Social Anxiety Equals Obsessive Control

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. I have a question as we begin this episode. Are you a control freak? Now, you might hear that and have an immediate reaction. No, Aziz, I am not. Then a second reaction of indignation. How dare you? How dare I know what those control freaks are like? They're loud, they're bossy, they're telling everyone what to do. They're dominant. They're oppressive, they're jerks, they're mean, they're bad, they're wrong, they're scary, they're narcissists. Not one of those people. I'm quiet, I'm shy. No one even knows I'm there. Oh, well, then I clearly am not that controlling. Well, maybe. But what if it's a different type of control or controlling? And what if it's an obsessive need for control that is part of social anxiety? And what if part of liberating yourself from social anxiety is actually letting go of that obsessive need for control? But let's examine this further together here. So is there a need for control there? Well, if you look at an interaction when you're feeling social anxiety, what's happening? What's going on? You know, usually when I talk to people, they're not feeling joyful, connected, at ease, fully and easily able to express themselves without self consciousness. These are what we feel when we're feeling social confidence, but when we're feeling social anxiety, it's the opposite, right? I'm tight. I'm restricted. I don't know what to say. I'm worried about not knowing what to say. I'm worried about how they're going to think of me. I'm not sure how I should be. I'm probably doing it wrong. They probably don't want to talk to me. I'm probably going to mess it up. I'm hesitant. I don't want to go approach new people. I don't want to take risks. I don't want to put myself out there, I don't want to reveal anything, and so on and so forth. Right? So if you look at the experience, it's a very active mind, attention in the body, an emotional constriction or negative experience. And then that's why, you know, eventually we tend to want to avoid social interactions because they feel bad. And then we say maybe it's about the social interaction, but actually what if it's not the social interaction? What if it's the way you're doing the social interaction with social anxiety? And what if that's this obsessive need for control? Just look at it, look at what's happening during that moment. Right? It might appear as fear, but if you just scratch the surface a little bit, you'll see very quickly what the fear is of. Right, well, what are they going to think negatively? What if I don't know what to say? Okay, let's say you don't know what to say. Well then I'm going to be awkward. Okay, so you're awkward. Well then they're gonna judge me, they're not gonna like me. So now I need to control what you think of me. And if I don't do it right, if I'm, I don't perform properly in the conversation, I don't say the right thing or do the right thing, then not only are you gonna think negatively, so I gotta control your mind. You also might feel aversion towards me. Like, I don't like this guy, I don't want to keep talking to him, I'd rather talk to somebody else. So now I also have to control how you feel towards me. And if there's more than one person, oh my God, there's a group of people, there's like four of us standing around, six of us. I gotta control what all five of them think of me. It's extremely exhausting. And then God forbid, it's a public talk or I got to share with a group of 20 or 30 or 50 people, that's 50 eyeballs. Set pairs of eyeballs on me, then I have to control what every single one of them thinks and what every single one of them feels. Which is why most people, they experience social anxiety, will not touch that with a ten foot pole. They're like, no, no, nope, I cannot gonna speak up, not gonna share. It's too much. It's too much to control. It's overwhelming. It is overwhelming. It is too much to control. And yet that's how we learned that's what we've practiced when it comes to social interaction. So are you with me so far? Do you see that there's a quality of needing to control? Is it obsessive? Well, I don't know. I'm not going to say what it is for you. I know for me, when I experienced a lot of social anxiety, it was obsessive, as in I could not stop the thinking, the worrying, the planning. What am I going to say? How am I going to say it? Plan my next conversation. It withdraws you when people are. When we're obsessing, we're having obsessive thoughts. We're not present, right? We're in our heads. We're thinking about the next moment, think about what we're going to do. So is it obsessive for you? And then we want to go a little further and say, what's going. Like, why are we doing this? Why am I obsessively trying to control everything? And of course, you probably pretty quickly realize that you can't, like you can't control what someone thinks and feels. That doesn't stop us from trying. Well, if I tell my best story and if I look my best, then I only show this angle. And so they don't see my weird ear. I put my hair over my ear so they don't see it. And no one. You know, I got enough sleep so I don't look tired. And I'm muscular enough because I worked out enough so no one's gonna think I'm fat or weak. And then I'm gonna make sure I come up with some funny stories ahead of time so I know what to share so people will be impressed by me. And I'm gonna ask the right questions and I'm gonna make sure I show that I'm smart. And if I don't know something, I won't ask a question to reveal that I didn't know the thing because not knowing makes me look stupid and unsophisticated. And I'm gonna make sure I think of some funny things to say and have some talking points and. Sounds a little obsessive, doesn't it? And then despite all of that, can you control what someone thinks of you? I mean, you could do your best. It might be lead to them thinking more highly of you. Right? It might. It might work, but it also might not at all. In fact, it might even be worse than not trying, because there's a funny thing when we're trying to control people feel it, even if it's unconsciously. They feel you're exerting some pressure on them, pressure to like you. And people can either directly, I can consciously perceive it like it's like a glaring, obvious thing. Having run that pattern myself for so many years and then helping people run that, you know, address this and heal it for so many years that if someone is talking to me and they want me to like them or they're, you know, running a social anxiety pattern, it's so obvious to me. And I don't judge it as like, you're bad. I just notice it. And I'm like, oh. And I also notice that it's less effective. It backfires. Like they're nervous and they're wanting me to like them. So they're doing or saying or being in a certain way that there's a tension in it. And I know that if they didn't have that tension and need to control me or control themselves to try to control me, that we would all be having a better time. It's just mechanics. It's like if someone was making an abrasive sound, like you'd kind of get like, you know, this. We would all enjoy this conversation more if you didn't keep making that weird groaning sound. Right? That's the sound of obsessive thinking. So it doesn't really work. It can backfire. Often does. Because we can't control people and yet we keep doing it. Like, hearing that doesn't make you say, well, okay, great, I just won't do that ever again. Why? Because it's obsessive. So then you got to dig a little deeper. Why do we obsess? Why do we have obsessive thoughts? Well, usually we're obsessing because it's. It's like think of the mind as a little machine, like a hand crank machine. A little windy, got some gears, goes around, goes around. And when we're afraid, when we're threatened, when we're in danger, that energy in our nervous system of threat that, you know, is on a very physiological level happening with cortisol and adrenaline and other chemicals rushing through our blood and body. That the brain goes from this pace to today's an episode for sound effects, by the way, but welcome to my life. I just sound effects all day long. That's. I communicate about 40% in sound effects, but it speeds everything up. And so the mind just goes faster and faster and faster. And it's trying to what? It's trying to resolve the threat. Right. That one of the main functions of your mind is to anticipate and react to the environment around you to keep you safe. And it can go into the future and it can draw from the past. So it's got this repertoire of information and it tries to study patterns, it tries to predict things. And in general your mind will over predict threat because its motto is better safe than sorry. So I'll miss out on some things, sure, but at least I'll live. And that's pretty hardwired into us. If you want to check out an interesting book, it's called Buddha's Brain by is it Rick Hanson? Rick Somebody other just check up, look up Buddha's Brain on Audible or Amazon if want to check it out. But he gets into the neurobiology of some of these patterns of suffering. And it's not like, hey, you're weak or you're messed up. It's like, oh no. This is almost kind of our default way of being until we learn and train and practice something new. So we're having obsessive thoughts because our mind is trying to solve the problem of the danger. And if it thinks, if it can just control you or control the other person, then you'll be safe. Now what's the danger? Right. When I say that, it makes me think of the line from Breaking Bad, which I never really actually got that far. I think I watched maybe some of the first season and then didn't get super into it. But I know this sound clip from a drop in a psy trance song where his wife is tired telling him, you know, honey, you're in danger. And she doesn't know if you don't know the show. It's like this chemistry high school chemistry teacher who ends up out of desperation to pay medical bills, I believe for his wife, for her survival, maybe cancer treatment or something like that. He ends up getting kind of in twists and turns, ends up creating meth and then gets involved in drug trade and all this stuff, right? And becomes more and more of like a king drug kingpin, right? Anyway, she doesn't know all this, but he's kind of become this like harder battle hardened criminal basically. And so she says to him, you're in danger. And he looks at her and he's like, I'm not in danger, I am the danger. And my kids love that line, by the way. I told them that we were listening to the song and they were. What did he say? In any case, what if you're not in danger? You are the danger. Go on offense, attack. No, but what if you're not in danger? That Is the life changing question to free yourself from social anxiety? Because as long as we're not questioning it, it's like the whole process, I mean, we're three, three, four layers away from the real source of all this. And really it's okay, I gotta get so and so to like me and oh, they don't like me. And I'm gonna ruminate about if they don't like me and what do I gotta do to get them to respond to me and what's the best message to send to them and oh, did I say the wrong thing there? And we're so lost in that. And we don't even realize we're in obsessive thinking trying to control everybody. So we take a step back. Like, oh, I'm obsessively trying to control everybody. Okay, what's going on there? Oh, I'm afraid. Okay, we take a step back. What am I afraid of? There's danger. What's the danger? Well, the danger is they're not gonna like me. Isn't it some version of that? And then they're not gonna want to be my friend, or they're not gonna want to date me, or they're not gonna wanna promote me, or they're not gonna think highly of me. And then what's the danger in that? Well, something bad's gonna happen. I'm gonna be excluded. I'm gonna miss out. On what? On connection, on love, on belonging. So your sense of. And. And actually underneath that one layer, deeper. Since might as well go all the way if we're doing this. Underneath that is if they don't love me, that can be okay. In fact, that's part of liberation, right? I'm not for everybody. It's okay if someone doesn't like me or something that I did. In fact, even those people that love me, like my wife doesn't like everything I do. Shocking, I know, right? She'll tell you doesn't like everything I say and do. What? I thought you loved me. Right? But you know, it's not even that we're. If someone doesn't, let's say someone doesn't like you at all. Like, I don't want to be your friend, I don't want to date you. That's still okay, but it doesn't feel okay. That's the danger. So the real danger is that when someone doesn't like me or love me, I feel. What? I feel unworthy. I feel unlovable. I feel desperate, uneasy, unsafe. It's like the bottom drops out and there's nothing there, right? There's like a desperate, almost drowning quality of I need this, like, oxygen when I'm underwater. And that's the part that we really want to examine is what is the threat there? The threat there, my friend, is feelings. There's some set of feelings that just feels awful. And we're terrified of that. We're running from that, which is pretty much one of the primary roots of any sort of obsessive thinking or OCD is there's feelings at the root that we are that feel absolutely. We cannot go there. Terrifying obliteration, if I were to go into those feelings. But ultimately that is the way and that is the way out. And that's when I work with people. That's one of the primary things I'm guiding them to do, is to be able to feel the feelings. And that's a skill. In fact, there's a whole episode of this show. If you want to search for it, go to shrinkfortheshyguy.com shrinkforthshyguy.com or just go to my website, drz.com and click on resources I believe. And there's a link to the podcast and you can do a search there and do a search for feeling feelings. I believe the official title is like the life changing skill of feeling your feelings. But if you search and you don't get it exactly right, maybe you won't find it. So just type in feeling feelings or even just feelings and you'll find that episode and you can listen to that. But that's really the skill set that's needed to do this. And if you want more support in that, definitely through my website, you can also reach out. You can apply for my Mastermind program. It's where I'm helping people do this. Every week we get together, practice. And then of course, the other part is taking bold action, which you probably know by now. So we got to feel the feelings and take the action. So it's kind of like an exposure and learning how to build our capacity of resilience not by controlling everything, but by realizing we don't need to control everything. Because as soon as you're willing to feel what you feel, if somebody doesn't like you, then a lot of that threat starts to dissolve. Like, it's okay. It's really okay if someone doesn't dislike me. And you might tell yourself that now, like, it's okay if someone doesn't dislike me, but your nervous system and your emotions are like, what? What? It's not okay. It's very not okay. So let's make it okay, shall we? Let's talk about how to do that through action. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is going to be to think of somebody in your life where if they were to temporarily not like you or think negatively of you or judge you, that it would feel awful. And you're very, you're like, I can't handle that. I gotta do whatever they say. I gotta avoid them. And it could be a certain person. It could be just like in general, speaking up in a group, group of friends or group of colleagues at work. So you imagine the scenario and you go with the what if, what if someone did judge me? I'm so scared of giving this presentation at work. Ah, okay. What if someone did judge me there? And I know the mind is gonna go a mile a minute. Well, this is gonna happen. That's gonna happen. Obsessive control, obsessive control. But instead, just slow down, stay out of the mind, go into your body and find the part that's just like freaking out, really scared, and just be with that. And again, listen to that episode. For more guidance, the art of feeling your feelings, you can also go to my not nice book page. So go to notnicebook.com and enter your email there and you get access to all the resources from the book. And there's a guided peace process, which many of my clients love. They tell me they listen to it maybe every day or as needed. And you can get access to that as well for free. Just go to notnicebook.com and enter your email and you'll get access to that. It's called the peace process. But that'll guide you through this as well. So there's, you know, it's, it works, it can be uncomfortable, but, you know, is it, is it worse than just. At least when you're uncomfortable doing the peace process, you're like engaging in the process of liberating yourself. Whereas when you're just uncomfortable because you're obsessively trying to control everything, you're not progressing. You're not getting anywhere. Right. You could just do that indefinitely and for the rest of your life. So let's not do that. Let's do something better, eh? All right, well, thanks for being with me today. I love and appreciate you. I love being here with you. You are awesome. So until we meet again, may you have the courage to be who you fully 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 shrinkforthyguy.com for free. Blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.