Dr. Aziz explains how social anxiety traps you in a cycle: you believe you're less than others, so you withdraw and become invisible, which confirms that belief. Breaking free means repeatedly testing social situations to prove the story wrong.
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Are you caught in the social anxiety trap? This is a cage that I lived in for so many years and I see so many people in the world and when I work with people to try to help them break free, I can see how they want to break free. They want to be more expressive, more outgoing, have better friendships, connect with other people in life. And yet there's something that's like pulling on you. You're stuck in this trap. It's like your leg is in a bear trap and you don't know how to get out of it. And I want to share in this video exactly how you can break free. I'm Dr. Aziz, I'm the founder of the center for Social Confidence and the author of six best selling books on confidence, including the Solution to Social Anxiety, which is all about how to break out of this trap. Let me explain what the trap is so you can see it clearly. And that's a huge part of breaking free because most people social anxiety and I had this when I experienced a lot of social anxiety in my life. Just think, this is kind of how it is. I'm kind of broken or messed up or different or something's wrong with me. And nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, that's the first, first and most important part of the trap is a belief is a story, is a perception of yourself as somehow fundamentally flawed, missing something less than others in some obvious ways and maybe even some hard to name vague ways. Just a sort of sense of not quite enough. And that is how you perceive yourself. And look, you might have had experiences when you were young that told you that you were had a hypercritical family or perfectionistic parents or bullied at school, school or couldn't make friends or there's something different about you or whatever it was. You might have got that message loud and clear. There is something wrong with you. And so we learn that it's a learned perception. And you might even start to wonder, I wonder where I learned that. Because if you see where you learned it, you realize it's learned. And so anything that was learned could be unlearned. You start to question where did I get that? When we here's the trap. We believe that that's true. And when I talk to people about it, the biggest reasoning for them like I'm just less than, I'm just a loser. That was a term that I felt I identified with when I was younger. Loser. It's like, how do you know you're a loser? Well, I just feel like one which in Cognitive therapy, they call it emotional reasoning. You feel like it, so it's true, but that's not true. Anyway, we believe it's true. When we're in the cage, we're in the trap of social anxiety. And then here's how the trap tightens. Because I'm less than, you're not going to like me, right? Why would someone like me? For me, it was. Why would anyone want to date me? There's so many better options out there. How would you want to be my friend? There's so many better friends to be with. Why would you want to listen to me tell a story? Socially, there's so many better stories, stories and more interesting people out there in the world. And so when you believe that, what do you do? You put yourself out there. Do you talk to people? Are you loud and outgoing? No. You contain everything. You downsize your social life. You become small, maybe even invisible in plain sight. And then so you make a negative prediction. People are not going to like me. People are not going to like what I say. And so what you do is you downsize and you stay small, you stay invisible. And what happens is that reinforces the story that you're not that interesting, not that lovable. Because people don't pay attention to you, people don't connect you. You are invisible, you're overlook. You say you see, now I feel all lonely and I'm separate and I go to places and people ignore me. And if I try to tell a story, everyone looks bored there. I guess I really am messed up. And it becomes this closed loop. And in order to break out of this cage, you have to start to challenge that story. That story of I'm not enough, I'm not likable, and I know it feels true. And I can't tell you how many clients I work with. They join my. I have a one year mastermind program. People join in and they want to make a radical change. And the whole first, I don't know, three to five months of their year is them wanting to make a change. And then another part of them being like, it's not going to work, I can't do it, it's not going to work. Ah. And they thrash around in the trap. We all do it. And then at some point they're like, okay, I'm ready. And the readiness is this. You start getting really willing to question that fundamental perception and to test out what's really true. Because look, I know what happened when maybe when you're 5 years old or 15 years old or something. But now you're 25, 35, 55. And you could live the rest of your life in that cage. Or you could say, you know what, I'm going to test, and this is the magic word to break yourself free from the trap of social anxiety is I'm going to test what really happen. So I'll ask somebody. Let's say you were interesting. Let's say you, that fundamental perception was wrong. Say you were attractive or you were interesting or you were likable. What would you go do? Well, I guess I'd talk to the people. I guess I'd ask someone out. I guess I'd speak up. Okay, great. Now we're gonna go practice that and see what actually happens. And we're gonna test out reality. I know it's the scariest thing in the world. Like, well, but something bad's gonna happen. I know it, I know it, I know it. And that's why I say don't just test it out once, test it out a dozen times, test it out 25 times. And if you hear that, you're like, ugh, there's no way I could do that. Well, that's how the trap gets you. And that's how people stay in the cage for years. Decade. I stayed in it for a deck, 10 years in my case. And I worked with people that have been in the cage for 30, 40 years. Look, you don't. The cage doesn't dissolve on its own. The cage just gets thicker, the bars get more restrictive, until one day you make a decision to start to test instead of just believing that old story. And if you're ready to make that change and you want my Support, go to drazeez.com and click on the coaching tab. You can learn about the Mastermind program that I run. I also have virtual events or in person events. I have a at home study course called Confidence University that helps guide you through. There's so many resources out there, so don't believe that story. The only thing that can stop you is that voice of doubt. And the way out is to challenge it and defy it until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.
