Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just flick your fingers and stop feeling bad?

Well, we’re not quite there yet…

…but we are very close.

In this video, you’ll discover 3 super powerful questions to get you out of a funk real quick!

And I’ll also teach you alongside that, a tapping technique with which you can shift your internal wiring and therefore, permanently improve your mental and emotional well-being.

Hey! It’s Seb. And welcome to Social Anxiety Solutions – where we combine the best of therapy with Energy Psychology to completely overcome your Social Anxiety.

Now, 2 decades ago, I discovered Personal Development.

And I thought, “Great, finally, there’s a way to change my mind stop feeling bad and start feeling better, get confident.”

And all of the books that I bought, they sounded really promising; it was a lot of inspiring words.

But when it came down to the actual practical techniques:

• affirmations
• visualizations
• changing your thoughts

And so on, and various other techniques, it didn’t really give me much of these instant shifts that I was hoping for.

Now, maybe 5 years after that, trying a lot of things…

…I eventually discovered Energy Psychology, and in particular, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) – this gentle tapping technique, which looks silly and out of the ordinary.

But with that, you can actually shift your emotions.

And now I discovered something with which I actually could shift my emotions rapidly quick.

Now, from that moment forward, I thought that “Wow! Why would I ever go into that old stuff where therapy is just useless if you can just shift your emotions? Why would you ever work on the cognitive level?”

Well, that was my initial excitement. I’ve since come to understand that we need the best of both worlds.

As my mentor, Dr. David Lake says – who’s a Psychotherapist and a Tapping Expert: “Tapping is really powerful. And you can shift your emotions – sometimes quickly, sometimes rapidly over time. But tapping isn’t therapy in and of itself. And some people, simply also need therapy.”

You see, we want to be able to shift our emotions because Social Anxiety is predominantly an emotional issue.

But sometimes, we’re also stuck in particular thinking patterns or particular mindset that needs to be altered.

We need the best of Traditional Psychology, Neuroscience, Therapy, and Energy Psychology.

We need the best of East and West.

And that’s what you’re getting a taste of today.

Question:

Hae you ever been ignored by someone?

That can be at a party or at work?

Or maybe when you reached out to someone on a text message or WhatsApp, or whatever you use?

And they didn’t get back to you instantly?

Or took a long time?

Or they didn’t get back to you at all?

Have you ever had that happen?

OF COURSE, YOU HAVE!

Now, I asked this inside our Social Confidence Club and we got a bunch of answers, but a lot of them were quite similar.

People wrote like:

• Well, it means that the other person doesn’t like me
• That I’m not interesting to them
• That I’m boring to them
• That they don’t value me
• That they don’t want anything to do with me
• That I’m bothering them

And I could very much relate to that because that’s exactly how I was feeling.

And I then said to them, “Look, what you guys are writing down, it’s all negative stuff. It’s all assumptions about what that meant. That is all negative. And it’s all very similar.”

How about that person is busy?

How about that person didn’t notice me?

How about that person wanted to get back to me, but my message got lost?

How about this person has a really big problem in their life and therefore my message has no relevance to that person whatsoever, or etc.?

And so I asked them, “Look, what you’re doing – this is the meaning that you’re making out of someone not replying to you or someone ignoring you.”

And these negative meanings, guess what…

…THEY MAKE US FEEL BAD.

And so you want to address that, but it’s important to know that that’s often what we’re doing.

Now, I’m going to get into these questions that you can ask yourself, but this is a little bit of a precursor and you’ll find out why that’s important as we get into the questions.

Three questions to feel better quickly:

1. What am I making this mean (about me)?

Now, what we do as human beings – what our minds do is we make things mean something.

This is how we learn. It’s the process of learning:

• We’re little, we don’t know anything about the world, and we’re being taught
• We’re learning through experience
• We’re learning through observation
• We’re learning through modelling
• And our brain is constantly going like, “Hey, what does that mean? And how important is this?”

And so we make meaning, we ascribe value. That’s what we’re doing over and over and over.

Now, I learned about this when maybe a year after I discovered personal development when I was like, 17, or something.

And I read this NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) related book called Mind lines by Michael Hall – I don’t particularly recommend it because it’s not an easy read.

But in there, he explains how it works internally.

And one of the sentences that stood out to me so much was, “Nothing in life has any meaning, except for the meaning that we give it, except for the meaning that we ascribe to it.”

I wrote that on my door in cursive massively with a big magic marker.

And so that got ingrained in my subconscious because I’m like, “I need to remember this because it’s so important.”

What am I making this mean?

Because in the earlier example, if a person ignoring you means they don’t like you, how’s that going to make you feel?

That’s going to make you feel:

• bad
• rejected
• sad
• hurt
• upset
• frustrated
• angry

Or if that person not responding to you means he’s busy, or something else is going on.

But this is not about me.

Now, you don’t feel those negative feelings, right? And the external event is the same.

But your internal state is either very negative, or it’s neutral.

And it depends on the meaning that you ascribe to that external experience – that external event.

So by asking yourself the question, “What am I making this mean? What does this experience mean to me?”

You’re figuring out what the associated meaning is that’s causing you to feel bad.

And then when you have that, now you can tap on that meaning.

And when you do the tapping, while you’re focused on that meaning, the emotions connected to that meaning start to neutralize, they become less relevant.

Now, not always, and not always instantly.

But usually, as you begin to tap, it starts to lose its validity because the emotions begin to release.

Now, if that isn’t the case, there’s more to do that goes beyond this. But this is the first strategy that you can use in order to start feeling better.

Now, a lot of these meanings that we make are actually old meanings.

And by that, I’m saying that if you believe that this person ignoring me means that, “I’m not likable, or people don’t like me” – you didn’t come up with that when you’re 25.

That’s probably a really old association that you made at some point.

All beliefs that you formed at a younger age that you’ve then collected evidence of because that’s how your brain works – it looks for evidence to prove what it already believes.

So you have some experiences when you’re younger that teach you that, “Wow, you’re not likable, or people don’t like you.”

And now your brain starts looking for evidence to prove that people don’t like you – it’s called a Confirmation Bias.

And so, when you’re having this meaning come up for you by asking that question, “Hey, what am I making this mean?”

And the meaning is like, “Wow, it means that I’m not likable” – that might be a very old belief.

But when you start to tap on it, you might find that it starts to shift and release, you might have memories pop up that are the evidence of that which you can then focus on.

And when your tapping is effective, typically what starts to happen as the emotion starts to neutralize, automatically…

… you start to have more rational [thinking], more empowered, and more matured thoughts to come then to the surface automatically.

Now if that doesn’t happen automatically, you can help that process along by asking some other questions.

Like for example, this question: 2. Is this absolutely true 100%?

Now, this is a question I got. It’s not exactly the same question, but from Byron Katie’s book – The Work.

It’s a great question because it helps you to doubt the validity of what it is that you’re assuming to be true.

It helps you to doubt the meaning that you’ve created.

You can go:

Do I know 100% sure that this is absolutely true?

Or is there some room for error in my thinking?

Am I making assumptions here?

Or is this 100% Fact?

Do I know what that other person is thinking?

Do I know what’s going on in that other person’s mind?

Am I factual?

Can I go to court and prove without a shadow of a doubt that what I’m saying is 100% true? Yes or no?

That question will help you to start to doubt that nonsense that you’re believing.

And then the 3rd question that you can ask is: What else could be true about this that brings me relief?

Now, a common negative thinking pattern that a lot of people deal with is called Negative Filtering – which means that you’re filtering out the positive and you only focus on the negative side of things.

Now, tapping on our feelings and our beliefs often starts to shift this pattern already.

We expand our awareness and we become more open to all of the possibilities.

And so we start to include the positive and it’s no longer only negative.

It’s also when you’re doing it right. Also, no longer only the positive because that’s also nonsense.

We’re getting to see reality as it is and become okay with it until we see the world as it truly is, rather than how we imagined it to be.

But while tapping is excellent here, it’s a very helpful question to ask yourself, “What else could be true about this that brings me some relief?”

It’s kind of helping the process of the positive coming in along.

It redirects your focus from only on the negative to, “Hey, what might be positive here that I filtered out? What could be true about this that I’m missing here?”

Now, when you ask this question, it’s very important that you look for real things – things that are actually true.

So if you say with the same example, “This person is ignoring me.”

And your thought is like, “Well, what else could be true? What else could be true is that I’m awesome. And that person really loves me and actually can’t wait to get back to me.”

If you believe that, great…

…but that’s highly unlikely. And so this fabricated positive thought won’t help you much.

However, when you’re coming up with realistic things that are also true, that give you just a tiny bit of relief – that’s what you’re looking for.

So maybe this person is busy. Or, “Hey, we have a long-term relationship. And I haven’t done anything obviously wrong. So I’m probably just making this up in my mind, or whatever.”

As long as it is true, what you’re thinking and it gives you relief, that’s what you’re looking for.

And it’s helpful to write it down as well, especially if you’re struggling a lot because the act of writing it down takes the crap from your head on paper and it gives you a little bit of distance.

And then when you write down the thought that is also true, gives you a sense of control.

So here’s an example of how this works. She doesn’t respond to my texts. I asked the question, “What does this mean to me?”

It means she doesn’t like me. I feel hurt. I feel panic.

So then you start the tapping.

First of all, you can just sit with those feelings. Allow those feelings to be there. If in fact, if you just do that, that’s going to be very helpful.

Just sit with your feelings

Sit with the thoughts

Don’t try to change anything

Just accept them

Allow them

Do that for a couple of minutes

It’s going to be very, very beneficial.

However, so you’ve made that assumption, right? You have that meaning – She doesn’t like me.

Well, then you can just go:
Beginning of the eyebrows: She doesn’t like me
Side of the eyes: She doesn’t like me
Under the eyes: I’m convinced she doesn’t like me
Under the nose: This means that she doesn’t like me
Chin: This means that she doesn’t like me
Collarbone: It means she doesn’t like me

You can just go like that.

And typically that starts to shrink the emotion – the emotion starts to reduce and reduce and maybe it even neutralizes.

Now, as you’re doing this tapping and the emotion starts to neutralize:

• more realistic
• more empowered
• healthy
• mature of your age thoughts naturally start popping in.

You start getting insights like, “Oh, she’s probably busy” or whatever the realistic situation is.

That said, you might follow up with a question like question number 2: Is this 100 sure? Am I absolutely 100% sure that this is true? – which helps you to bring some doubts to the validity of this assumption that you’ve made of this meaning that you’ve ascribed to this external behavior of this person not getting back to you.

Further, then you can ask question number 3: What else could be true about this that brings me a feeling of relief?

And then you might come up with thoughts like, “Well, this is just a thought in my head.” or “I thought crazy things like this before. And in reality, they actually did like me. So this is just a pattern, or whatever.”

As long as it’s giving you relief, that’s a helpful thought. And there you have it.

So again, to summarize real quick:

Whenever you’re feeling bad, you check in by asking yourself, “What am I making these mean?”

Start tapping, you can accept and allow the feelings, and then you can focus on whatever meaning you make and you can verbalize that meaning for a bit.

And then you can also ask the questions, “Is this 100% True? Am I 100% sure that this is a total fact?” Or “What else might be true about this that brings me a bit of relief?”

And you can write this down.

So this little process, and when you do this a couple of times, it becomes part of your automatic thinking goes real quick.

So try it out and see how it works for you.

Now, I do want to let you know that for significant issues – to shift permanently, just changing your thinking is not enough.

You need to address the underlying emotional drivers of that thinking, you need to address the deeper underlying stuff.

You see, Social Anxiety is predominantly an emotional issue. And so the emotions need to be processed. The really stocked deeply held negative limiting beliefs need to be shifted.

And sometimes, that can happen with a process as simple as the one that I’ve just shared with you now.

At other times, this process only helps you feel a little bit better.

However, feeling a little bit better is something that can really improve the quality of your life already and it can already reduce your Social Anxiety.

But ultimately, you want to deal with the deepest roots and the deepest problems completely so that you can totally liberate yourself and live a life of effortless social ease where you enjoy connecting with people when you’re free to be your true self, and you can really live an inspired life.

And that’s kind of like this guy – Brent Cunning (Brent’s 1 Year Update: “I’m getting better and better as I go.”). So check him out. I think you’ll find that very inspiring.

It will get you the feeling of, “Wow! There’s hope for me too. I can do this too.”

That might motivate you to start applying this process that I just taught you.

Hope this is helpful.

Talk to you very soon.

Bye for now!

If you experience Social Anxiety, click below to receive the FREE “7 Secrets to Social Confidence” Mini Course!

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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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