Why You Get Anxious Before Interviews, Dates, and Presentations (It's Not What You Think)

Why do we get anxious before a job interview, before a date, before a presentation, maybe before going to a situation where there's a lot of new people, a conference, even a social situation where you don't know people there? What do all those situations have in common, and why do we feel uneasy or anxious or even maybe self-critical? Before those situations? That's what we're going to cover in this episode. I'm Dr. Aziz. Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm excited to share why we experience anxiety before all those situations. There's one unifying factor that runs through all of them, and this is going to be an extremely illuminating episode for you. And it's part of a series of discoveries that I've been making just in the last 6, 12 months that have really been rocking my world. Even after doing this work for almost 20 years, specifically focused in this area, I'm discovering more new things every week that is really coming together and something that I'm excited to, to share with you in the next few episodes. That's part of a larger transition expansion of the work that I'm doing and actually will affect some of what I cover on this show. We're going to be building it out and explaining it in new ways that I think will be very— just make everything so much more clear. It's like my frameworks and understanding of this is getting more and more crystal clear, and my ability to help people is getting even better and better with this. So I'm excited to share all of that. That'll be coming up in the next few episodes. But for this one, will be beginning some of those discoveries. So what do you think is going on with that situation? What do those— all those situations have in common? They sound pretty different, don't they? Job interview, a barbecue, work conference, a date. Those are pretty different domains of life, right? What is going on there? What do you think? Well, And although you might say, well, they're high-stakes situations, maybe, maybe, but is a social gathering really high-stakes? Is a work conference that high-stakes? Aren't you just like kind of going to learn about stuff and talking to some people? I mean, you might even say, is a date high-stakes? I guess if you really like the person, it feels emotionally like high-stakes. So maybe it's not that it's technically high-stakes. The anxiety makes us feel like it's high stakes, right? But why would we be anxious before those things? You might say, well, because I want them to go a certain way, right? They all have a clear, quote, good outcome of them going well. If I go to, if I get the job, that's great. If the person wants a second date, that's great. If the people at the barbecue like me, that's great. If I make some, whatever your goals are for the work conference, That's great. There's a clear positive outcome that I want. Okay. Yeah, you got an outcome, you want it. But you got an outcome when you go to the gym or go out to dinner, you want to get full or eat some good food, you want to get a workout in. You're probably not anxious before you go to the gym, right? Unless there's some specific, you know, weird situation going on in your gym, you might just go there and you leave. So what's different? Hmm. Hmm. Are you getting it? Are you seeing the pattern underneath? Well, it turns out in every single one of these situations, what they share in common is that you are going into a situation where there is uncertainty of how it's going to go. And there's a chance that other people might not like you. They might not react well to you. They might not choose you. That person on the date might say, I don't want a second date. That's them saying no and not choosing you. Maybe not liking you that much. In the job interview, it's like, I say no to you, we're choosing somebody else. Maybe they don't like me. Maybe they don't think I'm smart or capable or good enough. Right? So those, and we can go through the same thing with the work presentation, the social situation, the work conference, every single one of those, there is uncertainty of how it's going to go. And in that uncertainty, there, it's not like I don't know what I'm going to order at dinner tonight. That's a lot of uncertainty. You probably don't feel anxious about that. Instead, it's anxious when there's uncertainty and it could, quote, go good, go well, means people like me or approve of me or say yes to me. Or it could go, quote, badly, and people say no to me and they dislike me or reject me or disapprove of me. Right? And that This is what creates the anxiety. And now, well, now it feels high stakes, man. Now I'm worried about how it's going to go. Oh my gosh. Now I go off to the races. Maybe I got to control how it goes. I got to make sure that you see me in this certain way. And that's when I start to pull out whatever my song and dance is. Maybe I do the perfectionist thing and I try to make sure that I look just so perfect and know everything and look so polished and say all the funny things and have the right jokes and all that. Maybe then if I perform well enough, then, then it'll go well. Or maybe I'm just going to be so pleasing. I'm just going to be so agreeable. So I mean, what do you— there's nothing to fight against. I'm just a soft, gooey sphere. What? There's nothing to hold on to. Nothing to push back. Nothing. No spikes. Nothing's going to get you. And you don't even know where I am. You don't even know where I stand. I don't know. Maybe I don't. I don't know. I'm like a I'm like a vapor. You can't pin anything on me. Do you like me now? Maybe I'll be like a plastic bag. I'll just wrap myself around you. Just exactly like you, but I'm me, but I'm you. Whatever you like, I'm that too. We have all these different strategies. Maybe you just go real quiet. You just nod, or you just recede into the distance and avoid the whole thing. We all have these different strategies of how we try to deal with that uncertainty. And every single one of those strategies is an attempt to get control of the outcome. And it's either to control and make other people give me approval, or to try to avoid disapproval. That's more important often. And sometimes I'll just not say what's really true. I'll not be myself. I'll even just leave or hide or be quiet in the interaction, just smile and nod and be sort of invisible in plain sight. Because that maybe is not going to get people to like me. They're not even going to notice me. But at least I'm not getting disapproval. And I can keep myself safe. And every single one of these is a safety or protective strategy. And these are the kind of the recent discoveries I'm making around approval. And I'm seeing more and more of my work, like, wait a minute, all this stuff is coming back to our relationship with approval and disapproval. And that's what I'm going to be illuminating more in these episodes that are coming up. So I'm excited to share that with you. But for this one, we want to see the pattern really clearly, because what happens, and I see this all the time, I was just working with some people in my mastermind this evening. And, you know, they're all facing, as part of the program, they're like stepping into their lives more, they're taking risks, they're building their confidence. And They're going into job interviews when they used to talk themselves out of it. They're going on dates when they used to not go. They're speaking up at work when they used to not to. One guy's putting himself out there as a consultant when he has his skills and only worked for other companies before, right? There's all these things that are happening. And they're uncomfortable. There's uncertainty in every single one of those situations where they could be disapproved of, right? And those are the things they'd avoided their whole lives. And now they're doing them. And part of the program is to help them sustain that. And one of the key insights that we were discussing tonight is that we don't say, you know, I'm not sure how this job interview is going to go. It could be a yes, it could be a no. And there's a lot of uncertainty. I don't know what's going to happen in the room. I don't know what the questions are they're going to ask me. I don't know if it's going to feel great. I don't know if I'm going to be on point or a little slow. I don't know. I really don't know. And I could do that for every example: the date, the conversation, the work conference, the presentation. Truth is, I don't know. And not only do I not know exactly what I'm going to say, because I don't know what they're going to ask me, but I don't even know if they're going to smile and nod and give me thumbs up and approval, or they're going to grimace and shake their heads at me, or they're going to be very polite but say, "No, thank you. We're done with you." That's pleasant, but still very uncomfortable and lots of disapproval. Because they should have said yes to me, right? So I don't know any of that. And that's uncomfortable. That feels very vulnerable. Hmm. Yeah, let me just sit with that and allow that and relax and surrender to that uncertainty and lack of control. And then I'll go in and see what happens. No, no, we don't do that. We say, man, It's uncertain. Yeah, you can't see me right now, but I'm grimacing. This is— ew, this is unpleasant. No thank you. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to fill that void of uncertainty with certainty. And that's the voice that pops in your head, says, I'll tell you how tomorrow's going to go. You want to know how it's going to go? It's going to go bad. All right, where's my list? First, you're not going to know what to say. Second, you're going to sound dumb. Third, you didn't prepare enough, so it's gonna go awful. Fourth, you're not even really qualified to be here anyway. You know, that's the, you know, interview example. The date, first, you're an ugly loser. Secondly, it's gonna— she's gonna ask you questions, or he's gonna ask you this, and you're not gonna sound like an idiot because you're gonna just— you're not good at connecting with people, and your stories are boring, and this is good. And it just goes on and on and on. And of course, it's so personalized to you. It is more customized than the most customized ChatGPT can ever be, where it says, "I know you and you're asking the right questions. Now, would you like to—" Right? And you're like, "Wow, ChatGPT, how do you know me so well?" And it's better than that. It's more customized than that. And it says, "You know, I remember what happened when you were 9 and no one else knows, but I know." This is the voice in your head. Not ChatGPT. That would be really weird if it said that. I know what happened when you were 9. How do you know that? Oh my God. What's the singularity? Is that what they call it? Yeah, the singularity is happening. Anyway, back to now and you and this voice in your head. And that voice knows so many things and it just starts hitting you with all these details. And yeah, and then we get so sucked into it and we're like, oh yeah, that is true. Oh my God, I have always never known that. Information. That is my weak spot. And we get so wrapped up in that, that we don't see that what it's really doing is not delivering a list of truth. The statements about you and your lovability and your worth and all that are not real. They're not based in truth. They're designed to cause you to shrink and avoid the risk. Call this your safety police, and the predictions about tomorrow in the interview or the date of the presentation, guess what, are also not true. How do I know that they're not true? Because that event hasn't happened yet. It doesn't exist. How the F in the universe can you know exactly what's going to happen tomorrow. You can tell yourself, you know, it's going to happen tomorrow. But especially in these situations where there's other people and uncertainty involved, how do you absolutely know that? But that voice of doom certainty sure sounds like it knows, doesn't it? And we get so roped up to it, we don't see, oh, oh, this voice kicks on when I'm entering uncertainty. And so the solution here is not about being so awesome that you only get yeses. It's something very different than that. It's something about increasing your capacity to be in that uncertainty, to be in the "I don't know." And that is a muscle, and that is a practice, and that's something we can build over time. But we can't build it until we see this. So that's what this episode is about, is showing you real time for you to see that So you can start to bring your attention back to the uncertainty of the moment, and then ultimately building your capacity to be in the unknown and to be and tolerate with whatever comes. And that's what I'm discovering in those last number of months about how it is all orbiting around this approval/disapproval pattern inside of us. And that's what I'll be sharing a lot more about in the next few episodes, give you the whole big picture that I'm seeing. And I can't wait. So thanks for being with me today. And 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.