of those down. You might have even heard those terms if you've nerded out on YouTube. You might have studied and watched other videos about them. But I'm going to link it all together and most importantly, help you leave with a practical sense of what you do about it. Because some of the problem with literature, especially around avoidant attachment style, because it kind of leaves you this idea that you have this like broken switch inside. It's like, how do I flick it to normal? I can't. Ugh. I guess I'm an avoidant, right? No, no, no, no. These are just patterns, social anxiety. It's just a fear of people. It's a fear of rejection. You imagine rejection is a coming. You want to go talk to people because they're going to reject you. You don't want to open up and be vulnerable because they're going to reject you. And so you're afraid of connection. Right. Because if I reach out to try to connect with you, I'm probably going to get rejected. Now why? Well, because beneath social anxiety is a core belief percept that there's something fundamentally wrong with you. Unlovable, not enough, not desirable to others, like a core sense of shame or unworthiness. Good times. And so when you have that you don't want to connect with people, you're afraid. So that can block you off from connecting with new people, dating deeper relationships. Maybe if you do talk to people, it's very superficial. Maybe the people that work around you don't really know you like, oh, that guy yeah, he's. He's got, you know, he's got things. He's got a face and hair and stuff. I know a lot about it. Right. They don't know anything. They just know you're that guy who sits at his desk. Right. That social anxiety leads to a lot of avoidance and maybe missing out on relationships or sense of isolation. What about avoidant attachment style? So avoidant attachment style, to sum it up as swiftly as possible, is you are also. It's a fear of connection. And the way that you deal with that is avoiding all connection. So what's different between social anxiety and avoidant? Well, the avoidant thing really starts to emerge as you get closer to people. So social anxiety is kind of like people stay away. But, you know, maybe you want connection. We're not meant to be isolated creatures. We're social animals. So you move towards somebody. For me, in my case, when I overcame my initial social anxiety, it's like, I want a date, I want a girlfriend. Then I'll have arrived in life. And so I approached women and I started to date. And lo and behold, all the stories in my head about being an ugly loser were mostly false. And I had some women that are interested in me and they want to date me, you know, so far, so good. And then I realized that there was this other thing. I had no idea the name of it or anything, but it was the avoidant attachment style that as a woman wanted to get closer. Be like, yeah, I want to date you. Yeah, I want to sleep with you. Yeah, let's be boyfriend, girlfriend. Instead of being like, wow, this is everything I could ever wanted. This is amazing. I was like, I gotta. I think I gotta get out of here. You get this like, itchy feeling and it's fear. It's like a panicky, trapped, I gotta get out of here feeling. Which is kind of crazy making because maybe earlier you were approaching that person, you were pursuing that person. Hey, let's get together, baby. She's like, okay, I've made a huge mistake. I gotta get out of here, right? This is crazy making for her and for me. I didn't know what was going on. Think of it like a magnet. You know, if you flip a magnet around, if you have the opposite poles will attract, right? But you flip it so it's a plus and a plus. They'll start to do that weird repelling thing. That's what happens in your system. It's an emotional repelling. What's going on there? Well, there's fear. And in this case, the fear is if I really deeply connect with somebody, something terrible is going to happen. Something awfully painful is going to happen. I'm going to be abandoned, I'm going to lose them, they're going to die, they're going to smother me and not going to be able to be myself. So not to open up too many cans of worms here, but niceness and avoidant attachment style tend to go together like peanut butter and jelly. Nailed that one. So they just go together. Because when you're really nice and pleasing and you don't have boundaries and you say whatever you want, I'll just be whoever you want me to be, which is what I did, then of course you're going to feel trapped. Of course you're going to be afraid of being smothered and losing yourself, because you are. You're giving your whole self away. As you get close to people, you feel this intense fear and the fear manifests as get away from me or I got to get out of here. So you flutter away and leave a trail of wreckage in your wake. But if your social anxiety is bad enough, you never even get close enough to cause that wreckage. What do we do with all this? I mean, clearly look at these clinical terms. You just really messed up, right? The good news is, is this messed up guy now has a ton of social confidence. Obviously you should watch these videos. Look how confident I am. And then number two, have an amazing relationship with an amazing woman. Together like 13 years. So what's happening there? Well, the good news is you can overcome this social anxiety. You can absolutely overcome. I have dozens of videos. I mean, this whole channel is basically dedicated to that. So study that, watch that. If you want more coaching and training on how to do that, go to draziz.com-a z I z.com and get my five steps to unleash youh Inner Confidence Mini course. It's absolutely free. You can learn how to overcome your social anxiety and I can show you how. So that's the good news. What about the avoidant attachment style? You can overcome that too. That's just a pattern. And the pattern there is, first you have to develop healthy boundaries. You have to become way less nice and way more authentically you. And guess what? What? It's scary. But it's not as scary as that creepy, crawly, freaked out feeling you get when you get close to somebody so you can face that fear. And what you do is you start to practice in small ways, especially as you start getting close to somebody by asking yourself The MVP question for my book, not nice, which is, what do I want? So someone says, you want to go out on Friday night. You say, well, you don't say to them, hmm, what do I want? I don't know. You do this in your head, right? So you get a text, hey, want to go out on Friday night? Well, what do I want? My friends are going out on Friday. That sounds more fun. You're gonna hurt their feelings. How bad of you. Ooh, okay, right. So you practice that. You say, oh, I got some plans on Friday, but how about on Sunday afternoon, right? So you learn how to do it socially and skillfully, but you're having boundaries. You're saying no, you're asking for what you want. And the more you get close to somebody and practice that along the way, early first date, second date. First time you hang out with somebody, you just start to really tune in. Then you show yourself. You calm yourself by saying, hey, look, look, we can have boundaries. We can come and go, we can leave. We can have a level of connection that feels right. Right? And the second thing to really heal this at the root is you got to. And this solves both the social anxiety and the avoidant attachment style is deep vulnerability. And again, you don't have to start there on the first conversation or the first date. That always gets a little weird. Just, you know, as you get to know somebody in a natural progression, you reveal a bit more. You let yourself be seen and known for who you are. And that removes that underlying panicky feeling that I'm going to be discovered and they're going to not like me and they're going to leave me. And of course, the more you build your self confidence over time, you don't have that chronic fear of people leaving you because one, why would they? You're awesome. Awesome. And two, even if someone did, you realize, oh, there's a lot of options for me in my life. And that helps you have this base level of secure attachment. Hopefully this serves you and gives you some hope, some inspiration, some guidance on how to shift this and break free. If you're interested in this kind of stuff and want more content like this about avoidant attachment style and secure attachment and creating healthy relationships, please comment in the section below with your questions, with your ideas, and I'm happy to share more of this stuff with you until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.