Sebastiaan: Hello, my name is Sebastiaan van der Schrier. I’m a former social anxiety disorder sufferer and I’m a social confidence coach since 9 years. I’ve logged five thousand coaching hours solely coaching socially anxious clients from severe social anxiety to feeling calm and at ease and relaxed in social situations.

That means no anxiety as opposed to being able to manage your anxiety somewhat. It means being able to connect with people on a level where you’re not impressing people and you’re not trying to impress people, you’re not seeking people’s approval, you’re not worried about what people think of you, you’re not adjusting your behavior in order to please the people. You’re just being you. Why? Because you feel safe to be yourself.

Why don’t you feel safe to be yourself?

Why you don’t feel safe to be yourself

Well, because you have these things in your mind called beliefs. Are they just thoughts?

Well, yes and no. Yes, they’re thoughts but they’re not normal thoughts because you can’t just shift and change them by changing your thinking. Contrary to popular belief that it’s a problem in your thinking you should just be very cognitive about your problem and then just change your behavior. Yeah, right, try it and see how it works. There’s an important component missing and that’s the emotional side of things.

Social anxiety is very emotional problem and so these beliefs that you’re having what’s the difference between a belief and a thought?

Well, a belief is just a thought that you’ve thought over and over and over and over and over and you have emotion connected to the thought. So, belief is just a thought or an idea that feels true and it feels true because you have emotional evidence to support the belief. So, it’s like a thought that is with emotion superglue to your subconscious mind operating on a subconscious level causing you to perceive social situations in a certain way and interpret social situations in us in a certain way.

Why you have negative self-beliefs (like “I’m not good enough)

For example, one of the most common beliefs people with social anxiety have is “I’m not good enough”, right? You might be able to relate to that if you’re watching this. So, if that were just a thought you could just say, “Alright, well, I am good enough”. Great, alright, try that and see if that happens. And then they people would say “Well, you just have to repeat that affirmation. You have to make an affirmation of it – I am good enough and say it with conviction. I’m good enough, say it in the mirror.” I’ve got lots of mirror in my house. Yes, I’d like to dance, and I want to see myself in. A long story.

Anyway, so, yeah, just say it with conviction “I am good enough” and say it in the mirror and look at yourself and look in your eyes and mean it. “I am good enough” say over and over, mean it, practice it over and over and over. And yes, that works to a degree, that works a bit. So, that helps you to start believing that positive a bit but what it doesn’t do is it doesn’t get rid of the negative. So, then when you’re in a social situation and a certain situation triggers you then the real underlying “I’m not good enough” comes up and you feel the emotions connected to that belief.

So, if you believe that you’re not good enough well, guess what? You learned that somewhere. You don’t come into this world believing that you’re not good enough, right? It’s programming, that’s been conditioned into you. How? Well, many, many different ways but as an example if your parents were very strict, were very critical and you were constantly criticized and you couldn’t ever do anything good enough and your degrees weren’t right, your mom was just always complaining about you and blah, blah, blah, then the conclusion that you draw from that is “Well, clearly I’m not good enough” and I say the conclusion that you draw from it but usually it’s not a conscious decision, it’s just your subconscious mind which is the deeper part of your mind that’s actually in control that’s like a tape recorder that’s been recording everything in your life from the moment that you’re born. It’s just observing what is happening trying to make sense of it so you’re some kind of like “Well, what does it mean? What does this mean?”

And why is your subconscious doing that because it wants to make as accurate map of the world as possible so that it can navigate through the world as safely as possible. It makes sense, right? And so, because the subconscious is prime directive its main purpose is survival, it’s the oldest brain, all right? It’s your reptilian brain. And so, it’s going “Well, what does this mean that my mom’s criticizing me all the time? What does that mean that I can’t ever do anything right? What does that mean about me? Well, clearly I’m not good enough”.

And so, because all of that criticizing and complaining over time, it feels really bad, you feel insecure, you feel disappointment because you’d like to be considered as good enough, you’d like to be accepted there’s a natural need that you have and it’s that you get rejection all the time. So, there’s sadness, there’s disappointment, there’s insecurity, they’re all these uncomfortable feelings associated with this whole conditioned idea that you’re not good enough. So, it’s just a thought but all the emotions that resulted from those repetitive experiences are connected to that thought as a belief in your mind. So, now you’ve got that belief – Great, that sucks. Yes, it does. It does very much so, because you’re not able to truly be yourself when you have a limiting negative identity belief like that.

What you can do about these negative beliefs

Now how do you change it? Well, that’s a longer story than this video allows me unless I sit here for an hour and not going to happen. This is just a short video, but I am going to help you a little bit because the cool thing is that there are really advanced amazing techniques these days with which you can shift the emotions connected to the belief. And as a reminder a belief is nothing other than a thought that feels true a thought that you believe that is true because you feel it to be true. When you get rid of the feeling it’s just a thought and when it’s just a thought it holds no power over you. So, the trick is to get rid of the emotions connected to the belief. To get rid of your emotional attachment to a belief like “I’m not good enough”.

And so, how do you do that while you don’t do it with affirmations you do it with a release technique. And there are since a couple of decades now there is a new and emerging field which is very weird and bizarre and strange, but it’s called energy psychology. And one of the most prominent well-known techniques that falls under the umbrella of energy psychology is called EFT and it stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques. Now what is it? It is a strange-looking tapping technique where you tap with the tips your fingers at specific acupressure points on the body. It’s kind of like acupuncture but instead of using needles you tap with the fingers on these acupressure points and when you do that while you’re focusing on a particular emotion, the emotions actually start to release. Hard to believe, I know, I struggled myself with social anxiety for the longest time. I tell my story on other videos on this channel. I tried affirmations, visualizations, face your fears, hypnotherapy, Neuro Linguistic Programming, many, many different things and I could get anything to till I found this weird thing and tried it, didn’t work, eventually got it to work and I kept trying because I found so much evidence of this actually working. It’s a scientifically proven to be effective technique. For energy psychology there are more than a hundred peer-reviewed studies and in psychology journals that are published for example, in the APA the American Psychological Association. And for EFT alone I think there are over 20.

So, they know that it works, they just don’t know exactly how it works yet but who cares? You don’t know how your iPhone works and I would get people contacting me or your something Samsung phone or whatever device you’re on. One of these amazing devices and you get a call or you’re on FaceTime and you don’t know how it works but it does work. It’s incredible. Same thing for EFT – It’s incredible. I use it to overcome my own social anxiety, I’ve helped hundreds of coaching clients to let go of their social anxiety and feel socially at ease. It’s not unique to me, alright? And if you look up some of my other videos you’ll see the comments below videos that of people that tried some of my guided tapping which we’re going to do in a second actually so just follow along then or go check out my podcast where I interview, coaches, psychologists, doctors, psychotherapists, PhD’s, best-selling authors, researchers who have incorporated this exciting technique into their practice and have seen the results of their clients go through the roof. This stuff is the real deal, alright?

So, I’ve tried to convince you enough. Now I actually I want to give you an experience of this. Now, I’m not going to say that this is going to resolve your deeply held identity belief that you’re not good enough forever and ever more but it’s very possible that potentially it’s not going to feel as strong to you anymore and it’s not going to have as much of holding you anymore after we do this technique if you decide to follow along, all right? But to actually get rid of it completely is very much possible but there’s more to it than that and how to do that, I share on my website. So, there’s a little, little cliffhanger for you social-anxiety-solutions.com. That’s where you can check it out.

Alright, so, let’s do an exercise. So, I’m going to guide you through some tapping. Let me just turn off this. I’m getting messages from my friend thing. Okay, good, so, I’m going to guide you through some tapping and it’s going to be very simple. Now if you don’t know exactly where I’m tapping just guess roughly where I’m tapping. And even if you’re not hitting it exactly right, you’re still going to get the benefit and simply repeat after me out loud what I’m saying.

I know this sounds silly if this is the first time you hear this. I know it sounds crazy but just follow along and actually give this a go. You can whisper if you want if you’re speaking a different language. English is my second language, I’ve been Netherlands, I’m Dutch, English is my second language as well. Doesn’t matter your subconscious will do the translating for you. It is a very forgiving technique, okay? So, I want to give it a go, say yes.

Tap Along Exercise for “I’m not good enough”

Alright, so, just start with closing your eyes. I’ll do the same. Just take a deep breath. If you’re still watching this, close your eyes and follow along. Take a deep breath. Good, now just keep your eyes closed and just say out loud “I’m not good enough”. And rate how true that feels to you in a scale of 0 to 10. Zero is like doesn’t feel true at all and I’m not looking for your logic here, I’m looking for the feeling how true does it feel to you because logically you might say “I’m a great guy or I’m a great girl, nice and friendly, I feed my cat” whatever. You might come up with all these reasons as to why you’re a good person but I’m looking for the deep feeling underneath when you’re really genuine and honest with yourself and you’re sensitive to the way you feel when you say “I’m not good enough” notice how that feels in your body how crappy it feels and rated on a scale of 0 to 10, okay? Great, write it down or just remember it. And now just follow along with me.

Alright, so tap on the beginning of your eyebrows that’s right here and just repeat after me the whole time. All right, to say “I’m not good enough”. Side of the eyes, “There’s nothing good about me”. Under the eyes, “I’m such a worthless piece of shit”. And by the way we’re saying negative things, that’s right, nothing bad is going to happen. We’re just bringing up some emotion as we’re doing the tapping, so the tapping can work its magic. All right, you’re not manifesting any negative things with this, don’t you worry.

All right, it’s all good. Okay, under the nose, “I’m not good enough”. Chin, “Everyone is better than me”. Collar bone, “Especially because I have this social anxiety problem”. Under the arms, “I’m so inferior”. On the liver point, “I have the least value of anyone in the world ever”. On the wrist point, “If life would be a competition as to who’s best, I’m last”. Top of the head, “Even some animals are higher on the ranking than me”.

The beginning of the eyebrows, “That’s not true”. Side of the eyes, “I’m amazing”. Under the eyes, “I’m the best ever”. Under the nose, “There has never been such an amazing person as me”. Chin, “I am why they invented the word special”. Collar bone, “And it’s not arrogant when it’s true”. Under the arms, “I’m incredibly awesome”. Liver point, “I’m unspeakably fantastic. Wrist point, “I’m God’s gift to humanity”. Top of head, “When I’m not such piece of shit”.

The beginning of the eyebrows, “It’s not that I’m not good enough”. Side of the eyes, “There’s just nothing good about me”. Under the eyes, “That’s a lie”. Under the nose, “Superman bleaches in comparison to me or Superwoman.” On the chin, “I’m the greatest person alive”. Collar bone, “I’m a worthless piece of shit”. Under the arms, “But I’m amazing at being worthless”. Liver point, “I’m not good enough at being the best”. Wrist point, “I’m awesome at not being good enough”. Top of the head, “I’m not good enough of being awesome and it’s awesome that I’m not good enough. Or is it?”

Deep breath. Okay, now with that simple bit of tapping there’s a couple of things going on there that we’re doing, won’t go into all of it but basically, we’re voicing both sides of you because one part of you feels pretty good about you and one poor part who feels pretty shit about you. And even emotional attachment to “I’m awesome, I’m amazing” that is also something that can hold you back massively because then you always have to live up to that.

My colleagues and psychologists also tapping expert Steve Wells he says, one of the most damaging things that people can do to their kids is to say “Oh, you’re so smart. Oh, you’re so brilliant. Oh, you’re so amazing” because then if you grow up like that then you feel that pressure to always have to live up to that. All right? And so, the emotional attachment to “I’m super-smart” can also be a massive dungeon, a trap, shackles to your feet, right? So, we’re just kind of voicing both of them while we’re doing the tapping scrambling things around. It’s actually technique I learned from good old Steve.

So, yeah, check in with yourself now. Close your eyes, take a deep breath and say again “I’m not good enough” and notice how that sits with you. Now is it still the same number? Does it still feel as strong? Does it feel different as the feeling moving your body? Has it been released? Do you feel a different feeling instead? There are many things that can be going on. This might have brought up some memories or some uncomfortable feelings for you. In that case just keep tapping and continuing to tap will help the feelings to settle. Alright, just keep tapping going over these points and that will help the feeling saddle. That’s actually what you can do anyway if you want to get a little bit more benefit of this.

Now this was helpful to you? Great, there’s a lot more where that’s coming from. Go to social-anxiety-solutions.com. That’s my website, you can get a free social confidence starter kit where I give you 10 and free videos. Pretty amazing. 5 I teach you the technique that we’ve just done; 5 where I guide you through more of these tapping routines.

So, go check that out and also, I want to know what your experience was of this. So, can you do me a favor and go to the comment section below and just type in what was your rating before you did the tapping and what was your rating 0 to 10 rating after you did the tapping. What was your experience and maybe a question or some feedback that you have? I’d like that.

Alright, now if this was helpful for you great, I release videos like this every Thursday and I have been doing this for years. In fact my first video is from 2009 and I started teaching but I already released a lot of my social anxiety but I still have some of it and if you watch that video you can see it. I’m all frozen up and uncomfortable.

So, anyway, subscribe here or wherever it is and check out the podcast and that’s Social Anxiety Solutions in iTunes. I hope that’s been helpful. Thank you, please leave a comment, go check out my website social-anxiety-solutions.com. Bye for now.

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Sebastiaan

Sebastiaan van der Schrier is a Social Confidence Coach and ex social anxiety sufferer. He helps socially anxious people become confident using a unique and painless approach. He is the host of the Social Anxiety Solutions podcast show and runs the first ever online Social Confidence Community.

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