Dr. Aziz explains why your nervousness makes others uncomfortable: you unconsciously look to them for cues on how to act, which creates awkward hesitation. The fix is to own what you want to say, ask genuine questions, and stop seeking approval from the room.
Hey, Dr. Aziz here. And today I want to share something with you that you might not like. In fact, I didn't want this to be true either. But the more I've been studying it over the last decade, the more I'm absolutely certain that this is true. And you know what it is? It's that social anxiety makes other people uncomfortable. It's the thing I don't want to say, right, because so much of what I teach is like, look, we got to accept ourselves. It's okay to be anxious. And I absolutely believe that. We have to be able to internalize that belief that it's okay for us to feel however we're feeling, whether we're nervous or anxious or socially anxious or shy. But there's a truth element that when we're really wound up and socially anxious and awkward, it makes other people feel that way, too. But here's what I want to share with you. It's not all bad news. It's not like, oh, God, now I need to hide in the hole because I can't interact with them because I make them anxious. No, that's not what I'm saying here. What I want to share is I've discovered why that is just. Just recently. And I wanted to share that as soon as I found that out. Why, if I'm anxious, why does that make someone else anxious? Well, there's actually probably many answers to it. Probably some sort of. We pick up on body language, subtle signals, energetic things, cadences and speech, all that stuff. But I'm not going to go into that now. The one major thing that I wanted to highlight, why does it make us anxious if someone is socially anxious or nervous around us, Is because of this. And this is something you can do about. That's why I'm sharing it. That when you're feeling shy and anxious, you are hesitating, and you're looking to the other person to determine the interaction. You are looking to them to determine what to talk about, what to say, how much of yourself that you should share. And if you think about it, that's putting a lot on the other person energetically, and they feel it. And then they have a sense of like, I don't like this. I don't want all this pressure, you know, versus if someone. If you're more confident in yourself, you're just sharing what you'd like to share. You're asking them questions that you want to know about. You're just saying things spontaneously, and there's no lean or demand on them to determine how the conversation goes, you example, so you really see how this plays out. Have you ever been with someone and the two of you are hanging out and. And it's dinner time and you want to find out where you're going to go eat, and you're thinking of a few places in town that you'd like to try out, and you say, well, what do you want to do? The person's like, I don't know, I don't care. What do you want to do? And then you say, well, I could go to this place, this Mexican place, or this Chinese place, or this pizza place. I mean, I'm open to anything. Those three sound good to me. What do you want? Oh, I don't know. Whatever you want. At some points it gets kind of annoying, doesn't it, when someone will not take any ownership for what they want and they're putting that all on you. Now that's a trivial example. But it becomes more apparent in an interaction when the person is looking to you for approval for what to say if they should reveal that about themselves. And so that creates a discomfort in the opposite person. So if you're struggling with shyness and social anxiety, I mean, there's so many different ways you can approach this. And I encourage you to check out the website. Website and any of the products I have to help you break through some of the challenges. But this is one tidbit can help you, is you need to start focusing more in on what you want and saying what you want to say, asking questions, stop looking to them and for their approval to determine what you should do. And you might have heard this before, you might already want to do this, but this might just be a little bit of a kick in the rear to get you to say, you know what, When I'm waiting and looking for them, not only am I feeling anxious, but it's actually going to make this whole situation worse. It's going to make them more anxious. So I strongly encourage you to start building up your conversation skills by just taking ownership, saying what you want to say, asking a question that you're curious about, just blurting something because it's interesting to you and not looking to them so much to guide and take control and giving up your responsibility and power to the other person. And it's very uncomfortable to receive that. And if you want to know how to go deeper into finding out what you want and sharing that, I strongly suggest checking out my new book, the Solution to Social Anxiety, where we go in depth into how to actually find what you want and then have the boldness and the courage to start asking those questions. So thanks for listening, and I look forward to speaking with you soon in the future.
