Stop Seeking Approval From 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 second, 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. Welcome to today's episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, and today we're talking about your family. Oh, yes, everyone's favorite topic. And I don't mean your current family, if you've created one. I mean your family of origin. That's the people that you grew up with. And I'm going to include in this your parents, siblings, aunts and uncles and maybe close friends of the family that you grew up with that may not be, you know, related by blood, but are pretty much family. Right. So that group of people and how it's influencing you, and specifically, as the title of this episode would indicate, how to stop seeking their approval. You know, this is such a common issue, and it's definitely related to social anxiety and niceness, and you'll see why in just a few minutes. And it's also a source of great suffering that can exist even when you're not living in the same house as your family. You may or may not be. You know, sometimes you're a family member, a relative, a grandparent, a parent might be dead, and yet there's that fear of their disapproval still. So you can see that this goes beyond maybe the rational and goes into the realm of our emotions, our need to fit in, our need to be good. And these can be major impairments for you being fully confident, fully yourself, living a life that's fully your own. So I'm excited to talk about all this with you today. If you're benefiting from this show, I have one short, simple request that's gonna be to take a million dollar bill, put it into an envelope, send it to my. No, it's gonna be to go to itunes or Apple Podcast, I believe it would be called now, where you can give a review to this show. And so if you've been benefiting from it, you know, please share about that because that's gonna help me reach more people which is the purpose of this whole jam is Operation Mass Liberation. Let's all free ourselves. And speaking of freeing yourself, that's what today is about. So remember I said you're wanting approval of your family is related to social anxiety and niceness. Let me explain that. So social anxiety, which is feeling nervous around others, imagining they're gonna judge you, imagining they're gonna disapprove of you, and then as a result, either hesitating, holding back, obviously feeling nervous or anxious, but it can really limit your behavior. Or you might flip it into the nice version, which is you do go approach, but you're still holding back, right? You're being the nice, pleasing, polite, not offensive version of you, the version that you think people want you to be. That's sort of a more adaptive approach than just kind of completely hiding and running away. Either one, though, is born out of a feeling inside, which is, I'm not okay. I'm not acceptable, I'm not worthy. I'm not likable. Just instead of just taking that at face value, I say it with such a certainty because I've seen it with so many clients. I've been studying this for two decades now. But don't just take my word for it, even if I sound certain about it. Really examine it in your own experience. You know, let's say you're going to go talk to someone that you thought was really impressive in business or really attractive personally. And if you knew, I'm on par with this person, we're equals. And if this person doesn't want me, well, there's someone else that will. If you really knew that and you thought, like, I'm awesome, of course, they might not like me, but I like me. And if they don't like me, that's okay, I'll find someone else. If you really knew that, would you feel that anxious around them? Usually when people really examine this, the answer is no, right? It's like, well, actually, I'm nervous because on some level, I'm less than them. They're better than me, they're more successful than me, they're more beautiful than me, they're smarter than me, or their judgments of me are more meaningful than my own perceptions of myself. So if they judge me as awkward or stupid or silly or unattractive or whatever, then that must be true. So you see how you're living in this diminished version of you who is not as good as others, whose reality is not as valid or strong as others, and you kind of have to defer to other People to determine your worth. You can see that might be a setup for anxiety and niceness in your life. Well, it gets even more intense when you come to your family of origin, because where do you think those rules of what is good and bad comes from? It's not entirely your family, but it's a lot of that. I mean, you get other rules as you grow up and go to school and your religion and the culture that you live in now. But the root of it is in your family. You know, what's valuable is the kid who's good at sports, valuable, the kid who's good academically, the kid who has friends, who's popular. You know, your family has values around these things, like the kid who's compliant and does what his parents says right away. You know, don't be the rebellious one. Don't talk back, don't say no, don't go do your own thing, don't have these sorts of friends, don't dress like that, don't talk like that, don't like this, like that, instead. And of course, you add to it with your peers and other influences. But that that core sense of good, bad, right or wrong, what gives you your worth often is heavily influenced by our family growing up. And that's not. I'm not saying this is bad or wrong or it shouldn't be this way. This just seems to be how it is. And that makes sense too, because you're coming to understand the world and yourself and your place in it, in this environment that is your family. And when I say family, I use that pretty loosely. Maybe you grew up with one parent, two parents, split family, aunts and uncles, extended family, grandparents, it doesn't matter. It's those people that are around you that create this sense of good and bad and right and wrong. And what I see in many clients that I work with is that they are in a state of suffering regularly, not just around me. It might be when they're interacting with their family members, but even when they're not around their families, they're still suffering around this idea of I can't be myself because my family won't like it, or my family doesn't get me. You know, I'm different than them. And there's a lot of suffering around that. And that could be for a variety of reasons. You know, like I am more liberal and they're more conservative or vice versa. Right. We have different political views. Or, you know, I remember worked with one client and she was a lesbian, and her family or mother specifically didn't accept that about her, right? She says, I love you, you're my daughter, I'll always love you. And I don't accept that about you. I don't even know what that statement means. It's like, I don't accept. Well, here I am. Mom, are you going to kick me out of the house? No, no, you can still come and visit me. It just means, like, I just want to let you know that I still very much disapprove of your terrible, terrible quote, choice of who you love. Right? So there's, there's the direct judgment of family that might be painful, or there's that sense of maybe they're not directly critiquing or judging you for having a different opinion, a different perspective or different lifestyle. They just don't get it. So you share about something you're into and they say, huh, neat, or nothing at all. Okay, well, anyway, can you pass the salt? Like, oh, my heart. Right? Don't you see me? So whether it's wanting to be seen, wanting to be loved, wanting to be approved of, wanting to be accepted, this is the source of pain. Now the challenge is it's like, yeah, of course you want those things. I mean, that's human. To go through your human existence and say, I'm accepted by no one, I'm loved by no one, I'm seen and known by no one, and I feel fine. I mean, you're either on Valium, although that probably, you're probably on heroin. You gotta be on heroin for that to have no effect on you, right? It is not realistic. So I'm not saying that's what comes confidence is, and that's what freedom is. What I'm saying is not needing that from your family of origin is where the freedom lies. Another way to say this, my friend, is diversification. So, yes, you need acceptance and you need love. But do you need it from that place that has been so hard to get it from? Because the option that many people will face, and you might have faced this as well, in fact, this just came up on a mastermind call for the mastermind that are in last night. It's like, whoa, wait a minute. So my option is either I'm myself around my family and then they don't and they reject me, or I have to, you know, in order to be accepted, I have to be something that I'm not and hide a lot and hold back a lot and pretend like I don't. I don't like either of those options. And yeah, both of those options Are unpleasant. What about a third option? What's the third option? Well, the third option could be I could be myself around my family, and they don't like it, and that's okay. I don't need them to like it. Or I could not share as much with my family, you know, hold back some and not be. Not need them to know me deeply. That's okay, too. I'm going to share with other people. So that's where the diversification comes in. Because what about, do you have friends in your life? Are those deep relationships? Do they know you? Do they accept you generally? I mean, no one's gonna accept everything about everyone. Where it's like, we're totally aligned in everything, in every moment. We both want the same food. We get hungry at the same time, we pee at the same time. We, you know, like what? It's ridiculous. So you have differences, but for the most part, they listen to you, they respect your opinion. Even if they have a different opinion, you could talk about it in a way that feels mutually, you know, growthful or beneficial. Do they know you? Do they know what's going on in your life? Do they know what makes you tick? Because that's one of the pains around family, right, Is you might be really passionate about something. I remember I worked with this client who's really passionate about music, and his dad grew up working in the world of finance, and he trained his son to work in the world of finance, and that's what he really leaned on and reinforced. And that was good. And his son, of course, went to a good school and learned finance. Didn't give two blanks about finance, but just did it for. Because that's what he was supposed to do for many years, was able to get a successful job in finance, all the while was practicing music on the side, and eventually made a decision to pursue that much more fully with his life. And his dad was just befuddled, confused, disappointed, hurt, saddened. And for many years before my client made this shift, when he'd talk about music with his dad, his dad would just kind of be like, huh, interesting. Like, really? No. No energy, no response, no curiosity whatsoever. And so do you have people in your life, though, who do see that passion in you for whatever it is, in this case, the Kleinhos music? And for him, you know, he actually had a spouse, he had kids, he had a community, he had family. So he had all these sources of love and connection and approval and being known. And yet not from dad, though. Oh, that hurts, right? Not from mom, not from My uncle, not from my grandpa, not from my sister. And it hurts. And we're in torment about it and we're thrashing about it, and I get it and I've done it. We can all do it, but we can all also do something else. And look, I'm not telling you that you have to do something else. Maybe you can get your family to accept you more. I don't know, maybe you share with them. Hey, I really am passionate about music, and every time I talk about it, it seems like you kind of change the subject. What's up with that? You have a direct conversation. You let them know that this is what's important to me. And it's really painful to me that you seem to disapprove of that. Am I just reading into that or do you disapprove of that? You know, whatever it is, maybe you'd have a real conversation. The problem about real conversations is that you might get real realness back. And then what if the parent says, yeah, I don't approve of music. I think it's stupid. I think it's a waste of your life, or, no, I don't approve of you being a lesbian. I don't. I don't think it's a godly or right or whatever the client's mother's opinions were. Bam. Ouch. Ugh. So then you clearly. Then the disapproval is clearly laid out for you, and that might be the best thing that ever happened to you. Because when are you going to stop seeing your family as the source of love and connection and approval and as the ultimate authority on what is right and important and significant in life? When are you going to stop doing that? When you reach a certain Decade? When you're 30? When you're 40? When you're 80? When you have kids? When you get married? When you move to a different place? When you earn a certain amount of money? When you have your own house or apartment or whatever? When does it occur? Because for most people, the answer is kind of never, right? I've worked with people in their 60s and 70s who are still hurting and upset that their. Their dad or their mom didn't love them in the way that they wanted. And this isn't to dismiss that desire and that craving that you have that we all can have. Of course a child wants to be seen and known for who they are. Of course they want to be accepted for they are. Of course. And if you didn't receive that, I'm sorry, it could be much worse. You could be, you know, sort of benignly ignored and neglected, or you could be actively abused and tormented. And no matter what form occurred for you, I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry to hear that. That's painful. That hurts. It's not giving a child the nutrients and the nourishment that I think we'd all, whether you have kids or not, would agree are important for kids to have. And at the same time, that was then and this is now. And now you're an adult. Part of stepping into adulthood. I don't just mean numerically your age, I mean emotionally. The maturity of an adult is to decide your own reality, decide what you value in life. I value music. My dad values finance. That's the client that I'm talking about. That's the work that I was doing with him, is to help him claim that. And why is my dad's perspective or opinion any more significant than my own? In fact, shouldn't my own be my own values be more important to me since I'm the one who's living this life in this body right now, making the choices for me and my family? And so you decide this is what's important to me? Yeah, but my dad thinks it's stupid. So what? You could find a million people that think whatever you're into is stupid. I like Magic the Gathering. I think it's one of the greatest games of all time. It's been going for 30 years, by the way. There's a lot of people, maybe even you, you terrible monster, who think it's stupid. So, okay, when I was younger, when I was in middle school, when I was 12 years old, 13 years old, had a lot of social anxiety. I was mortified to tell people I was into magic unless, you know, they thought it was cool. But at the school I went to, it wasn't cool. No one played it. But I played with my brother, I played with my cousins, and I just kept it secret at school. I played sports at school because that's what was cool thing to do. Don't play magic, you nerd. So I kept that secret. I kept a thousand and one secrets when I was young because I had so much social anxiety, so much shame. And part of stepping into adulthood is like, this is. This is what makes me tick. This is what I like. This is what I'm into. And to really own that. And that's. It sounds when you. When people hear it, when you hear this, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, okay, own it. Something shifts. When you really do, though, when you really make that Decision to claim your own life. And then you release yourself of needing something from mom and dad, needing them to be different. You release them, too, from that invisible pressure. Because I'll see this all the time. It's such a common pattern. There's a client who's upset about a parent or a sibling, and they don't understand me. They're so judgmental of me. And the client is just oozing with judgment of that person. And it's ironic, right, because it's like, how dare they be so judgmental of me, those pricks. You know, it's like, wait a minute, Wait a minute. Do you see what's happening here? Right? Because we're hurt and we're upset. Why? Because we're attached. Because we still need something from them. When you're young, you do need something from them. You need the shelter. You need support. You need emotional connection. You might not get all of it, but that's what a child needs to thrive. Now, as an adult, it's on you to diversify and find your other sources to create the relationships in your life that are a reflection of your values, where you can be fully yourself. You can have people who champion you, who support your interests, your passions, your philosophies, the way that you want to live. And that doesn't mean you never have any conflict with anyone, and there's never any disagreement. That's not realistic. But for the most part, there's a celebration of who you are, and that's being reflected back to you from the people around you. And guess who it starts with? You celebrating you, you owning your own life and making that decision, saying, you know what? I release you, Mom, I release you, dad. Whether they're alive or dead, I release you. Grandpa, grandma, uncles, siblings, I release you all. You don't need to change your perspectives about me. It's okay. You cannot like things. And that's. I don't need to change anything around that. And you might say, well, geez, that's all well and good when I'm not with them, but it's terrible when I'm with them. And all they want to do is go on and on about how bad whatever, you know, gay people or Republicans are this or that is. And I, you know, that feels like it's offensive to me. Okay, well, maybe it's time for some assertiveness. Mom, I can understand that you have a strong opinion about gay people, and that's. And that's unacceptable to you, and that's your opinion. You're entitled to Your opinion. I'm not here to change your ideas. And if I'm going to be spending time with you, I don't want to hear you continually criticizing gay people. Because, as you know, I am gay. And that's offensive to me. That's hurtful to me. So you can have those opinions and you could share them with whoever you want, just not to me when I'm around you. Can we talk about something else? Right. What is that? That's a boundary. It's assertiveness. And I use the example here of being gay. But it could be a thousand and one things, you know. Hey, you know, it seems like whenever I. You. When I talk about my passions, you know, in music, the client who's into music and his dad was, you know, didn't. Didn't think much of that. You know, it seems like you, you're critical of my choices around the life path I'm choosing. And that's your right. You can absolutely have that. Those perspectives and those fears and those concerns. And if we're going to be spending time together, I don't want to just keep hearing about what bad choices you think I'm making. That doesn't serve me. And I don't. I'm already clear. And if you think I'm making mistakes, great. Let me make my own mistakes, dad. Right? So do you see I'm being assertive, I'm being firm. I'm being direct. I'm being clear. And if you hear this and you're like, who the hell talks like that? Can. My friend, you gotta learn how to talk like this. And if you haven't attended not nice Live, we have that coming up in the early part of 2023 at the end of February. It's a virtual event where I teach people how to be more. Less nice and more real and be able to talk like this, where you can really have these kind of boundaries and so much more. So definitely check that out. If you're not on my email list Already, go to draziz.coM-R-A z I z.com and you can go to the Events tab and join the mailing list there. You can also just get my free video course. It's called five Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. Right there on the homepage of drz.com and that will put you on my email list and you'll get special discounts to all my events and stuff like that. But you can learn this stuff. Absolutely. I never used to be able to talk like that. And Now I can. So part of it's having a boundary with family. But even in order to be able to have the boundary, you got to let go of needing to control them and needing them to think the way that you think, approve of everything that you do. And it's time to make the decision to just let go. And then when you notice that part inside, it's like, I want something that's okay. Letting go doesn't mean you amputate that part. Tune into that. You'll feel an aching inside. I'm aching. It's hurting. Okay, what if. Yes, you're hurting, but no, mom is not the source of that love and approval that you're seeking. Dad is not the source of that. Your siblings are not the source of that. Right. Let's say you're hungry and you want to go to a certain restaurant. It's been your favorite joint in town for 10 years. And so you bring your new date, say, hey, I'm going to take you to this great place. I go there all the time. And you walk to the front of the restaurant and right there on the sign is a door. It says permanently closed. And you say, what? I've been going here for 10 years. Like, oh my gosh. And you're devastated and you're sad and you miss it. You know, two weeks later you wish you can get that whatever burger or whatever you got there, I don't know. And you miss it. And then at some point do you go somewhere else? Do you just keep hanging outside that restaurant? Hello? Banging on the window. Can you let me. Do you have. Please. Actually a better example than a burger joint would be there's this amazing ice cream stand. It's not a stand, it's a little store. Right? Shop. Ice cream shop in downtown Portland. And it was called Little Bean. And it was a. The ice cream was made from chickpeas. Seriously. And you had tasted like probably chickpeas and a bunch of oil and stuff. But anyway, it was dairy free and we eat dairy now. But at the time our family was vegan, or at least me and my wife were. Anyway, so we walk across town through the city of Portland to go get to this ice cream stand. And it was so good. It was so good. I'm not a big ice cream guy. I don't eat a lot of ice cream. But every time I would go there, you better believe I would get an ice cream sometimes a double scoop. So good. And anyway, when all the pandemic craziness, I mean, Portland's one of the top cities in terms of crazy lockdowns for, well, excessive. Let's just say excessive lockdowns. That pretty much demolished the downtown scene and put so many business out of business anyway, it crushed Little Bean. So sad. So sad. And my kids were just really sad, like, is it going to open again? I was like, I don't. I don't think so. I think it's. Think it's dead. So. Son, Boys, come here. Little Bean is closed. I'm afraid you're never gonna have ice cream again. That was the only source. It was the only place we could get the ice cream. Kids, is that true? No. There's other ice cream places in Portland. There's. You can go to the supermarket, you can get Coconut Bliss, which I think they renamed to something else, but that's a vegan ice cream, right? And you can eat. You can get dairy ice cream. Get whatever you want at the supermarket, right? So there's many, many sources, but there are people in life who would stand outside that ice cream stand for the rest of their lives or they would leave and they would bitch about the ice cream. You know? You know that this. That place closed. That was terrible. That place. You know nothing else as good as that. Why did they close? Was it so awful of them to do that? So awful of the government? It's so awful. And they're just perpetually and permanently hurt and embittered and disappointed and sad. And then they have their reasons why they're defending, why they're hurt and embittered and sad. And you can do that. And you could go find a therapist and you could talk to that therapist for three years every week about how bad your mom and your dad were and how they didn't give you these things, and your therapist would agree with you, and you could still be holding on. Now, I'm not saying that talking through painful, challenging experience in your childhood is not valuable in therapy, but it's got to be in the service of ultimately healing and. And letting go. Maybe you switch the order of those things. It's letting go so you can heal. So if I wasn't holding on to something, if I never could get the approval of my family ever again, where would I go? What would I do? And then you might just discover that they're not the source of approval. Maybe even your friends is not the source of approval. Your community, maybe you might say, well, I'm the source of approval. Maybe. But maybe it's something beyond that. Maybe love and compassion are accessible as frequencies from anyone, anywhere. And you can plug into it at any time. And sure you could feel like it's coming from you, but maybe it's coming through you. And maybe you don't need to rely and hold hostage some old person. Give, give me the lover, give me the approval or else. Put your hands up, old man. Right. Maybe you could just give them a break. Let them go. And maybe, especially if they're dead, let their spirit go. And if you want a really beautiful insight into what that crinkly old judgmental parent might be after they've died, check out Anita Moorjani's book. I even have it in my office for those watching the video. I'm going to hold up the book here so you can see it. Dying to Be Me by Anita Moorjani. Highly recommend that book. Very sweet story about this. The story is actually very moving and, and at moments very scary and painful for her. Not sweet in terms of her dying and coming back from, from a brief period of being dead. But the sweetness is when she interacts with her deceased father and his essence. When, after she's died, when she's in her out of, you know, near death experience or out of body experience. By the way, I mentioned, yes, watching. Yes, you can watch these episodes. If you're not aware of that, go to YouTube, type in shrink for the shy guy. We've been posting them on YouTube as well as wherever you're listening to this in audio format. Tell your friends. So let's talk about how you can put this into action. Time for action. Action, action. Now, the action is pretty clear as I've been talking about it this whole episode. But it's going to be to let go. And there might be a preliminary step. Right. Because if part of you is like, no, no, I'm entrenched, like, forget that. You don't know what they did to me or that sucks. I think a parent should approve of their children. That's awful that they don't. Right? And you're kind of in that place of frustration and judgment and hurt. Okay. All right. Well then the initial question I might have for you would be if they were never going to change and you knew they were going to be that way until they died, whoever they is in your family, what would you do if you were never going to get that approval? Let's say they've been dead for 10 years, what are you going to do then? Just ponder on those questions because it might show you basically how when you and your sense of well being is hinged upon someone else and their choices. Well, you might just be waiting a long time. All right, thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you are awesome. Talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to welcome 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.

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