When It Gets Hopeless...

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. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to talk about when it gets hot, hopeless, and stick with me. That might not sound like the most exciting topic, but it's actually extremely relevant to your life and to your confidence because we all can feel that way. And you might not use the word hopeless, maybe you feel down or discouraged or pessimistic, but it all has a flavor of deflation of the future is going to be worse, of I'm not going to be able to get what I want or create what I want in life. And this affects you and it affects your choices and ultimately your progress towards a more confident life, a better life. And you gotta know how to deal with it when this arises, because it happens to everybody. We all have that part inside of us that reacts to setback or challenge or just a bad day with this heavy, discouraged, it's never gonna work feeling. In fact, when's the last time you experienced that? And it might be about a specific outcome, right? Like, oh, I asked that person out and they said, no, I guess I'm never going to be with somebody or a setback in your work. And you're like, I'm never going to get to where I want to be. So it could be a specific setback that you experienced. It could also be just kind of daily life maybe grinding you down a little bit. This feels like, oh, another day. Okay, another day. And maybe there's some needs that are not being fully met during your day, whether it's needs for social connection or meaningful work or something. And so it just kind of accumulates. And then it's not even one specific major event you could point to. But regardless, you still have that kind of heavy, discouraged feeling, that hopeless feeling. So my question for you is, when's the last time you experienced that? Was it a week ago? Is it right now? Is it a month ago? And what did you do? What do you do when that feeling arises. So one thing that I've learned over the years is that trying to not feel, that doesn't work. And there's a couple different ways you can try to not feel it. So let's say there's that hopeless feeling that's arising for whatever reason. Let's say there is a triggering event. And one way to not feel it is to just try to absorb yourself in distraction. You know, whether it's drinking or smoking or drugging or watching or numbing or porning or whatever. Those aren't all verbs. But, you know, the actions that you take to get away from feelings, you might just go on a little bit of a spiral there. And by the way, I had this thought the other day. I was doing some stretching and I had my phone and the little AirPod case a little ways away, and I looked at it, I was like, you know, I feel like that's the modern day cigarettes. Like back in the day, people would take their wallet and their cigarette pack out of their pockets when they sat down at a cafe or something like that, right? You always had your cigarettes on if you were a smoker, which a lot of people were, like 60, 70 years ago, at least in the United States. So, you know, you always have your cigarettes with you. And I feel like now it's just got replaced with like, you gotta have your phone with you and you put it on the cafe table when you get there as your items. And the way that we use the device is very much like smoking, right? Like, you kinda pull it out, you do a set thing. You probably have your set routines, whether there's certain things that you check or certain things you engage with for a little while and then you put it away. That's like having a smoke now when you sit down and flick on it for like four hours, that's like someone who goes out drinking on a Friday night and ends up smoking like a pack of cigarettes. So, interesting side note, not necessarily the purpose of this episode, but just something to think about that I've been reflecting on recently in my own life about how I am with these devices, how much I use them, how I let them use me or not, and my ongoing exploration of that, which may be an interesting topic for a future episode. In any case, maybe you go down that spiral of avoidance of feeling entirely. An absorption and a distraction that maybe, and this is a mistake that I made a lot is you just try to go super like, I'm gonna override this. I'm gonna get positive. I'M gonna make sure that I can make this happen. I'm gonna change my mindset, I'm gonna change my physiology. I'm gonna do something, get into action. And that could totally work. That could totally be just what the doctor ordered, just what you needed. And what about the times when it doesn't? What about the times when you try to get yourself into a different state and you just feel awful and you try to take action and you just feel like everything's not working and you know it's not gonna shift just from trying to barrel through? Okay, then what do you do? Well, what you might need to do is actually be with the part of you that's hopeless, which is so distasteful for most of us. It's like, I don't like that part. Part's a loser, right? And that's part of the problem is you reject this part of you. You try to push it down, you try to talk it away with logic, you try to attack it, you try to criticize it, you try to numb it out, and it's still there. And so what if you tried a different approach? What if you tried actually moving towards this part and being really curious about this part? And yes, it's going to say the same old stuff, right? Like, it's never going to work. I'm never going to be with anybody. What is this? This is just raw disappointment, hurt, pain. These are natural emotions when we feel like we have our hopes up and then they get dashed. It's just such a vulnerable, tender part of being a human, an open hearted experience of life, is to get excited and then have it not work out or something goes wrong. And then we feel down, like, ugh. It's the flip side of the elation and the victory you feel when it goes the way that you want. And so instead of trying to stop that and say, oh, no, I have such powerful positive beliefs, I don't let myself feel that. Okay, maybe, or maybe you're consciously telling yourself that, and then deep down you're feeling discouraged and hurting and upset. And you can see how much you're suppressing this by. How much tolerance do you have for others who might be feeling discouraged? Some of the positive people I see have zero tolerance for someone who's feeling anything hard in their life. And then they have to make all kinds of weird rationalizations to make sure that no one else has any feelings either. Oh, your house got burned down, huh? Well, you know, it's a gift in disguise. Person's like, what? Screw you. That's not a gift. My house burned down. It's a burden. Right. So can you be with someone else? And if you can't be with someone else when they're suffering, you can't be with them with empathy then that really takes a toll on your relationships. Now that doesn't mean you have to spend all hours of the day. Yeah, it's such tragedy. It's so terrible. I know everything's so bad for you. I don't mean that like they kind of go into the pity pile with them, but just being able to be with them and acknowledge that that was hard, that what happened and you can do that with yourself too if it was a specific triggering event. Yeah, you wanted that person to say yes or yeah, you wanted that job and you didn't get it. I'm sorry, what is that? That's a moment of self compassion, a moment of sanity, a moment of empathy that is shockingly rare in most people's inner experience. It's all cold, it's all, well, why did you make that mistake on that interview? God, you're such an idiot. Ah, that got a little Napoleon Dynamite there. But you know what I mean, right? It's just all blame or, well, you know, stuff happens in life, alright, you know, just gotta move on. Come on now, just imagine a parent talking to a child that way. Like a four year old. It's kind of rough, isn't it? I mean, yeah, kids gotta grow up sometime, but can you have a little more warmth around it? And I'm not saying this is easy and it comes naturally to most people. It certainly doesn't come naturally to me. I have to consciously access empathy, especially in the face of what you might have learned is quote weakness, right? Because that helpless feeling is almost a sense of weakness. And it's like, oh, you gotta stamp that out. And almost that sometimes with my own kids, like if they're kind of doing this whiny, like there's a part of me is like, I gotta stamp that out and sometimes it gets the better of me and I'm like, look, if we're whine, I'm just not going to do that. And sometimes I can move towards that. You know what? Yeah, I'm sorry you wanted that and it didn't go the way you wanted. Boom. And then just being with them, that just happened recently with my older son, he's eight and we were sitting, he was sitting at the bar and I was making some lunch or whatever in the kitchen and he was having some pain in his Throat. So he's like, daddy, my throat hurts. And so I was like, oh, I'm sorry to hear that bud, some acknowledgement phrase. And I just go about doing my business in the kitchen. And then he's like, dad, my throat hurts, you know. And he said every time I would look at him, he'd make this like kind of long, like sad look on his face. And my initial reaction was like, ah, life has got pain in it, son. You gotta toughen up. You're eight years old now. It's time to grow up. Right? That was my initial inner response. Now I didn't say any of that, but that's what I know has moved through me. And instead I just kind of was in silence because I really just didn't know what to say. I was just kind of going about making lunch and I was kind of like, what does he need? What does he want? What is he asking for? And then I had a moment where I realized that the way that I learned to deal with pain, especially physical pain, was you just, you just power through, dude. Like, no one can help you, no one can take the pain away. Just get her done. And that came about from my experiences with chronic pain. When I started when I was 15 years old, where truly no one could help me. At least at that age, I didn't find anyone. And so there was this hardening that I needed to do with myself that was just like get through it. And what I discovered later in life after I discovered some of the mind body sources of the pain, is I realized that was actually part of the problem. Because what the brain and nervous system are needing when it comes to this mind body pain is a sense of soothing and safety. They're on high alert, they're in overdrive. And so what's actually very helpful is to be able to self soothe and send a message of safety. Now one of the most powerful ways of sending a message of safety isn't just to tell yourself you're safe, you're safe, you're safe. It's actually to deeply witness in a calm and loving way. And in fact, one of the techniques for pain to do this that I learned from Alan Gordon is called somatic tracking, where you simply note the sensation of the pain as it moves through your body, some of the qualities of it. And so I paused for a second of making lunch and I went over to my son and I just stood right next to. He's got these little bar seats that are kind of high up off the ground. So when I'm Standing. He's kind of up near my height. And I just put my hand on his back. And I was like, where is the pain in your throat? And he pointed to, like, one spot in his throat. I said, okay, and does it get worse when you swallow? And he's like, he swallowed. He's like, it's about the same. I was like, okay, and right now when you're not swallowing, does it feel hot or tight? And he's like, it's hot. I was like, like fire in there. And he's like, no, like a. Like a burning feeling. I was like, oh, where is the burning? And he pointed that spot. And I said, can you. Can you take a second and, like, notice even more? Where is it like this big? And I made like a little tiny dot in between my fingers or like this big. And I made like a little, you know, quarter size thing with my fingers. And he's telling me the size. And we do that for like, the whole conversation was like, two minutes tops, right? And then I, you know, oh, I gotta go get something on the stove. So I go back into the kitchen and he's just sitting there. And the next thing he's like, hey, dad, you know, I'm gonna draw a picture. And his energy is just, like, completely flipped. And he starts drawing a picture and telling me about what he's drawing, and he's way happier. I just thought, wow, what a great reminder of what we need. And that's just not me and my son. That's what you need. That's what we all need, especially when we're having, like, what is he experiencing? He's experiencing sensations of pain that he doesn't know how to get rid of. And there is no way to really get rid. You can give him some throat comfort tea or whatever, but there's no way to turn off the sensation in his throat. And it's the same thing with. Maybe you feel really disappointed after something that you really were hoping for would happen, it didn't happen. And there's no way to turn off that sensation of disappointment that's part of your experience of life right now. And even if you're doing one of those things where you're telling yourself a story like, I'm never going to be with anybody, or I'm never going to find work that I enjoy, Things can never get better in my workplace. Okay, all right. Yes. That's probably fabricated and made up. It's a distortion. It's a fortune telling, a cognitive distortion. And maybe you can't stop believing that in this moment, maybe in a little bit, you'll see it more clearly. And one of the simplest ways to do that is to simply fully acknowledge it. And some of the language that I really like to do around this I learned from Donny Epstein. He's got this thing called the 12 stages of healing or the 12 stages of consciousness. You can go look it up, you know, get various forms of studying it, whether it's the free thing or the full. The full program. But in one of his stages, which he actually called stage one, you know, it's about. It is a form of. One of the emotions can be hopelessness. And some of the languaging that he uses I really liked, which is sometimes it seems hopeless. In fact, let me guide you through this in an action step. Time for action, action, action. So your action step for today. If you can do this right now, you're not running or whatever, you know, put. Put one hand on your chest, right in your upper chest, right where your collarbones are, and one hand on your belly button. And if you're driving or you're running or something, you can't do that. That's fine. Maybe just if you're driving, maybe put one hand on your belly as long as you can hold the wheel with one hand. I'm not giving you any advice. You know, the road conditions where you're at. And if not, just do it with no. You know, don't have to worry about putting your hands on your body anywhere. And the key, the reason you put your hands on your body is just to make more contact, Slow down a little bit, feel the breath moving in your belly and in your chest, and then just really let that hopeless feeling emerge. That party that's like, it's never gonna happen. And then you're just going to acknowledge and say, sometimes it seems hopeless, and then breathe. Sometimes it seems like I'm powerless to do anything or to change it. Sometimes it seems like there's nothing I can do. And you can use other phrases that are similar. The key is to use. Sometimes it seems like versus saying I am so hopeless because now what are you doing now you're creating a whole I am identity attached to being hopeless. No, this is just a passing state. It's just a part of you. Yeah, from this perspective, it seems hopeless. It could not seem hopeless in two minutes without anything in your circumstances changing other than your perspective. But we don't need to try to force that change to occur. Simply just allowing. And this is like a deep acceptance technique that I found extremely powerful. Especially when you're like that state where you just can't shake the hopelessness, you just can't shake the discouragement and trying to make yourself just create so much tension and then you're trying to override, you're trying to operate on top of it, just drop all that. Just be with the sensation. Sometimes it seems hopeless and do this for 5 minutes, 10 minutes and you just might be amazed at how much shifts without you trying to force anything at all. Awesome. Thanks for being with me today. Let me know how that works. You can go to if you're not already a part of Confidence warriors, you should definitely check that out. It's on Facebook and just go to Facebook and type in Confidence Warriors. You can say join group and then someone on my team can improve you and it's a great way to share. You can share about this episode, about your experience, and about anything else as well. And also when we run challenges and other things, those are done in that Facebook group. So it's a great way to stay connected and be learning with other people as well. 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 are awesome.

Thanks for listening to Shrink 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 social confidencecenter.com.

Sam.