Dr. Aziz (YouTube) explains that social anxiety is not primarily caused by past events or temperament alone but by a recurring internal perception: "there is something wrong or insufficient in me," which leads people to overestimate how often and how intensely others will reject them. This perception produces avoidance and prevents practice of social skills, creating downstream symptoms (fewer dates, weaker public-speaking or leadership skills) that feel like the cause but are actually effects. Changing that core perception is presented as the key to transforming social anxiety, and the speaker hints at forthcoming practical tips.
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Have you ever wondered what causes my social anxiety? It's a very common question. And it's almost like, well, if I can figure out what caused it and I can figure out, you know, how to get rid of it. And then we look at things like, oh, maybe it was my childhood, or maybe it was something happened when I was, you know, at school. And then we sort of feel lost, like, well, how do I fix stuff that happened in the past? Do I need to do like 10 years of deep therapy? And, well, that might be a useful self exploration. And the good news is you can actually transform social anxiety much more quickly. In fact, I'll share in a future video four key tips to cure yourself of social anxiety. But you gotta understand the cause, because once you understand the real cause of social anxiety, then that's gonna help you in the solution to it. So yes, there might've been experiences from the past. Maybe you have a more sensitive makeup, you're a little, maybe naturally a little more shy or a little more inhibition around others, more sensitive to emotion or people's voice tone or all that stuff might be true. And that doesn't create social anxiety. If you're sensitive to people's voice tone, that makes you sensitive to people's voice tone. If you have a little more inhibition, maybe feel a little bit more inhibition. That's not social anxiety. What's social anxiety? Social anxiety is a repetitive fear in social situations where you overestimate the intensity of someone's rejection and the frequency of someone's rejection. Everybody's gonna reject me always. And it's gonna be really intense when they do it. It's gonna be a strong dislike, a revulsion. That's social anxiety. And that means you're just afraid a lot around other people, right? So then what? You don't take risks, you don't put yourself out there, you don't speak up, you don't ask, you don't whatever. You kind of try to stay small. So what is the cause of that pattern? The good news is, the cause of that pattern is nothing from your past. It's nothing that's outside of your control. It comes from within your own mind, your own perception. It comes from one perception. One perception is the source of all social anxiety. It is the seed from which this whole tree grows. And what is that perception? There is something wrong with me or insufficient in me. I'm lacking in some way, and as a result I don't deserve love, connection, acceptance, belonging. And then therefore all the fears sprout out of that. So that's the essence of it. There's something wrong or missing or off about me. And therefore, people aren't gonna like me. People aren't gonna love me. And when you're believing that perception, you experience social anxiety. That's it. And you can have a lot of behaviors that come out of that, right? So if I think, hey, you know, there's something wrong with me, I'm not gonna go talk to that person. I lived that for many years. Like, I'm not gonna go ask her out. Are you crazy? She's gonna reject me. I mean, there's something wrong with me. So therefore, I avoided that like the plague. And therefore I didn't have that many dates. Shockingly. I know, right? So now you have a behavior pattern that's coming out of that original seed. Makes sense. And that behavior pattern you could call avoidance. Then when you're avoiding something, do you get better at it or do you get worse at it? We all know this. The only way to get better at something is to practice it. So whether it's an instrument or a sport or social communication, flirting in the dating arena, public speaking, or speaking up with leadership and authority at work, these are skills. And so if you're avoiding doing those things, do you develop that skill? Certainly not. So then now I'm like, well, I don't really have that good of social skills around people. I don't know how to connect with women or flirt. I avoid it because I'm scared of it. Now you have all these things stacking that are the symptoms of the social anxiety. They're the after effects. But it's all coming from that original perception. And when you change that perception, everything can start to change in a new way. You're able to approach more, you're able to ask more, you're able to go for it more because your sense of safety and self worth is no longer on the line. So share down below, what are you finding most valuable, most liberating from this new perception of social anxiety? Until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.
