You And Your Inner Critic

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon, welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. Helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Hey, welcome to this episode of Shrink for the shy guy. I'm Dr. Aziz. And today's episode is actually incredibly important because it covers the most important relationship in your life. You know, at the end of last episode, I talked about we're going to look at some relationship hang ups. And when you first hear that we're going to look at your relationship hang ups, you might think, well, is this me and women? Is this me and my friends? Is maybe even me and my family? But before we even look at any of that stuff, we got to go down to the most fundamental, important, biggest relationship in your life. And that is a relationship between you and you. And it's a relationship that you might not even really consider a relationship. You might not even pay much attention to it. You might even think, relationship with me, that's weird. I am me. How could I have a relationship with me? And that's often how we operate in our day to day life. Even though it's the most important relationship in our lives, we tend to be focused outwards or focused on what the next thing is going to be, how that person is going to respond to us, if we succeeded or failed, or we're focused very externally and we often don't focus on the relationship that we have with ourselves. But that doesn't mean that we're not affected and strongly impacted by that relationship. In fact, that relationship determines fundamentally so many things in your life. Whether you feel happy or depressed, whether you feel joyous and excited or feel stuck and hopeless, whether you feel excited and ready to take something on or nervous and worry that it's not going to work out. So much of that is related to you and you and how you relate to yourself. And in fact, this relationship is often, first, it goes unexamined, right? We don't really look at it. And secondly, if we were to start looking at it, what many of us find, what I found when I started looking at this, and what I'm guessing you might find, especially if you're feeling a lot of shyness and social anxiety, is that if you saw this relationship between you and you from the outside, as if you're listening to two friends talking or a couple talking, you would potentially be very disturbed at that relation. You might say, wow, this is a dysfunctional relationship at best. And you might even say it's abusive at worst. And that's Something that might be hard to swallow at first, but if you stay with me and listen to this episode, you're going to learn so much about how you relate to yourself, what's going on there. And if there are problems with it, if it doesn't feel like it's fully serving you and really helping you, you're also going to learn some ways to shift that. Ways to start treating yourself differently and better, hopefully start treating yourself with more compassion, respect and kindness, which are the fundamental underpinnings of any relationship. So certainly the kind of relationship we should foster with ourselves. So we're going to get into that. But I want to highlight this relationship between you and you with two examples that are gonna bring to light one incredibly important aspect of this relationship with yourself. And that is what I call your inner critic. And this might be old news to you. You might know exactly what I'm talking about when I say that. But for some people, they might not be entirely sure. So these examples are gonna highlight it. And even if you know, you think you know what I mean, these will help flush it out. And they're things that I'm pretty sure you can relate to. So the first one is a standard sht ness or social anxiety example. You are in a setting, whether it's at a party or at a function or even in a classroom, and there's some instance where you get engaged in a conversation with someone. Now, I don't know if they started talking to you or if you felt like it was a good time to start a conversation with them. So forget about how it started. But the experience is they ask you a question, you respond, you ask them a question. It's a normal conversation. But all of a sudden you start to notice what you just said. And some part of your mind starts to watch the conversation with a hyper vigilance, with a hyper self consciousness. And then it starts to comment and it says, oh my God, that question sounded so stupid. What were you thinking there when you said that? Or oh my God, this person doesn't want to talk to you. They're so disinterested in you. Maybe they look a different direction at some point in the conversation. You think, oh God, they want to get out of this conversation. They don't want to be talking to me. Or you shared something and then afterwards you think, that was so boring. God, you're so not interesting. Your stories are so lame. And you just start lacing into yourself. Have you ever had this experience? And the worst part about it is it can happen while you're still trying to talk to the person. So then you're not only trying to engage with them and manage the conversation, you're also trying to deal with this conversation between you and you, between your inner critic and yourself. And in my experience, usually especially early on, before we really started to work on this stuff, the conversation is kind of one sided. It's kind of like the critic is just following you around and criticizing. And maybe sometimes you're responding, but usually you're kind of just like a defeated sort of shoulder slumped down, head down, kind of a lump, like, ugh, yes, you're right. Ugh. That's true. I'm terrible. And that's an example that I think most of us can relate to if you've dealt with shyness. But here's another one that this is where my critic would really take center stage. So let's say you had a conversation or you did anything, you put yourself out there, you wrote a song and you shared it with someone, or you went on a date, or you had a conversation with a woman in your class and it wasn't even a date, but you just chatted with her. Or maybe you turned something in and did a presentation in front of a class or wherever it is, but you put yourself out there in some way. And maybe you're really anxious ahead of time. That doesn't really matter. But here's what I'm going to point out, and this is where my critic really took center stage is afterwards. For me, it always happened in the shower. I don't know why, but I'd be sitting in the shower feeling pretty good, the water's on me. And all of a sudden I'd have a memory of the event, a memory of the presentation and seeing someone's face looking away as I talked. Or a memory of when I said something and then no one laughed or I made a joke and she kind of gave like one of those smiles. That means I don't think what you said was really that funny. Something like that. And then I just, I kind of cringe. I have this memory so vividly, I would just cringe and be like, ugh, that was terrible. And then I'd replay it again and say, oh, God, that's so bad. And I'd replay it again and again and again and again. And I would just be miserable. And my critic would be laying in front of me all the ways that I'm falling short, all the ways that I'm not good enough, all the ways that I'm not lovable so these are just two examples. And my guess is that there are so many more. And hopefully, either if you don't relate to these examples specifically, there are other things that are coming to your mind about how do I criticize myself, how am I hard on myself? You know, and then we're gonna get way deeper into the specifics of what the critic says, what it does, where it comes from, what its purpose is, and. And most importantly, how to deal with it. But before we do, we're gonna take a brief skip and a jump to move over to a new segment, which is today's top stories. Today's Top Stories. So today's top story is actually about a university in Illinois called Knox University, and that they've recently posted on a new news story that they're having an increase in in students that are coming to the Student Health and Counseling Center. And the primary reason for people coming in is anxiety. But get this specifically, social anxiety. Social anxiety is one of the leading reasons that people come to get counseling at Knox University in Illinois. And here's the thing, though, is they interviewed the director, Dan Larson, of this program, and he said that, you know, in the past, it used to be a lot of other stuff, depression and other challenges. But just in the last two years, you know, it's been anxiety. It's been a lot of social anxiety. And what I found fascinating about this story is I used to work at Portland State University in their college counseling center, and I noticed an increase in just the two years that I was there, there was a steady increase in anxiety, particularly social anxiety. Now, I don't know. I don't have a broader perspective on what the trends are or if this is related to things like our hyperconnection with technology and our reduced social interaction and more Internet screen time, that sort of thing. I'm not going to go that far. We'll have to wait until there's more stories out there about that, although I have a hunch that it's related. But the most important thing here to take away is that there's a lot of people who are struggling with social anxiety. This is not an isolated incident. This is not something that you, because you're a weirdo, experiences by yourself. This is actually a societal problem of people really having a hard time with social anxiety. And as you remember, the core of that is feeling lovable, feeling worthwhile, feeling like we have something to offer and that we matter. And so I think that's just a reflection in our society about how a lot of us aren't getting that, that those needs aren't met at a young age. And it really sets us up for a lot of challenges, including anxiety and social anxiety. One of the primary driving factors that had people seek counseling at Knox Counseling center, but pretty much anytime anyone goes into counseling is problems with relationships or a lack of relationships. You know, I really want to be able to connect with people, but I can't. So there is so much out there to help you with social anxiety, and counseling is just one of the avenues, and I highly recommend it. I've benefited incredibly from counseling, individual counseling, going to groups or men's groups, but just taking some action to help yourself address this and realize that you're not alone. And the last thing I'm going to say about this is that even if someone doesn't present or go to counseling because I have challenges with social anxiety, these are universal feelings. No one is skipped when it comes to feeling tense or anxious around people, having moments of self doubt, feeling down on themselves. So the takeaway is you're really not alone with this stuff and that it's incredibly important to seek out some help to keep working on this stuff. And my intention here is to provide as much as I can in this podcast and other places to help you to develop that sense of social confidence and courage and belief in yourself. So we're going to take a brief break right now, but when we get back, we're going to get deeper into this critic, because I think that is the sort of the major pillar of social anxiety. One of them is the critic. It's sort of like how social anxiety manifests or operates in you. And the more you can understand this thing, the more you can become free of it. And that's when you start to feel more social freedom. So stay tuned. We're going to get deeper into the critic, where it comes from, what its purpose is, and how to deal with it right after this. Hey, Dr. Aziz here. Just the other day I did an interview for my new book, the Solution to Social Anxiety. This book is chock full of ways to help you overcome the shyness that's holding you back. And I thought it would be great to take a few seconds from the interview. That gives you a good sense of what is inside the book. So let's take a moment and just listen to that interview right now.

So I titled this book the Solution to Social Anxiety, and that's because I see it just as that it's a solution, it's a map, It's a way to get out of the problem, which is social anxiety, which is doubting yourself, feeling like you don't have much to offer, assuming that others are going to reject you, feeling tight and tense in your body, and really on a deep level, feeling like you're not worthwhile, that you're not lovable. And it's a problem that I've been working with guys on for the last 10 years, but really most of my understanding of it originally came from my own experience and having this absolute, unwavering certainty that if someone really got to know me, really got to see the real me and all my flaws, that they would be repulsed and they couldn't possibly love me. And that's the problem. And that's the cage that we construct. And it's a cage of our own thoughts and a perspectives and feelings, but it's a cage nonetheless. Maybe the bars aren't real, but it restricts us in the same way that a real prison would.

Hey, welcome back. Now we're gonna get deeper into the Critic, but before we do, we're gonna do a new segment, which is called how do I Talk to Her? And this comes from the work I do with guys, one on one, or even sometimes the occasional email question where we're talking about a specific situation where there's a woman and you want to initiate a conversation with her, you want to get to know her, but it's one of those things where it just feels totally out of reach, totally impossible. And we're going to get a lot more into the specifics of how to do that in future episodes and even deeper with interviews of some guys who are really good at starting conversations with women. But for now, we're going to get into one specific scenario of how do I talk to her? So. So how do I. How do I. How do I talk to her?

Talk to her?

Talk to her. So this instance is particularly interesting, and it came up in a session I did with a client recently in that he's started to overcome a good chunk of his shyness. I mean, he's gone from a place of feeling really stuck and debilitated to putting himself out there to letting himself, you know, get rejected or be embarrassed. You know, even putting himself in situations where that could happen is a huge sign of progress. And even more recently, he's starting to talk to women, you know, young women, attractive women his age that he wants to get to know. It's. It's pretty awesome to watch. But the other day he was telling me that there is a woman that is at his gym that he wants to talk to. But here's the thing. She's not another participant at the gym or another member. She actually works at the gym. And the only contact he has with her is when he walks into the gym and walks out of the gym. And what the contact is is he hands her his card, and she scans it, and he walks into the gym. And there is usually several people going into the gym at the same time. So there's a little bit of a line. So it'd be difficult to, you know, pause and chat with her because there's people waiting. And in addition, here's the kicker if you got shyness or social anxiety is there's another person working there behind the counter. Why the gym needs two people behind the counter to take cards is beyond me. It doesn't seem necessary. But for whatever reason, they have this. So not only are you going to be potentially holding up a line if you talk to her, but there's going to be this other person listening. So if you make a move and she rejects you, then you have the double shame, you know, the bystander effect of the person watching you and silently mocking you and judging you. So the question is, how do you talk to her? What do you do? And before I give my answer, I want you to think about it. Put yourself in that situation, Even if that feels like miles off for you, like, there's no way in hell you'd ever start a conversation with a woman you don't know at a gym, because that could be so embarrassing, just for a moment, as a form of exposure. Put yourself in that situation. You're single. She's attractive. You want to get to know her. You want to see if there's a connection. You want to see if you like her as a person and you can date, but you have to get to know her. You have to make it past that just smile and nod phase when you hand her your card. So what do you do? What would you say? Well, you know, there's just several ideas I had, and there's no right way to do this. But one was like, okay, it sounds like you have to at least first exchange names with her. That seems important. So the next time I handed her my card, first of all, she has a name tag. Then that's easy. You can just call her by name. Thanks, Tiffany. And then all of a sudden, you're saying her name. Another thing to do would be like, just hand her the card and be like, what's your name? Just saying it like that, just kind of out of the blue what's your name? People will always respond to that question and most likely she might ask you what your name is back now you're on a first name basis now. The next time you walk into the gym you say, hey Tiffany, how's it going? And that's it. And here's the thing about the situation like this, where there's repeated contact is you don't need to jump pounce on her right away, sort of play it cool, you can get to know her name, there's a familiarity. She can see you every couple times a week, however often you go in. And then eventually what I would do if I wanted to see if I can get her number or get her email and set up a future contact with her is I would want to pull her aside and talk to her briefly so I'm not holding up the line and the other person's not there watching me. And so the only idea I had to do with this is the first thing that came to my mind was I asked him, would there be any context in which you could pull her aside? And he said, well, the only time she goes to the side to talk to someone is if they have a problem with her membership. And I said, ah, bingo. So what I would do is the next time I'd go in there, I'd hand her my card and be like, hey Tiffany. She's like, yeah, I have a problem with my membership and I'd like to talk to you about that. And she'd say, okay. And then if she didn't lead away from the line, I would walk to their side of the counter and kind of wait there, assuming that she's going to come over there and talk to me. And then she comes over and I say, so this gym, it's been working well for me. I really like this aspect. I like the court, the basketball court, I like the pool, everything's good. But there's one problem with my membership. And at which point she would wait or say, yeah, and say, I've been coming here for three, four weeks and I've been wanting to have a one on one conversation with you, but that seems next to impossible with the setup of giving you my card. It's the only way I can contact you or connect with you. And it's a joke, it's demonstrating interest and who knows how she responds? She could smile, she could laugh, she could give you a weird stare, but then you just pursue that further and you say, well, I'd love to talk with you more. I don't know anything about you, but I'm curious. I'd like to get to know you, or I'd like to talk with you more. And even then, you still don't have to ask her out right away. But it's like, what would be a great way to contact each other in the future? Are you on Facebook or do you have email? Little things like that where you can just initiate the interaction and then set up a future contact. So that is my idea of how I would talk. So how do I talk to talk to her? So getting back to your inner critic, there's things that you might have noticed in the few examples I was sharing before the break, which is that the critic can come in overt or covert forms. Overt means obvious means on the surface, means it's direct and you can see it. That's like when your head in your mind, your critic is saying, that was terrible. You suck. What's wrong with you? You're so awkward. That stuff's easy to notice. That's really obvious. As long as we tune into it. There's our critic that's talking to us, but there's also covert ways that our critic operates. And this is a fascinating topic that we can't get fully in depth into now. But if you check out my book, the Solution to Social Anxiety, you'll learn a lot more about the depth of this covert way that we attack ourselves. But I'm going to share one right now, which is we tend to dismiss or discount our positives. We tend to explain away any positive feedback we get, any compliments, or even our own accomplishments. I know I am particularly bad with this, and I've made huge strides in dealing with my overt self criticism. But each time it crops up, I notice. And actually just this last week, I, I was noticing, wow, I really gloss over all of my successes. I kind of tend to ignore them and push on to the next thing. And then I don't feel that good about myself. When I achieve something, I'm like, yeah, yeah, that was pretty good, but. Or, yeah, that was all right, but you could have done here, or, yeah, but. And that's sort of the essence of the COVID dismissive way we criticize ourselves is we say, yeah, but to our accomplishments, to our achievements. And when I say achievement or accomplishment, I don't mean getting a gold medal or being the best in the world. I just mean, hey, you finished that report. Or, hey, you recorded that video. Or you worked for eight hours and put your energy into something and earn money for Your family or for yourself. That is an accomplishment. And that's the kind of stuff that we just steamroll right past and say, eh, yeah, but you're not earning enough. Yeah, but everyone can do this job. Yeah, but. And so on and so forth. And that's also an example of COVID self criticism. But whether it's overt or covert or any other way, what is this critic doing? What is its purpose? Why do we even have this thing? Why do you have this voice in your head that tells you you suck all the time? And it's incredibly uncomfortable. And I wasn't even fully aware of it until I was 21. And I'm sure if, if someone had asked me, do you criticize yourself? I might have been able to say, yeah, but I didn't really think in those terms. And so I just thought it was my own thoughts. So I'd go talk to someone and they didn't seem to want to talk back. Or I'd see my friend Tim in middle school interacting with a girl and I would just feel bad. And in my mind I'd think, oh, girls don't like me. I'm not very attractive. And that would just feel like the truth. So it almost sounded like the critic and I were fused. The critic was my own thoughts. I didn't really have a sense of, oh, I'm different from that. That's just a part of me that's being critical. It's. That's the truth. The question is, what is its purpose? Why do we have this part that is criticizing us? I spent a lot of time researching this, reading dozens of book on the subject and looking at depth psychology and all my training in clinical psychology and looking at Freudian stuff and Jungian stuff and really trying to figure it out. And here is my best guess as to what's going on. That we are on some level terrified of putting ourselves out there and being rejected, being told that we're not good enough, and, you know, I don't love you, I don't like you. That feels very painful. That feels. That's probably, you know, aside from physical death, that's the most painful thing that we can experience is a loss of love, a sense of feeling unworthy of love. And that putting ourselves out there, whether it's asking someone out or writing something and putting it out there on the Internet, writing a book, anything that you want to do, writing a song, sharing that song with people, all that stuff that tends to make our critic more active. What's happening there is we're about to be vulnerable. Even in that example of that one on one interaction with that person in a class or at a function, there's vulnerability there. They can see you and they could potentially judge you. And so anytime that can occur, our critic comes in and tries to get us to play small, to hide, to put our heads down, to hunker down, to put our. Like a turtle putting its head in a shell or a porcupine balling up. It's like, look, just close off your heart. Get down, hunker down. Don't put yourself out there. Don't let yourself be vulnerable or seen by others, and you'll be safe. So in a weird way, your critic is trying to protect you. It's trying to keep you safe. Now, it might keep you safe from overt criticism from other people because you avoid them or you don't engage with them, but it doesn't keep you safe from bad feelings because the critic, the way it keeps you safe is pretty miserable. And you're also pretty restricted in your life and you're not able to do things that you might really enjoy. And so it really comes at a cost, but it does try to keep you safe. And you can think about your critic like an internal propaganda campaign. You know, it's like, imagine kind of a tyrannical government that is saying, you know what, Everyone just do what we say, obey us, and no one gets hurt. And, hey, we're better than what's out there. You know, those enemies out there, they're the real danger here, whether it's the terrorists or some, you know, the Russians or something like that. So you need to be afraid of them and we'll take care of you. But imagine a really totalitarian regime like Hitler or something. But, you know, we'll take care of you. But if you don't do what we say, we will demolish you. That's kind of how our critic operates. And just like any tyrannical regime, there has to be a steady flow of propaganda for people to not realize this and want their freedoms. So the critic has a propaganda campaign against you. And if you really want to see this and pay attention to this, just start noticing how much you criticize yourself throughout the day. You know, it can happen 30, 40, 50, 100 times. It can be overwhelming at first. In fact, that's a technique from behavioral therapy is it's called self monitoring, where you actually have a little counter or a card in your pocket. And each time you notice you're criticizing yourself, you pull it out and put a hatch on the card and you count up at the end of the day and what people find is at first it's disturbing, but that's actually the first piece of the puzzle, is that awareness. And we're going to get into the third segment here in just a moment. But about what do you do with this critic? How do you defeat it? How do you overcome it? How do you not be held back by it? How do you not be so beaten down by it? And a big piece of that first step is that awareness. So we're going to get into that in just one moment. Stay tuned. Hey, Dr. Aziz here. I want to share one more segment with you from the interview I recently did for my book, the Solution to Social Anxiety. This segment of the interview goes in depth into what the three steps to social confidence are that you will learn in the second half of the book that will help you unlock your your sense of confidence and free yourself from the self doubt and anxiety that's holding you back. Let's jump into that brief segment right now.

Three major steps that I believe are ongoing practices. And the first is we have to know who we are on a deep level. What do I want? What really matters to me? How do I express that? How do I share my opinions and my thoughts and my feelings? So the second step is we have to learn how to have a deep sense of acceptance for ourselves, complete acceptance for ourselves, accepting all of our thoughts and feelings and desires and actions and choices.

This is a tall order.

I'm not saying this is easy, but this is. What's required is a practice of forgiving ourselves and loving ourselves. There's dozens of techniques and exercises and transcripts from sessions I've done and everything I could combine to really help someone reading the book feel a sense of relaxing into who they are and loving themselves more. That's what this book is intended to be. But we still need the third step. We have to step through that door. We have to take risks in our lives. We have to take action. We have to take bold action in the world. We have to try that thing. We have to take that risk that we're worried about. We have to be vulnerable and share that thing. We have to go after and apply for that job. We have to go talk to that person or ask that person out for a date, even if they might say no. And it's only in doing that that we find that a lot of our fears and expectations and predictions about how badly it's going to go are false and that we are lovable. And that People do want to connect with us. And so this isn't like you read this and you never feel this stuff again. You just know how to deal with it and how to not be held back by it. And that's my intention for you must be able to break free from this social anxiety and start living your life fully with full confidence in yourself and who you are. I strongly encourage you to check out.

A copy of the book.

You can get it on Amazon.com, you can get it on Kindle and there's going to be an audio version out there soon. And just many ways to find your way to that freedom. And that's what I hope for you. That's my intention. Thanks for listening and I look forward to speaking with you in the book.

Welcome back. So now we're going to get into how to deal with your critic. You have a good sense of perhaps how it operates, Is it overt or covert? Maybe even what it's trying to do, why it's there, but most importantly is, well, how do we get rid of it? That was my first question. How do I get rid of it? Well, after working with this and myself for over a decade and working with so many different people, and anytime I'm working with someone with shyness or social anxiety, we're working on their criticism because that's our own worst enemy. That's where most of the harsh and complete rejection comes from, is not from that person that says, no, I don't want to hang out, or that person that extracts themself from a conversation with you or looks away when you're talking. They're not incredibly and completely harshly rejecting you and saying, you're a worthless waste of space. That's what you are saying to you. That's what your critic is saying to you. So after working on this with myself and people for so many years, the idea of fully getting rid of it, I am not sure if that's possible now. I'm not going to say never. And there's probably someone out there who's incredibly enlightened, perhaps the Dalai Lama or maybe even people from other cultures. But growing up in Western culture, it can be hard to fully get rid of that critic. And I don't think that's the ultimate goal. I think the ultimate goal is to be less and less impacted by it. So instead of it feeling like a 400 pound gorilla holding you down and crushing your throat, it starts to feel lighter and lighter and lighter. And then eventually it's more of like a maybe an annoying Mosquito or something like that, where it's not gone and you kind of don't like it and you want to swat it away. But at the same time, mosquito's not really going to stop you from doing anything like a gorilla is. So I think that's the ultimate goal with a critic is how do we lessen it? How do we lighten it? And the first step, as I alluded to before the break, was we got to become aware of it. If you're not aware of that critic, then it is running the show. It is controlling you, and you have to start paying attention to it. So one of the best ways to do that is just start to notice, when am I going to be critical with myself? And you can start to pay attention to the particular situations where you might be more critical. That is, before social interactions, when you're about to talk to someone, when you're meeting someone new, when you're going to put yourself out there in some way, give a presentation, talk to your boss or supervisor at work, when you're going to go to a situation where might be people to date, to ask someone out to go on that date after any of those experiences. Those are all vulnerable times where your critic might be more active. And so two ways to develop awareness. One is what I mentioned before, which is the self monitoring. That's when you just simply make a hatch mark and record, how many times a day do I criticize myself? And that's an important practice. I'd say you have to do that for at least 10 days, though, because for the first few days, you're gonna forget about it a whole lot. Then the next few days, you're gonna be overwhelmed by how critical you're being, and you're gonna think, oh, my God, I'm really messed up. And then it's only after the next few days that you really start to get into a rhythm with it. You start to see, when do I criticize myself? And you also start to. You might even see that you criticize yourself a little less. There's something really powerful about just watching. This critic can tend to help take some of its power. They tend to defang it a little. But the other aspect, in addition to just monitoring it and watching it, is to really verbalize it or write it down and say it like this. Don't say, you suck. I suck. Say, oh, my critic is saying that I suck. Oh, interesting. And then write down, my critic says I suck. And you can do that in your journal. And I don't know if I showed this in an earlier episode, but you can just draw a line down the sheet of paper and on the left side, write out what your critic says. And then on the right side, you want to start to develop your more compassionate, appreciative, supportive, encouraging, realistic voice. You want to start treating yourself like a parent would treat a child, a good parent would treat a child, regardless of your upbringing. And that might be difficult if your upbringing was poor or your parents were hypercritical or. Or abusive in some ways. So it's even more essential that you find that compassion in yourself. And at first, it might feel so foreign and so hard to do and so weird and almost uncomfortable, like you don't want to do it, but we especially have to do it. You have to find a way to talk to yourself. Well, with kindness, with respect, even if it feels phony and false at first, it's the practice of doing it. And then you have to go one step further, I found. And you have to really actively start catching yourself doing things right and overcorrect with that supportive voice. That means you have to create an ongoing running dialogue of encouraging yourself, of supporting yourself, of congratulating yourself, noticing what you're doing right and saying it in your mind in the third person. I know this sounds crazy, but this is how you really free yourself of that critic. So as you're walking along, you say, hey, Aziz, that was really good. I really like what you did there. That was a really good session with that person. Hey, Aziz, this was really. This was a good blog article. Well done for writing it. Good job. That was a good video, Aziz. Well done. And you give yourself that support, that encouragement, that praise that is so essential that we're so desperately trying to seek from the outside. Now this doesn't mean you don't need it from the outside anymore, or you're an island and you're totally self sufficient. That's. That's unrealistic. We're not that independent. We really need other people to love us and to support and encourage us, but we also have to get into the practice of regularly giving it to ourselves. Because if you discount anything positive that comes your way, you dismiss all your achievements, and you continually attack yourself, then no amount of positive praise from the outside, no amount of love from the outside is going to really get in and help you feel better. Because your critic is like the gatekeeper and it's saying, no, no, we're not letting that stuff in because it doesn't go with our propaganda campaign, which is, you know, this guy sucks. So you really start to have to start to question that propaganda campaign. And if you want to get a lot deeper into this, I strongly recommend checking out my book, the Solution to Social Anxiety, where we go, you know, there's a whole section on your critic and there's another whole section on self acceptance and self compassion and just dozens of tools and exercises and stories and transcripts from sessions. So there's just a huge amount of wealth of. If this feels like something that you really want to address now, then that is a great place to start. And you can find that on Amazon.com, the solution to Social Anxiety. So now we're getting to that point in the episode where it's time for your action step. Time for action. All right. Time for action indeed. So I know there's been a number of things I've mentioned in this episode that are action step to take, such as self monitoring, record the critic, how many times you noticed each day, or the regularly highlighting of successes. Those are things to do and I encourage you to do them. You know, you don't have to do everything. Just pick one of those and incorporate into your life. But I do have one specific action step for you to take this week, and that is I want you to pay attention to what your critic says that you cannot do. So maybe your critic says you can't start a conversation with that person. Or I was actually talking to a client earlier today and he's been putting himself out there more and he's been hanging out with people through meetup groups, but he doesn't have any actual connection with the people outside of the meetup group. So he doesn't have their phone number or he can't text him, he can't set up, hey, let's go check on a movie or go do something or get a cup of coffee or whatever. He doesn't have that established friendship. So what he needs to do is ask someone like, hey, this is fun. Let's go catch a movie sometime. What's your number? And for him, that's terrifying. So his critic says, you can't do that. They're gonna say, no, they don't really like you anyway. You're just that weirdo on the sidelines. Or maybe your critic says, you can't go start a conversation with that woman. Or it says you can't ask her out. You're not good enough. You can't do that thing, you can't write that thing. Pick one thing this week that your critic says that you cannot do and do it. Maybe Even starting with something really, really small. Don't pick the biggest thing that it says you can't do. Pick something small that some part of you is like, really? Really? I think I can do that. And do that. Because what you're doing there is. You're setting up a precedent. You're saying, you know what, propaganda campaign critic, I hear you, but I'm no longer going to be held back by you. That's the first step to taking it from a gorilla and turning it into a mosquito. It's no longer holding you down, and it could be criticizing you the whole time. In fact, there's a phenomenon of as you get closer to the edge of your comfort zone and try to take that action, your critic will get louder and it will criticize you more. And then afterwards, it could be even more critical of you and say, never do that again. Change back and I won't hurt you anymore. That's all part of the process. I call that the backlash in the book. So if you need help with that, check it out. But that's okay. That's part of the process. The most important thing is to not be held back by it anymore. So go ahead and pick that one thing that your critic says you can't do and do it. So thanks for listening. That is our show for today, and we're gonna get deeper into your critic in future episodes and dating and relationships and how all this stuff ties together. So stay tuned. We got a lot coming up. Thanks for listening. Hi, I'm Dr. Aziz.

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