The Life-Changing Skill Of Feeling Your Feelings

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. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today is going to be an experiential episode where I'm going to guide you through a process that is one of the most valuable things that I've ever learned. I teach it to all my clients. I talk about it in a number of my books. I guide people through this process in my books. If you ever read my book, not nice. On the website notnicebook.com I have an audio version of a process similar to this. I'm gonna do something a little bit different today, but the essence of it is how to feel your feelings, how to be with emotions. Now, we usually don't need a whole lot of practice being emotions that feel good, although we might, you know, we might get grasping or clinging or uncomfortable with positive emotions. But we tend to struggle a lot more with what we would call negative emotions, emotions that are unpleasant, emotions that feel uncomfortable or feel bad, whether it's fear or dislike, aversion, hurt, rejection, angry, desire, craving, shame, guilt. These are the emotions that we tend to really struggle with. And most of us have not learned how to feel feelings. And so we kind of just bump our way through it, just kind of operate on top of it, try to get through the day, try to get through the week, maybe distract ourselves a lot, maybe with more neutral behaviors and sometimes maybe with more behaviors that have side effects. Whether it's, you know, drinking or drugs or overeating or binge watching things that, you know, avoiding responsibilities. We can do a lot of stuff that might have smaller or bigger effects over time on our health and our lives and our relationships. So what we want to learn how to do is to feel any feeling. And this is truly one of the most powerful sources of confidence because all of our fears are fears of feelings. And so when you know that you can handle any feeling, you start to develop a deep sense of confidence. So I don't want to talk about it. A whole lot. I want to guide you through it, but I will give you a quick overview of the process. The process is to allow the feelings without needing to control them or fix them or make them go away. It's kind of counterintuitive. You know, our mind is used to, like, if I gotta, you know, solve something, I need to go do it. Let's say I have a pest control problem in my house. I can't just let the ants or the rats or whatever it is just run around everywhere. That'll only get worse. And that's how our mind approaches emotions. It's like, oh my gosh, look at these emotions. They're so bad already, I gotta do something to make them better, get rid of them. But it's actually the opposite that the more you try to go after your emotions and fix them, the more they persist and intensify or go weird underground and show up in strange ways or body pains or all kinds of stuff. You produce more tension in your body and you start to get weaker in a way like you're not able to feel emotions. You get more scared of your emotions, more reactive to your emotions. So this process is going to be guiding you to be able to be with your feelings without needing to run away, without needing to fix them, and to discover how, when you do this, something beautiful opens up. So let's do it. My intention would be that you can download this episode to your app. Whatever you're listening it on and you can have this and you can just fast forward. You can notice what timestamp that we're at here, we're about to start. And you can just jump to this section and you can listen to this, you know, daily for as long as you need to, or whenever you want to pull it out if you're struggling and you need some guidance or help. Sound good? Okay, here we go. So to get started, it's optimal to do this with your eyes closed at first. Over time, you can begin to do it while you walk, even while you drive, and doing a variety of other things in your life. But for now, give it more attention. Close your eyes. You can be seated or laying down, doesn't matter. So go ahead and close your eyes now and just start to bring more attention to your breath. Just feel the sensation of air coming into your body and going out of your body. And if you're feeling unpleasant feelings right now, even this simple task of focusing on our breath can maybe be difficult. There may be a lot of commotion in your mind, a lot of thoughts Impulses, urges, ideas about what you need to do or what's wrong, or predictions about the future, stories about the past, stories about you and others. And if we're feeling painful emotions, and there's a lot of emotional sensation too, maybe turmoil, maybe it feels painful, or there's squeezing or tension or emptiness or some other form of unpleasantness. So what we're going to do now, instead of running from it, is to move towards it. So in your next in breath, as you're breathing in, your lungs are opening and expanding. And so as you breathe in, also let yourself be opening to whatever sensations you're noticing. We'll get to the mind in a little bit, but we've got to start with the body. The mind is like it's smoke and mirrors. There's so many thoughts so fast. It's like, imagine like a storm cloud with lightning in it, and going in there is confusing and disorienting. So we're going to drop beneath the level of your mind, into the level of your body. If you imagine like there's a storm, than dropping down to, say, the ocean, that's your body. And no matter how strong the storm is, maybe there's choppy waves at the surface. If you drop down 20ft into the ocean, it's calm and that's always available to us. Similarly, if you zoom out above the storm clouds, up into the atmosphere, up into the edge of outer space, it's also calm still and that's available to us as well, And we'll use both. So bring your attention to your body. And breathe and find the place. Like, where is there tension or squeezing or grasping or aching or any other unpleasant sensation, maybe pressure or tension, it's hot or cold. And you're just going to go to that spot with your awareness. And you're going to bring your awareness there and just be with it. You don't need to dig it out or really kind of contract around it. Sometimes we can do this when we're focusing on it. There's almost this, like, intensity, like, okay, I'm going in. See, there's no need to furrow your brow or clench your teeth. In fact, soften, soften your jaw, soften your belly. On the next in breath, just soften everything that you can soften right now. Nothing to hold on to, nothing to fix. You don't even need to try to let go or anything. Just see if you can just allow a little bit more. Just allow everything to be as it is. And if you feel this urgency or need to change Something or I can't be with this. Ah, just note that's just stories in the mind. And if you drop below the level of mind, below the surface of the water, it is just sensation, movement, it is just energy moving through your system. And just breathe and allow it to move. The feelings last longer when we clench and block. It constricts the flow. But when you just allow them to move and flow, they will rise up, peak, and then subside. And so when you're focusing on the sensations, you're doing great. By the way, this is courage in action. Know that as you do this, you are loved, you are held, you are guided, and you are safe. It is safe to feel and you got this. We never get more in life than we're ready to handle. So if you're experiencing something challenging or uncomfortable or painful, you're ready for it. You were made for this. In fact, your capacity to feel this. And even 10 times this, you got and more. You are stronger than you think and you're more expansive than you think. And speaking of expansive, so when you're focusing on the sensation in your body, let yourself feel it and be with it gently in a spacious way. So instead of bringing, collapsing your attention right into that one spot, let's say you notice a lot of squeezing in a certain part of your body. You can also gently put your hands there if that feels good. But then bring your awareness not only to that spot, but around your body, even outside of your skin. Let your awareness be a little bit more diffuse. I mean spread out, so you're kind of holding this area. In fact, sometimes you might notice that a certain sensation or feeling in your body is not actually contained within your skin. It can almost be like a cloud that is within your body, but also around your body, existing outside of the bounds of your skin. You might just get an intuitive sense or you might feel it. Much like with your eyes closed, you feel the edge of your skin, you know where your body is in space. And you're also aware of the space around you, even when your eyes are closed. So let yourself be aware of the sensation in your body and the space around your body. Sometimes when we do this, the feeling doesn't have to be so contained within us and it can start to dissipate. Let it, if it wants to let it dissipate into the room. You're not pushing it away or trying to sneakily get rid of it. You're just letting it be, not compressing it in any way, letting it expand. And if the sensation Feels like it gets more intense. Let it get more intense for a bit. If it subsides, let it subside. Letting go of needing to make this change or go away, Just welcoming it. That's right. This feeling isn't your enemy. It's not something bad that has to be cut out or gotten rid of or killed. What if it's providing useful information? What if it's coming from a part of you that needs your attention? Can you give it that attention right now? And can you give it more fully, more generously. Saying, show me. Show me everything you got. I want to see you, I want to know you. And then just breathe in and invite and allow the feeling fully as best as you can in this moment. As you do this, letting your awareness also expand. Even with your eyes closed, can you get a sense of the room that you're in? You can almost just feel the space around you. And can you even get a sense or a feeling of how that can go on indefinitely? Like you can feel or sense outside of your house or the building that you're in? So letting your awareness just go bigger now, bigger and bigger, out through your entire building or wherever you are, out into the edge of the town or the city that you are, out to the wildlands, the woods, the mountains, the ocean, Up through the atmosphere, up into outer space, To the moon and the planets and the stars and the cosmos. Just letting your awareness be this vast open space. And then from here, almost like you're looking back at this little person down there. And that emotion, can you see it as a cloud around you and inside of you? Maybe. What color is the cloud and how far out does it go from this little Human? A foot? 3ft? 6ft? Just bring that attention to the edge of that cloud. Where does it end? How does it end? Is it a sharp ending or is it more? Does it fade out like mistake? Each breath in, allowing more, Each exhale surrendering more, Surrendering to the feeling. If your mind is active, there's certain things that it wants or doesn't want. It needs this. It can't have that. This has got to be this way. We're also just going to surrender the need to control anything right now. So our mind says life has to go this way or else. Well, right now we're just going to surrender to the flow of life. Sometimes if we're feeling pain, it's because something that we wanted to happen didn't happen, that person didn't respond, or someone's upset with you, or you failed at something. Or you're anxious about something or there's so much to do or something we focus on. And just for right now, surrender and allow things to be as they are, Just bowing, submitting to the flow of life. You may take action later, you may attempt to change the circumstances, but right now, just acknowledging what is. So that person didn't get back to me. That project didn't go how I planned. I don't know what's going to happen next. Maybe this will work and maybe it won't. Maybe they'll respond to me and maybe they won't. Just allow whatever is. And if you notice a tension or a squeezing or a grasping arise, just bring your attention to that in your body and allow that to. You're doing great. With each breath, just softening a little bit more and allowing life to flow. You don't need to control. You can float more down the river of life and steer less. You can love more and fear less. What if there's something bigger than your mind at play here? A vast symphony with billions and trillions of distinct instruments, people, objects, entities, energies. This flow, this rich unfolding of life. So many variables. What if life is unfolding exactly as it should and you are in the right place? You're exactly where you need to be. And part of life is uncomfortable or painful. It's loss or rejection. Sometimes not getting what we want, and sometimes getting what we want. Sometimes succeeding and being victorious and feeling powerful and sometimes failing and feeling small, helpless and hopeless. Sometimes being adored and loved and admired and sometimes being rejected and disliked. Someone's upset with you. Sometimes it's gaining prestige, possessions, money, and sometimes it's losing prestige, possessions, lots of money. And as these things change and flow like weather patterns through the sky. Here you are, this vast awareness, observing. Can you feel that right now? Can you be the observing consciousness, the awareness that's observing the feelings, observing the thoughts, witnessing your life circumstances and your stories about those circumstances. And this vast awareness goes out beyond the room, beyond the city, out into the mountains, the streams, the rivers, the oceans, up into space and continues through the whole solar system, the whole galaxy. It's ever present, Spacious, vast. Breathe in the wisdom of this awareness. Letting go of the need to control anyone, anyone's feelings, anyone else's decisions. I don't need anything from this person. Letting go of the need to control your feelings, Just letting them move, letting them be, letting yourself be. You are safe, You are guided, you are held, you are loved, you are worthy. It's okay to relax, to let go, to let yourself be carried by the current of this vast awareness, this vast intelligence, this vast unfolding. It's okay to let yourself be optimistic, to hope, to dream, to create anew, to experience a future that is different than the past, To enjoy your life. You deserve to have joy, to have fun, to spend time with people that you love, to take a break, to take it easy, to play more. It's okay to let go. It's okay to be you. Thanks for being with me today. You can stay in this space as long as you like. You can re listen to this guided process as many times as you like. And I hope that if you're struggling or scared or sad or hurting in any way, that you can turn to this and use it a hundred or a thousand times as much as you need. And that each time you use further ingrains, you get on a deeper level with more clarity. That it's okay. It's okay to feel that you're okay. It's okay to let go, that you can get to the other side of anything. That you are resourceful and resilient. And a bright, beautiful being who has so much to contribute in this world just with your presence, just with your smile, just with your love. So we'll conclude this episode in this place Again. You can just rest for as long as you like and until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you 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 shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com. Sa.