17 Apr 2026 · 15 min
In this solo self‑help podcast, Dr. Aziz explores a recurring mental pattern he calls the "voice of doom" – an inner narrative that predicts failure whenever a person is about to take a meaningful risk (e.g., speaking up, presenting, asking someone out, changing a job or relationship). He describes how the voice appears with intense certainty, amplifying fear, anxiety, and rumination, and functions as a psychological brake that seeks to protect the individual from the perceived emotional pain of a negative outcome. Dr. Aziz argues that the voice is not simply negative thinking but a manifestation of a deeper need for certainty; the mind trades the discomfort of uncertainty for the certainty of a bad prediction. He explains how heightened emotional stakes make the voice louder, and how humans habitually buy this "negative certainty" because it feels solid and controllable. The episode outlines the costs of obeying the voice – missed opportunities, chronic self‑sabotage, and a life lived on the sidelines – and offers a path to change: notice the voice, observe its predictions and certainty level, tolerate the underlying feelings, and consciously choose a different response. Listeners are encouraged to practice this awareness over the coming days to reclaim agency over risk‑taking and personal growth.
Chapters
Have you noticed that in the moment before what might feel like a risk, so speaking up in a conversation, throwing your idea out there, a presentation at work, maybe even a change in your life, you're going to go for something or put yourself out there, apply for something or make a change in a relationship. Before you do it, maybe when you decided to go for it, you felt excited. Maybe you felt like it was the right thing. But then when it gets close to that moment, what happens? Well, usually there's a growing sense of tension, fear, anxiety, rumination, dread, doom. And there's a voice in your head. I don't mean like, you know, you're crazy, you got voices in your head, but just it's like your thought stream starts to go a certain way and it actually predicts how it's gonna go. It knows how that conversation is gonna go. It's— behold, it's gonna go bad, and they're not gonna like what you're gonna say. It's gonna be awful. Awkward. They're not going to want to be your friend. The people are going to think your presentation's off. You're probably going to lose your train of thought. It's going to be a train wreck up there. Definitely don't make this change in the relationship. It's going to go horribly bad. You'll be single forever. You're going to die alone. And we get spooked. What's fascinating about this voice, if you pay attention to it, is it's there so reliably, so predictably, almost every time when we're going to take a risk of any significance in our lives? And even the small stuff too, like sharing something with a friend or with a stranger, it could be there too. What is going on with that voice? How does it know the future? Why does it show up so reliably? And what if the problem here is that it's not, you know, quote, negative thinking? What if it's not even about positive or negative? It is about a certain pattern that runs again and again, and it's coming out of a need that we're trying to meet. In fact, there's another feeling that we just cannot tolerate, and that's why this emerges. And as you learn to tolerate what's underneath, then those predictions lose their power. That's what this episode is about, and it's going to be extremely liberating to see this pattern playing out. I'm Dr. Aziz. Welcome to the show. Have you seen this pattern in yourself? Where does it show up most? Is it work for you? In a social situation? Romantically? And what need do you think that voice is trying to meet? Well, let's reverse engineer it a little bit. The moment of risk, right? That's when essentially there could be upside or there could be downside. That's what makes it a risk, right? I hope this goes well. And by go well, we mean the way that I want. Pleasure, comfort, success. People think I'm awesome. I think I'm awesome. Yeah, everything's turning up, Milhouse. That's what I hope. That's the upside of the risk. Well, the downside, the downside is doom, death, and ruin, right? Or maybe more minor stuff like embarrassment, awkwardness, tension, not being respected. Now, before you take the risk, and maybe when you make the decision, let's rewind a little bit. When you make the decision, like, I'm going to say that thing, I'm going to go give this presentation, I'm going to go take that new job. There's something in you that wants to do it, that's drawn to it, that's excited about the possibility and the vision, right? Is looking at the upside of the new action of the, quote, risk. But then what happens? Well, we make the decision to go for it, and that could be done weeks ahead of time. That could be right in the moment. Oh, I got a funny thing to say. I'm going to say it right now in the middle of a conversation. And then, then you're about to do the thing. Now, if it's a couple of weeks out, you got a lot more time for this pattern to play out. But it's the same pattern. And it's that voice. Voice says, don't do it, it's gonna go bad, bad. And we for the most part, we'll just agree. We'll say, yeah, oof, you're right. That will go bad. Let's not do it. And we never stop to question like, wait a minute, who's in there? Who's saying that? And why are they saying that? Now, why on earth, if I want to take the thing, if I want to take the risk, right? I want to go talk to that person so I can have a new friend. I want to go ask that person out so I can have a date. I want to take the risk at work so I can grow or get promoted or have a new opportunity. I want the thing, right? I want the result. That's why I'm going for it. So why right before I'm about to do it, what I tell myself, it's going to go real bad, right? That's like you're taking a shot in basketball and you tell yourself right before you shoot, you're going to miss. It's going to be awful. Like, what's going on there? Well, a couple of things. One, that part of you is like the brakes, and it's hoping that if it does get to you early enough and say, hey, you're going to miss this shot, that hopefully you won't take the shot. And if you don't take the shot, then you get to be protected from the downside of the risk. So that's a risk-averse part of you. At other times I've called it your safety police that says, I don't care about all that upside. We just got to protect against the downside. And it perceives the downside as very intolerable, just awful. Oh, if it was awkward for a minute, I just would die. I could not handle that if they didn't like me or if I failed publicly in that presentation. That would be mortifying. It'd be humiliating. And it sort of is just like a cliff. We don't even see what's on the other side of it. It's like, well, maybe you'd— maybe there's ground underneath there. Maybe I'd fall for a little bit and I'd land, I'd be okay. Nope, nope, nope. Be awful. Just like fall off the end of the map, like what the ye olden times explorers thought were there. Fall into endless space, I guess. Don't do it. So that's going to be a first attempt. But if you're driven, motivated, sick and tired of the old pattern, something, you might push through and say, no, I'm going to take the shot. I'm going to take the shot. And still, right before you take the shot, right leading up to the game, right leading up to the presentation, right leading up to the date, the whole time, the whole time, you're going to mess this up. It's going to go bad. It's going to be awful. And if you're like, wait a minute, wait a minute, if I'm going to go for it anyway, why would I do this to myself? They have a term for this in sports. They call it psyching yourself out. Why would we do that? And even if you don't want to, even if you see, okay, this is my safety place, I'm not going to believe in it. Why does this keep repeating? Well, because it's not about the truth of what's going to happen. Because guess what? That part of you that's predicting that it's going to go bad, it doesn't know. It doesn't know. We have this— I don't know if it's a flaw or just a habit in humans where we tend to believe people who are very certain. And so if someone could say something with enough certainty, then we're like, well, geez, I mean, how do you argue with that? They seem so sure of themselves. And so this voice inside, let me ask you, when it predicts that it's not going to go well, how sure does that voice seem inside from a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the highest? Every time I ask a client this, they tell me it's like, it's a 10, dude. It's for sure going to go bad. At least that's what that voice thinks. Okay, well then what's going on here? And when you see this, it's going to be— it's powerful to illuminate something. And then allows you to choose differently. Well, the truth is about any risk, any moment of life really, but especially the ones that feel like we're going for something, we're putting ourselves out there, we're being more real, we're being vulnerable, we're being known, we're going for anything. We're like taking a shot, as you might say, with the metaphor. There is a heightened level in that moment of uncertainty. I don't know how it's going to go. And some emotional stakes, right? Like if you don't know what the special at the restaurant is going to be on Sunday when you go there, you know, that's uncertainty. Maybe that's fun or exciting. What are we going to— what are they going to have? But you're probably not on edge about it, right? And that's because there's no stakes to it. It doesn't really matter. You might like the food, you might not like, you just order something else, whatever. But when it comes to the presentation or the date or whatever, there's some stakes involved emotionally. Ooh, I hope this goes well. Ooh, I don't want it to go badly. Ugh, I really care. I'm invested in this. And so when there's uncertainty plus heightened emotional stakes, which means more feelings, We find that really uncomfortable to be with. Enter the voice I like to sometimes call the voice of doom. And it says, hey, do you dislike uncertainty? You say, aha, it's like an infomercial. Are you tired of all that uncertainty in your life? Yes, I am. And are you tired of that uncertainty when if it doesn't go well, it's going to feel really emotionally bad? You're going to feel disappointed or embarrassed or sad or uncomfortable. You nod your head. You're like, yeah, I am. Well, introducing doom certainty, the solution to all your problems, right? And it's like, I'll give you certainty. I'm going to give you certainty, but that it's going to go badly. And As awful as that product is, we buy it. Humans buy it by the bushel. We'll just, sure, load it up, buy two, double certainty, double bad. I'll do it in every area of life, my career, my social life, my dating life, everything. I got it all mapped out. How's it gonna go? Awful. How do you feel about it? Terrible. But it was kind of good too. Because as terrible as it is, I mean, because it's obviously a very anxiety-producing or depressing storyline to know your future and know that it's going to suck and it's not going to go well and people aren't going to like you and you're doomed to this or that. I mean, that feels pretty bad, right? So why would I say that some part of us gets something from that? Well, we get a sense of solidity from certainty. It's like something to stand on. It's something to hold on to. It's, it's like the uncertainty of going wide open into I don't know can feel really on shaky ground, and like we're swimming in the river, and we just don't like that until we actually build that capacity. But if we, if we aren't aware of any of this and we're not building any capacity, then just the natural default is going to be to go for more certainty. This is a very human thing. It's probably the dominant need in most humans is a sense of certainty. We get it in all kinds of ways: positive, negative, neutral. Here, you might say, is a negative way because it has a very corrosive effect, as you might imagine, right? One, the prediction it's not going to go well might really, truly get you to miss out on a lot of things in life. This is what I see all the time. People I've talked to have been running this pattern for decades. And by the time I meet them, they're in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and they've missed out on a lot in their life. And some are a little aware of that and a little bit in denial of that. Some are very aware of that and feel the pain and the weight of that. And plus a motivation and a desire to say, I cannot keep doing this. I don't want to keep doing this. I don't want to live on the sidelines of my own life, partially alive, partially dead, waiting, prioritizing safety over a full life. And until we really see the impact it's having, well, often let the pattern keep running and then we'll say, "Ah, I don't know, this negative voice I have in my head and it just, I don't know what to do about it. It just kind of, it's there and it's—" It's too hard. It's too true. It's too real. We're either totally fused with it and we just believe it. Or sometimes people start to learn, maybe in the self-development world, and then they say, well, that voice is there, but, you know, I just can't change it. Can't challenge it. Just feels too strong. Convinces me. What am I going to do? And in both those cases, what we're going to do is just live that pattern out for maybe indefinitely. Right? Until we choose something different. But you have to see this before you can even choose. Because otherwise, this is just how it is. And the crazy thing about this whole pattern is the voice could be dead wrong. You could say, "Oh, it's not going to go well. Those people aren't going to like you." And let's say you don't listen to that voice and you go over and talk to those people and you have a pleasant conversation, maybe a great connection, maybe even something comes out of it. And instead of saying, hey, hey, wait a minute, who gave me that awful advice? Why is that? Why are we even listening to that guy? He's so full of it. Instead, we just don't even miss a beat. We just like, whew, I got through that one. What a fluke. That was lucky. I don't know why they— that went well. And then we go to the next moment and it says, this is not gonna go well. They're not gonna like you. And we're like, really? You sure? Oh, I'm sure. Right? So until you really see this and say, "I'm going to choose something different," the pattern will keep running. And so that's the purpose of this episode. And that's what I want you to do after you listen to this is pay attention over the next few days. Notice that voice, especially when you're stepping into uncertainty. Notice what its predictions are, what it says, how certain it is. And you'll see the pattern real time. And when you see it, that's when you start to have more opportunity, more chance, more choice to ultimately change it. Awesome. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.
