Dr. Aziz explains social anxiety as a form of social phobia — essentially a fear of people rooted in fear of rejection, social disapproval, or being hurt by connection. He uses his childhood arachnophobia as an analogy, describes common avoidance patterns (including "hiding in plain sight" and overestimating the likelihood/severity of rejection), and recommends graded exposure to build a new dataset of social experiences. The video ends with a call-to-action to join his Confidence University for guided practice and community support.
Chapters
Do you have a human phobia? You know, there's a snake phobia, spider phobia. You're scared of those things. You don't want to get near them. Are you afraid of humans? Now, that might seem like a strange thing to ask, but actually, did you know that back in the day, social anxiety, before it was called social anxiety, was referred to as social phobia, which means I have an intense and irrational fear of social, AKA human connection with other humans. And so whether you use that term or not, it's interesting to think about it in that way of a fear of people. And if you observe your behavior with social anxiety, it kind of looks like that, doesn't it? Like, if you want to go into that room full of people. Like, people, right? That's kind of like when I was a kid, I had an arachnophobia. I was afraid of spiders, deathly afraid of spiders. Apparently, it's genetic because my youngest son is terribly afraid of spiders, and all my great coaching and advice has not helped him yet. Hey, you can move towards a spider. You want to do gradual exposure. And he's like, that sounds terrible. Why would I want to do that? Like, fair enough. I didn't really want to do that when I was a kid either. In any case, we got a little shed over there out back, and if you said, hey, you want to go in that shed full of spiders? Be like, no. Now. Now I would, because I'm macho and tough. No spider's gonna scare me. But let's say I said, hey, you want to go to that room full of humans? To you, it might feel like, you want to go in that shed full of spiders. And you're like, do I know any of those humans? Ugh, that sounds terrible, right? Are they fancy? Are they wearing suits and dresses and stuff? Are they beautiful? Are they successful? More successful than me, right? I don't want to go in that room. And it's kind of like a shed full of spiders, right? You want to go talk to those people at the restaurant. I don't know them. Oh, my gosh. You want to go talk to your boss. I definitely have a phobia of my boss. There's probably an official term for that, boss of phobia. Anyway, we have a fear of people. Now, what's helpful is to break this down, because that might sound scary or depressing to feel like you're afraid of humans because that's who you're going to mostly connect with and have all your relationships with is humans. I Mean you have maybe some dogs and cats, but for the most part it's with humans. So if you're afraid of them, you're kind of screwed. But here's the good news, you're not actually afraid of humans. You're afraid of a certain type of interaction with humans, which is rejection or social disapproval or dislike. You also might have a fear of connection, which is kind of a mind fuck. But here, stick with me because there's a fear of rejection. I don't want to get hurt emotionally. I see people with social anxiety are also afraid of connection because if I go more connected, more deep, I'm going to get hurt even worse. So it's really the same fear underneath, which is a fear of being hurt by being not loved, by being rejected or maybe being taken advantage of. Something bad going to happen with people. And so we get this fear of people. And the best way to steer clear is just not interact with people. Then I'll make sure I won't get hurt. And that's what social anxiety is all about. It's about hiding to not get hurt. And that might be hiding by not leaving your house, but it also might be hiding in plain sight though you're around people and you're quiet and you're small in your body language and you don't draw much attention to you. And I call this hiding in plain sight because that's a very common pattern for social anxiety. In any case, what you're most afraid of is that rejection, that negative pain, painful emotional experience. And the problem is you, like with all phobias are predicting it is way more likely than it is. So if I were to ask my 8 year old son, hey, you want to go to that shed full of spiders? We know what he's going to say. No. What's your prediction of the likelihood that one of those spiders is going to bite, jump on you and bite you? And he's like, that's like a hundred percent going to happen, dad. And in my mind it's a zero percent chance. I know they're going to scurry away and be like, don't kill me, right? So I don't feel afraid. And he does. So you, and this is in research with people with social anxiety radically over predict a negative outcome. It's going to be awful. They're not going to like me. And it's not just they're not going to like me, it's going to be like this harsh, wholesale total rejection of you as a human being and as a soul, right? Like, ugh, ugh, you disgust me. And we expect that to come our way. And so one of the biggest ways you can liberate yourself, and this is what I do with all my clients at events that I lead, especially in person events or virtual events where you can get people into action. But I do it in my longer term coaching as well, in between sessions is like, we have to get out there and build up a data set of new experiences of being around the spider and it not jumping on your face and attacking you, of interacting with somebody and actually realizing, maybe I don't get rejected at all, maybe they're quite friendly, maybe they don't super want to hang out with me and be my best friend. But they're also not really harsh and mean and awful. It's actually quite neutral. It's fine, I can handle that. And you only get that when you do the exposure, which is like true for any phobia. So if I tell my son, hey, you go in the shed with me and we'll look at the spiders or even less than that, let's look at that spider in the corner of the room. Let's just stand two feet away from it and see if it jumps on us. And he's like, no, no, I don't want to do that. Right. And then so the fear remains. Not that big of a deal for him. He's 8 years old and, you know, it's not limiting his life in any way. But where is the fear of humans limiting you in your life? I mean, for me, when I lived in the cage of social anxiety, that's the reason I use that term, is it? Fear felt like a cage. It really was. I was limited. It wasn't a physical cage, but it was an emotional, energetic, behavioral boundary that prevented me from putting myself out there, connecting with people and living the life that I really wanted. So if you want to shift this, the key here is you got to get a new data set. You got to test out again and again and again, again what actually happens, not my prediction. And you'll realize humans aren't so bad. They don't pounce on your face, bite you when you go interact with them. And that includes deeper connection as well. It's the same process for developing deeper relationships. If you have a fear of trust other people, it's slowly moving in. Beautiful. So I hope this serves you. If you want specific step by step action steps and a community and guidance to really make this shift possible, definitely go and check out Confidence University on my site, go to draziz.com and check out the Confidence University under products. You can also click down in the description below to learn all about Confidence University. We've been revamping it and have an awesome new, thriving community you can interact with. Get support to make sure that you make these changes. Because you might watch this video and be like, yeah, I know all this, but you're not doing it. So if you want that support and that step by step guidance on exactly what to do in what order, check out Confidence University. All right, until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.
