HealthyGamerGG - Can Extroverts Have Social Anxiety? ft Dr. Ali Mattu

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

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Hey, chat. Welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Alokinoja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist gamer and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. Dr. Matu, welcome. Dr. K, what's up?

What's up, dude? It's great to see. Oh, it's so good to see it. This is real. I can touch you. Yes, you can touch me. This is real life. Yeah, dude. So it's great to see you.

Yeah. I think we've like, you know, chatted before. So super looking forward to this. We had one great conversation about anxiety. And so I had so many questions after that. I'd love to dive into a couple things with you. Let's do it. But before we dive in, can you just tell us a little bit about like who you are, where

you come from, where people can find you? I'm a clinical psychologist. I focus on anxiety. This is what I have done. I've spent over 10 years treating anxiety. And when you treat anxiety, I think. I thought it would be just helping people overcome the things they fear, but anxiety is so common with other problems as well,

like depression, substance use, all sorts of things. So I've kind of had to learn a lot about working with those other things. And I became so frustrated with how hard it was to access all those things I know and the long wait list that exist in mental health. that I started making YouTube videos, and that's all on my channel, Dr. Ali. And I've tried to create more resources now to help people with anxiety, and I've got braver withanxiety.com where I share a full course and a bunch of regular lessons about what to do about this problem.

So that's who I am. Cool. And so you mentioned that you thought it was anxiety was about helping people overcome their fear, but it's more than that depression. It's absolutely more than that. So how is it, because when I think about anxiety as a definition, right, I think about it as like a propensity for worrying. I think about it tied to almost being synonymous with fear. Yes.

How is it more than that? Yeah, so let's break it down. So fear is when there is some type of real threat in the environment. The classic example is a lion is chasing you. And so what do you do? You try to run away and get to safety or there's fight or flight, right? Maybe you stop and try to fight that beast and all of that. There's also a freeze response.

In nature, it is often helpful to not do anything when there is some type of threat to play dead. And so that's why some of us will just freeze when there's something scary happening. But that's fear. Most universal emotion on this planet, emotional state, it keeps us alive. It helped our species get out of a lot of danger. situations. We were more people who, we were more animals that were good at navigating fear than we were hunters. You know, we have this, we have this story about humans that we were these hunter gatherers. We were more gatherers than we were hunters, I think. Anyways, that's fear,

right? Okay. And then you've got stress, which is when something important is going to happen and you are stressed about it. That stress is that fear response, but about some type of future concern that is going to happen. Okay. You have a test coming up. You have an important presentation

or in the olden days. You have to prepare some type of harvest. You've got work to do. You're going to be stressed about it. And what you want to do in your stress is you either want to prepare for that stress, prepare for those situations, or get some help. Share that with other people in your tribe, get some help for it, right?

And then you've got anxiety. And anxiety is the same kind of reaction, but to things you worry might happen. Okay. There's no real proof it's going to happen, but you're thinking it might happen. You're worried it might happen. You're worried about things going badly, and it's creating that same fear response. The problem becomes when people are, they're experiencing anxiety to a level where it's getting in the way of their life. And I know that's a totally subjective term. Yeah. But it is a subjective problem. And when that problem starts to happen, it can really expand and go in other areas. And that's when it can also become depression. That's when it becomes substance use and a variety of other problems.

So let me just make sure I understood you. So you define kind of fear as a clear and present danger. A clear and breath. Yeah, yeah, like here's important. Yeah. And then you've got stress, which is just the body, brain, and mind's way of responding to something.

I love the phrase that you use, the word you used, important, right? So it can be like good things, it can be bad things. It can be like catastrophic things or really exciting things. So is your body's way of like preparing for something important? Yeah, it can be excitement, right? Like you've got a first date coming up.

You're going to be stressed about it. Yeah. You're going to be scared. Part of that is also excitement. Yeah. And then we've got anxiety, whereas, which is sort of like, I guess you're sort of describing it as a stress response for a hypothetical. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And how does that turn into depression or addiction? All right. So let's say you're someone who is, you have a gorophobia. You have a fear of being in situations where you can. can't easily escape. And you have a hard time leaving your front door because everything in the outside world is hard to escape. There's, the farther you get from your home, the more limited you feel in terms of your paths and where you can go. So your world becomes very small. Now, if that happens over a long period of time, you're not as activated as you

should be. You're not able to go out and do as many things as you should be able to do. So maybe you're falling behind in work, maybe you're falling behind in school, maybe you quit school, you drop out of school, maybe you end up on disability because you can't do your work. I'm going to these extreme examples, right? But once that starts to happen, depression's naturally going to kick in, either because of reduced activity, reduced meaning, reduce hope. So, All of that stuff is going to play into it. Another thing that can happen is if you haven't done, let's say you have been depressed for a long period of time and you've pulled back from many areas of your life.

Well, anxiety always comes up in new situations, in important situations, and things you haven't done in a long time. So if you're someone who's coming out of a depression and you're starting to go back into life, you are going to be anxious because you're doing things that you haven't done in a long period of time. I see. So it's almost like, I kind of see what you're saying. So depression becomes a consequence. So as anxiety starts to restrict your life in the way that you can live, a natural consequence of that is going to be something like depression. Absolutely. I mean, depression exists to be a stop sign that tells you, hey, life isn't going in the direction you want it to be.

The reason we have anadonia, the reason why we stop experiencing pleasure, is to zap you into taking stock of what's happening in your life, right? That's the least what I, the reason why I think anadonia has even evolved in our operating system. Like, why would it be there? It's to shake you out and say, like, look, this is not what you want to, this is not the direction you want to go in life. Yeah, that's interesting. I think I would agree with that 50%. Yeah, what's the other 50%? So I think I would just come to a slightly different conclusion,

which is I think An Hedonia is, you're saying it's a way to, it's a signal to stop and take stock. Yeah. I would say that it is also a signal to stop, I agree, but not necessarily to take stock. I almost think about An Hedonia depression as your body's way of signaling to you that you should not continue going, right? Yeah.

So it's almost like a motivation as an efficiency or energy conserving mechanism. So when do we get depressed? When we get signals from the outside environment, hey, this is not working for you. Our body, our brain are trying to be efficient. So they'll tell you like, hey, if you're not getting good feedback about this particular thing, don't engage with it because it'll lead to more pain, more suffering. It's like not something that you should continue to invest your energy in. I think that is fascinating. And we could have a whole conversation about that because I think there's a parallel to avoid incidence and anxiety, where sometimes, yes, we want to listen to the anxiety and we want to avoid that

situation. If there's a line there, avoid it, because you're going to lose that battle, unless, unless you have some good weapons and you know how to handle them. And in a lot of situations, we don't want to avoid. When anxiety is firing in situations where it shouldn't be, maybe you're wired for anxiety, maybe you've got a background that makes you more likely to experience it, then maybe we don't want to listen to it. But I think that's probably true of depression as well. Some people more wired for it. Yeah, so I think it comes down to this like idea of just because depression is trying to do something doesn't mean that we should do it. Yes. Right? So like if you look at like autoimmune disease like autoimmune disease is your immune system trying to attack

something that it thinks is foreign, even though that's a bad idea. Yeah. I'm wondering whether so I just I use that same exact analogy with people all the time. So I wonder if actually like a great place to explore, you know, the conflicting parts of us. So I heard you mention something which was really fascinating to me, that extroverts can be socially anxious. And I thought that was incredibly fascinating because at first I was like confused because I thought the whole point of being an extrovert is that you really enjoy hanging out with other people. And I sort of think about people with social anxieties, people who don't enjoy hanging out with other people. So those seem to me to be like opposites.

And so the more I got, so I'm really curious, like, what do you, like, can you explain? Like, can you be a socially anxious extrovert? I'm going to do an annoying therapist thing right now. Okay, cool. Okay. Let's do it. I love that question. And I loved your reaction because it reminds me, the annoying therapist thing here is I'm reflecting.

I don't hold hands with my patients. Well, I mean, I'm going to leave you hanging here. No. What I'm, the annoying therapist thing I'm doing is I'm reflecting back on your question without answering it at first. Because when you had that reaction, it was such a good reminder to me that there are things I know in a worldview I have that is so completely not shared by other people. and there's also this like we as professionals but we also just like as humans have such a gap in knowledge and experience right

like to me being an extrovert and being socially anxious that's just my life man this is just the life I've lived oh so you're an extrovert or socially anxious yes yes I am an extrovert and I'm socially anxious and I've worked with a ton of people like this Okay. So to me, it's like an assumption that exists in the world. But to a lot of people, like those ideas are so, like, what?

Yeah. And I didn't realize that until you had that reaction. And then I was like, oh, my gosh, this is not a, this is not what people think, right? Yeah. So, so like that's what I'm kind of confused about. I mean, I have an answer in my mind. I tried to figure out myself. But, like, when I think about extroversion, I think about it as a scale of introversion to extroversion, right?

And extroverts are people who enjoy hanging out with other people. And introverts are people who hanging out with other people kind of drains their battery. And then when I think about social anxiety, I think about social anxiety is, you know, being anxious around other people. Yeah. So how can those two things coexist? Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to answer your question by answering, like, three different questions.

Okay, cool. All right, because we're these annoying overthinkers about mental health, right? But this is why you all are here, right? All right, let's talk about extroversion and introversion first. Okay. And my understanding of this continues to evolve and change. I used to think about it as extroversion is you like people, and introversion is you don't like people,

which is such a extrovertedly biased way of thinking about it. And we live and work in the United States, which is much more of an extroverted bias society, right? If we were doing... Networking. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So much.

Too much. If we were in South Asia, it might be a little bit different. If we were in Japan, it might be a little bit different, right? The more collectivists societies are a little bit different, especially like how much, how emotions are expressed in social situations and social expectations are very different in different cultures. But we live into extrovertedly biased society. And my view of extroversion and introversion was very extrovertly biased. Like extroverts good at people, introverts, terrible at people. Then it evolved more towards extroversion is this biased towards the outside universe.

And introversion is this bias towards the internal universe. And there's some people on those streams and then there's a lot of people in the middle. Yeah. That can kind of, depending on the situation. Yes. Yes. They go, depending on the context and the situation and the mood and all of that. And that's what I used to think.

And this kind of evolved from my own experience, becoming a full-time clinician, which I'm not anymore. I'm not a full-time clinician, but when I was full-time practicing, I would see a ton of people in the day. and then I would come home completely exhausted of any social interaction, and I would be this horrible husband, and I would be wanting to be completely absent dad, at least during the weekdays, right? Because I felt like my social battery was beyond depleted. Here's my understanding of extroversion and introversion now.

I still think it's a spectrum. I still think there's a lot of people in the middle, which, depending on context, can be nudged in different directions. But I think extroversion now is you're driving pleasure from things that happen in the outside context. Sometimes that means social, maybe driving pleasure from the warmth of interpersonal experiences, the joy, the surprise, the novelty of good conversations. But it also can come from the outside world. It can come from nature. It can come from other things. versus introversion, which I think is being able to drive more pleasure and enjoyment from the internal universe or from more solitary things as well.

That's how I kind of think about it right now. So we've got the spectrum, right, where if we want to really make it basic, it's, does what happens outside give you joy or does what happen inside give you joy? I think that's simplifying it. But for our purposes, I think that's fine. I think that that's a really good, and we'll get to this in a second because I've got a couple questions for you. But I was trying to figure this out because, you know, I was trying to figure out how can you be extroverted and socially anxious. And the place that I went to was actually neuroscience. Yeah.

So I started... It's a good place to go to? Good place to go. So what I sort of started exploring is, okay, hold on a second. What is extroversion in the brain? Yeah. How do we know what is the difference between an extrovert and an introvert? isn't even a real thing neurologically.

Because these concepts were originally, I think, developed by Carl Jung. And he wasn't a neuroscientist. So what I found was really interesting, and it kind of mirrors what you're describing, is that the brains of introverts and extroverts are pretty different. So if you look at like there's basically like a level of cortical activation that is different between introverts and extroverts. The really fascinating thing is that extroverts require, a higher level of external stimulation to activate their brains.

Yes. So there's a really fascinating experiment where if you take a single drop of lemon juice and you give it to an introvert and you give it to an extrovert, a single drop of lemon juice will cause a far higher salivary response in an introvert. Yeah. And a far lower salivary response in an extrovert. You just described my marriage. How so?

My wife is very much an introvert. Okay. I am very much an extrovert. And I've always understood her as someone who I would define as a supertaster. I don't make that definition. I mean, that's a, that's a, it's a, it's a term from psychology. But she is much more acutely aware of stimuli, whether it's in the environment or in the food. That's hilarious because that's my marriage too, but it's the other way around.

It's the other way around. I'm the supertaster. So literally like, I mean, I've had a conflict with my wife. for coming up on 20 years now, where, like, basically she puts way too much lemon in the food. Yeah. And so I never realized, like, oh, I was like, I read this experiment, and I didn't even think that, like, I'm so sensitive to lemon. I'm a supertaster.

Yeah. So I taste all kinds of things in food that she doesn't taste. Yeah. Whenever she makes food, I think it's over-seasoned. Yeah. And whenever I make food, she thinks it's under-seasoned. Yeah. And it really does come back to this idea where, like, if you look at the brains of introverts and extroverts,

an introvert, a small amount of external stimulus creates a large internal reaction. Absolutely. 100%. And with extroverts, so they require a large amount of external stimulus to create like an internal response. Yes. So their threshold of like signals from the outside, they can handle a lot more. Handle and need. That's the other great point.

So the other really interesting thing is that extroverts, their dopaminergic response requires a higher amount of sensory input. Yes. And so this is why it is we work best when there's diversity of minds and diversity of experiences in teams. Right. In families, in organizations, in work,

you need all these perspectives. This is one of the problems with the United States and I think one of the problems with many more collectivist societies is we're more biased towards one or the other. But you really need both. Like a good meal.

I had this fantastic Wauken meal the other night. And what I told the folks at the restaurant is I've never had such a great balance of flavor before. And it reminds me of what you were describing with your marriage and your cooking is if I make food, It is, it's too dumb. There's too much pepper. I get this feedback. It's not just my wife, but I think my kids too

are more introverted and more sensitive. They all say I put too much pepper in. They all say I put too much salt in. And it's, it's now got to the point where the one thing I like making, I,

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I get the kernels, but everything else from scratch. and it's never good enough. I'm always perfecting it. But I'm very sensitive to salt because I don't want them to say it's too salty to the point where I put too little salt in now because it's stereotyped threat going into play. I get so anxious of that.

Anyways, I'm going off on a tangent here. Let me pull myself back in. So people who are more extroverted need more of that stimulation, right? So let's get it back to how can you be an extroverted socially anxious person. Yeah. So let's actually like before we do that. So I'm curious.

So, you know, here we are describing what an extrovert is, what an introvert is. So what I'm curious about is you say you're a socially anxious extrovert. How does someone know whether they're a socially anxious extrovert? I did not know for a very long time. because here's what happens for people that might be on this trajectory is that first thing to show up is probably going to be some level of social anxiety. Okay. And so what do people do when they're socially anxious, they end up avoiding situations that trigger that social anxiety?

Well, for a socially anxious extrovert, that means you are probably also avoiding situations that are much more extroverted experiences. So the kind of situation where an extrovert might thrive is there's a lot of sights, a lot of sounds, a lot of people. There's a lot happening. There's a lot of novelty, unexpected things happening in the environment. And those are the kind of situations that are really going to fuel you up when you're an extrovert. But if you're socially anxious, those are also probably the kind of situations where you're going to avoid. Now, maybe you might do something like Times Square in New York City, which, you know, if you're, for all the New York people watching, it's not a place that you want to go because it's so much. But if you're visiting, if you're a tourist, it can often feel so great and you can feel so alive because there's so much happening, there's so much stimuli. And there's no expectation of socially performing.

Okay. So if you are someone who loves these environments where there's a lot happening and there's no expectation to perform, and you also avoid social situations where you feel like you have to perform, you feel like you might be judged, you feel like you might be evaluated and rejected, then you might fit this category. But a lot of people who are extroverted socially anxious people avoid all. of those situations, including the ones that they probably need, which are the much more heavy stimuli, big crowd environments. Yeah, so what is there like, I'm still kind of curious about how would you know, right? So what you're describing is like, okay, how would an introvert with social anxiety be different from an extrovert with social anxiety?

Yeah. Okay, so some people might, let's talk about the introvert one, introvert social anxious. Someone who's an introvert and socially anxious probably does not like social situations, would probably prefer to be in much smaller groups or by themselves. They are also probably someone who is much more easily overwhelmed by a lot of stimulation. They get their little dose of social, they're happy, they move forward, right? someone who is more of an extroverted socially anxious person, they need more. And they probably, a good measure of this is do big environments with a lot of stuff going on,

do those end up leaving you feeling rejuvenated? Like put the social aside for a moment. And let's think about that time square environment. If you're in this environment where there's a lot happening, does that invigorate you? Okay. If yes, then you're probably more extroverted. Now, are you someone where when you feel like you have to socially perform in those environments, is that really difficult for you? And, you know, you want to connect. You're looking for that connection. You're looking to be in those kind of environments.

But that feeling of performance is really difficult for you. You avoid it. That's probably extroverted social anxiety. Yeah, so that's, it, I was kind of thinking about this too, and what I sort of like was trying to understand. So I saw some fascinating research. So, you know, you're kind of saying, I love this example of Times Square because there's a lot of stimulus, but you're socially anxious. And so I think you're tunneling down into something really important. If you like being around people and it feels relieving to like not need to perform, right? Because that's what the social anxiety really is. It's like this desire to perform.

And then when I started looking at it from like a neuroscience perspective, I, you know, discovered a couple things. So the way I kind of understand it, let me know what you think is if you're hungry and nauseous, that's the way I would think about extroversion with social anxiety, right? You crave it. Yeah. But when you get it, sometimes it's really difficult to deal with. Yeah. So people, like, so if you're really want to hang out with people. Yeah.

But when you, so the drive to hang out, you're not content at home by yourself. So you're sitting there, you're at home, you're like, this is boring, I want to do something, seeking a lot of stimulation. You want to be out there with people. Theoretically, you could enjoy or you do enjoy being with other people. But there's this other layer that once you show up with other people, you want to be there. There's like a craving within you. There's a hunger. But there is also like a suffering that comes with it.

Because the second that you show up, even though you want it, it makes you really anxious. Yeah. That metaphor is a great one. And how I often share this with people is, and I didn't start sharing this with people really until we had our first conversation about this, because then I started to clue into, oh man, this is not a common idea. But it's like you love to swim and you're afraid of drowning. Yeah.

So it's so similar to your metaphor right there. I would say this is absolutely true for a lot of people and where being an extroverted socially anxious is different from being an introvert socially anxious there's a lot more phomo there's a lot more fear of missing out there's a lot more a desire to share more of what's on your mind and feeling like you can't

and worrying about how other people will perceive you You know, one of the biggest challenges of social anxiety, one of the biggest changes that needs to happen, is a reorientation of what social situations mean for people. For someone who's more introverted, we have to help them from seeing social situations as a total waste of time, something I don't want to do, something that's scary, to something that can be useful and something that you need to kind of learn how to deal with these social situations. For an extroverted person, we don't necessarily have to do that. They want to be there. They want to participate. So what I'm kind of hearing is like, do you have to convince, like, if I had a patient and I was trying to decide, okay, is this an introvert with social anxiety or an extrovert

with social anxiety, how much do I have to convince them that social activity is like, really like you've got to learn how to like this stuff, you got to learn how to handle it, versus how much is there that natural drive? and then what we're really focusing on is relieving the anxiety piece. Yeah. So there hasn't been a ton of research done on this, but the studies that have looked at social anxiety and personality variables, like the big five,

one of which has extroversion and introversion on it, it's a very small percentage of people that show up into an office. Well, there's a small percentage of people that show up to get help and are able to. But of those that do and have social anxiety, few of them are extroverts with social anxiety. Most of them are introverts. So just statistically speaking, you probably have an introvert with social anxiety.

Yeah, so there's an interesting, I stumbled on an interesting reason for that. So what I also, I was looking at, sorry, did you want to go? No, no, no, no. So this is what's so interesting. So if, let's say I'm an extrovert, and I love social interaction, I crave social interaction,

I want to leave the house, but the second I go to the party, I feel the thoughts, in my head, I'm worried about how I look. I'm worried that other people are judging me. I really feel like dancing, but I'm terrified of going on the dance floor. That's like a really interesting kind of diagnostic question that I've started to think about. Like I've talked to patients of mine who I realize now were extroverts with social anxiety. And one of the key things is like they're people who want to be on the dance floor, but feel absolutely terrified of being judged.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And so here's the really interesting thing. They develop a very very, very interesting way of managing, which is substances. Yes. Yeah, yeah, we're going to get into that. When I go back to like college, right, there are some people who love parties, but they hate parties without drinking or getting high or anything like that. And what they have to do is they crave it, right? They're extroverts. So they show up at these parties and you'll notice there may be people in your social circle or maybe you're like this, where the second they show up, the first thing they've got to do is start drinking. Yeah. And that's because the alcohol affects the parts of of the brain that are causing the anxiety, but leaves the extroverted parts of your brain,

which are actually completely different, like not completely intact. So there's this pattern of people who is actually socially anxious loves to party. And why do they, why do they love to party? Because when they party, they have substances on board that basically self-medicate the anxiety and allow them to actually be extroverted and sort of satisfy that hunger. Which is really tragic because the more you drink, the more likely it is for the anxiety to get actually boosted, especially the next day. It's this great term called anxiety. So that's very common. That definitely happens.

A couple of points to that. So one, for kids and teenagers, they might not be at this point yet. where they know they love to party, where they know they love to go out. Because the dominant experience for them has been the social anxiety, which has put a wall, a barrier from them accessing the extroverted experiences that they want, that they crave. So they haven't gone beyond that wall, and they don't know yet that all of these experiences are really invigorating for them.

There's more of a global avoidance to a variety. idea of situations. So that was my, that was my experience, Dr. Kay. I did not know I love all of these things. So for me, being a kid, being a teenager, I think I was chronically understimulated in ways that I needed that stimulation. And what did that look like? How did you feel? How did you know that? Lower energy. It felt more like depression. Like I wasn't doing the things that made me feel alive. I would spend a lot of time at home. I would spend a lot of time with my family. I wanted to be, I wanted to feel more, I wanted to feel more alive. I wanted to feel more active and I felt slow, reserved, and I felt like something was wrong with me, which is social anxiety, right?

it took it took a long time until I had a few random surprise kind of situations in high school I accidentally took public speaking I thought it was going to be a class where we study famous public speeches like you know JFK Martin Luther King all this stuff and then we write essays about them and so when on the first day of class I show up and miss Hayes the teacher says welcome in public speaking, were you going to face your fear of public speaking? I freaked out. I ran to the counseling office to try to drop the class, and the counselor said, you can drop it, you just need to ask the teacher's permission. And then my social anxiety kicked in. I didn't want to ask the teacher for permission. So I did what a lot of people with anxiety do as I stuck with it, and I thought

I'm going to somehow get through this whole class without public speaking. But that class changed my life. And yeah. I'm so curious whether, you know, what part of you was attracted to public speakers in the first place? Yeah. Right? So like kind of thinking about, even if you didn't know what it was, what is it that

appeals to you? Why would a child who is so socially anxious seek to learn about public speakers who are in the spotlight in such a safe and academic way? This is where this can become my therapy session. I was really inspired. I was really inspired by these people, especially, I mean, JFK and Martin Luther King are, the two that stick out of my mind. Because as a kid, these two individuals changed culture, and they changed culture for the better. And they, I'm a huge space geek.

And so for me, JFK was the one that really got us to the moon and said about all of those changes. So I was fascinated by these people and their ability to inspire a large amount of people towards good. Now, is that what I wanted and I aspired to do or I was fascinated by it? I don't think I was thinking that deeply. I think that probably was there. And if I had a good, if I had a good counselor, therapist, psychiatrist. I think it has to be there because now you're literally someone who has a YouTube channel that tries to affect millions of people by using your powers of public speaking for the benefit of humidity.

Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't need a doctor to make those connections. Yeah, no, I think it was there. I think I wanted to be. Of course, I would have loved to be that kind of person then. I never thought I would be, but I wanted to be close to that. Yeah, absolutely.

But I was not someone who had had those experiences. And so when I took that class, and, you know, Ms. Hayes, the teacher, was basically doing brilliant behavioral therapy. where she was the situation that classroom was hyper focused on learning about anxiety small groups

small social situations what do you think is going to happen do the thing in a safe environment and then process what actually happened make predictions gain real world experience live by what your senses are revealing and the information you're getting from other people, not what your mind is telling you,

not all these predictions your mind is making, but living by what your senses are revealing to you about the world, right? We would do these things, make these predictions, have the experience, and then get real-world social feedback. And once I started doing that, I started realizing all these fears I have about myself about being stupid, dumb, strange, ugly, worthless, like people are going to think everything I have to say

is just moronic. I started to realize everyone shares those fears. And so if everyone shares those fears, then it can't possibly be true about all of us. We're not all dumb and strange and stupid and ugly. Yeah, but everybody else is wrong, but not me. Well, I got so much data in that class that I would say things

and think they're stupid. and someone else would say, I was really actually interested in what you have to say. And these weren't therapists that I was paying for, yeah. That was the cool kid in school who doesn't need to be nice to me. He could have been a total dick. So it was almost like, I mean, because I'm kind of curious, right? So if you're someone with extroversion and social anxiety,

and you sort of feel this like impotent drive to do more, to act more, to engage. with your environment, maybe be inspiring to accomplish more. Because when I think about the people that I've worked with that are sort of in that vein, too, I think there is this drive to, like, be outside of your shelf. Like you really long for it, right? Yes. What I'm kind of curious about is, like, it sounds like this class for you was basically, like,

forced exposure therapy, where you had to, I mean, you didn't have a choice. You had to put yourself out there again and again and again and again. What I'm kind of curious about is for people who aren't forced into that real world information, which conflicts with their thoughts. Like I think people will sort of put themselves out there like once or twice, right? But the ratio of thoughts in my head to real world experiences is really unfavorable. How do you approach this if you've got, you know, if you don't have the option of taking a class which forces you into public speaking like every single day or every week?

Yeah. Yeah, so there's a couple of things here that I think are really important for us to highlight. One is it's not just about being in the situation, but it's about being in situations that are optimized for learning. Okay, what does that mean? What that means is so you're kind of gave the example, well, you know, everyone else is wrong, but, you know, I'm right. Like everyone else thinks they're stupid, they're not, but I am.

Yeah, yeah, right? So what was really important about that class is I needed to trust these people. And I needed to trust that I was safe enough to take a risk. And I needed to trust that what they were telling me as a truth. And that meant sometimes I had to get harsh feedback. So I remember there was a speech I had to give in that class where I was performing some kind of monologue. And this was the 90s. So I picked a monologue from Seinfeld.

And I gave it. And I thought it was hilarious, but my delivery sucked. And I remember someone saying like, you know, the words were funny, but the way you said it wasn't. And then some people were nodding. And then my teacher said, yeah, here's how you could have made it better. So I knew these are not people that are just trying to make me feel good. it's not just like boost the self-esteem beta you're good you're confident like it's all fine it wasn't that it was let's be real we're here to work we're here to learn there's some stuff you're going to do

that's great there's a lot of stuff you're going to do that's pretty neutral and then some stuff you're going to do that's bad so we need to be honest about the good the bad and the ugly here and that's how you improve right so it has to be it's not just about putting yourself out there over and over again, but it's about creating experiences that are optimized for learning. Yeah, so how do you do that? Because I think it's challenging because on the one hand, you're right, you've got the, oh, you're so perfect, my beta is so great. And you know, right? That would be my mom. And my dad's saying, it's not that good. So you've got, and that'd be better. So you've got, and maybe that's a great example, right?

Because you've got people who will like either out of politeness or because they're in your corner, will like always try to be encouraging. So you kind of can't trust them to be honest with you. And on the flip side, you have people who are maybe giving you honest feedback, but it triggers your fears, right? So if someone says like, hey, it turns out that you're not that great and your delivery could have been better. I can imagine so many of my patients that would hear that feedback

and it would cause them to crumble. Actually, not crumble. It would cause them to be solidified actually, right? So their beliefs were correct all along. I knew it. And then they sort of end up retreating. So how do you find that environment where you can, you feel safe, people are giving you good feedback.

You're not just paying them. It's not just your therapist, right? How does someone build that? Yeah. I think that also reveals a little bit about extroversion and introversion as it relates to social anxiety. So I'm going to answer this question in the annoying therapist way by first. backing up into something else and then working my way here and call me out if I don't.

Sure. Because I think this is where we need to go. What happened for me with that class is as I started to learn, oh, these are, this is actually anxiety. I'm not weird. You know, because I did not know. I didn't have this knowledge or terminology that this is anxiety. I thought I was just a piece of trash, like garbage.

Like, no one wants to be near me, no girls ever going to want to touch me. That was the dominant fear of my middle school years is no girls ever going to want to touch me. You know, that's what I, yeah, that's a whole other episode. But as I work through these fears and developed an understanding of this is actually anxiety, a lot of people share these fears in social context. I can work through it. Most of the time, the feedback I'm getting, most of the time is I'm just okay.

Sometimes I'm great, sometimes I'm bad. But I can handle that. As I move through that, then these situations started to feel really good. Then I was starting to have fun. And I started to learn this thing that is true of myself to this day, which is I dread,

social situations and I want to gain the experience of them I love making a new friend I hate going to situations where you make new friends love it right

yeah like maybe some people can relate to that where just a few nights ago at a conference at a meetup for this conference I did not want to go to that meetup I didn't know anyone there.

And that terrifies me. I also know this is why I'm here to meet new people. If you don't go through, if you can't get past that wall, then you stay stuck. You never meet anyone new. And your world gets smaller, right? This is why I'm here. I want to learn new things, meet new people.

And so as it has always been true of my life, I have to find a way to get over that wall and put myself in that situation. And I've had enough life experience now where I know I can navigate it. I know I've got the social skills. I know I'll be able to handle it, even if it goes badly. And most of the time I know it's going to be just neutral. Sometimes it's going to be great. Sometimes it's going to be bad.

Most of the time it's neutral. but if I can just work through this massive anxiety and I've got the tricks that I do to get over that. Like what? The biggest trick I have is make some kind of commitment, something that forces me to go there. And sometimes that means I'm just texting someone. Like, hey, I'm going to go to this thing.

They might not be going to it, but there's a little bit of social accountability. Oh, so you kind of sign yourself up for it. I use that extroversion trick. Yeah. You know, I'm wired. Yeah, my phone, I have like five or six different threads that are pretty active during the day. My wife has like one. It's with me.

My wife is not a big texter. She's not a big talker. I'm not a big texter. My wife has tons of threads that she's constantly. And I like, like there was a family thread that we had. I was like, you guys got to remove me from this. I am the most active person on my wife's thread. Yeah.

My wife's family thread. Yeah. Yeah. She taps out of it. Your thread with your wife, you are the most active person. No, no, well, yeah, that too. That, too. My wife does a lot of, like, tap back to my messages.

She's just leaving you on red. No, I meant her extended family thread. I'm the active one, and she's not. She asked me to update her about what's happening in her family. Yeah, so my wife updates me about what's happening with my family. She's way more active on my family threads. Right, right. So I use extroverted tricks to help.

help myself with my extroverted social anxiety. So I will get accountability. And I don't tell my friends, hey, buddies, guys, I'm experiencing social anxiety. I need your accountability. No, that's not really how it works. They would think you're so weird if you said that. Yeah, I mean, that's like, they'd be like, bad, all these really good therapists mode today. But I will tell them, like, we often talk like, hey, what do you guys up to today?

What are you doing? And I'll be like, yeah, I got to go to this thing. I'm kind of dreading it. but I'm going to go because I know they're going to ask me later how it went and if I tell them like I couldn't go I was too anxious

that there enough you're so anxious about reporting your anxiety and letting down their ex-exam so it's almost like you're harnessing your social anxiety to drive you to go yeah I'm harnessing my social anxiety and my extroversion you know the other thing I know

is I remind myself of this all the time that the hardest part for me in these extroverted situations is always a beginning. It's walking through the door. Because they know once I'm there, the vibe is going to sink in, and I'm going to love the vibe. Yeah. So that's because that kind of circles back. I love that point that.

So here's what I kind of do, because I'm an introvert with social anxiety. Well, I guess now I'm sort of neutral. But so like, you know, I hate going to these things. So I find that once I go there, it's just I don't enjoy it. Yeah. And then so it's kind of weird because now I'm an introvert without social anxiety. And I used to be an introvert with social anxiety. Right, right, right, right.

So kind of like I think a couple things that work really well for me are just, first of all, kind of like you're saying, sort of like a commitment. But I don't hold myself externally accountable. It's so interesting because I'm an introvert. I hold myself like internally accountable where I just sort of think to myself like, okay, tomorrow, which one would I have rather done? And then I almost accept that I'm not going to enjoy it, right? Once I show up, it's like, this is something that like needs to get done. Yes. I'm not expecting to enjoy it. If it sucks, that's what I expected. But always like the next day, I'm glad I went, right? So if I had just stayed home and like played video games or whatever, like that would have been fun. But then

over the course of days, when I look back on my month, like how productive was I? Yeah. What I sort of found is forcing myself to show up helped me create a life without regrets. Yeah. That helps a lot. Yeah. And the other really fascinating thing that you're talking about about sort of showing up at the beginning and then you kind of get into it, right? It reminded me of sort of the neuroscience mechanisms where, you know, anxiety and social anxiety comes from your amygdala. Yeah. Comes from the fear center of your brain.

And that's all about hypotheticals. Yes. Right? So what's really interesting is if you have social anxiety and your extrovert, extroversion comes from your thalamus and your dopaminergic circuitry. So it comes from your sensory input. You're very sensory. We need more lemon. We need more salt.

We like loud music. We like hanging out with people. We crave stimuli from the outside. The vibrations of the music feel so good. Absolutely, right? So if you sort of think about anxiety happens before you have any vibrations. Yes. Before you have any sensory input.

Yes. It's all literally in your head, in your body. And then the moment that you show up, so if you can cross that bridge, it's kind of exactly what you're saying, getting over that wall, then literally a different part of your brain kicks in. Yes. Your thalamus kicks in. You're getting all the sensory input. dopamine starts kicking in, you really start to enjoy it. And then once again, the anxiety is if you pay attention, I think what you'll find is that

if you're still not enjoying it, that's because you're thinking about what comes next. Yeah. Right? So you can still be in the situation that you would enjoy, except your mind isn't there. Your mind is like, what is this person going to say? And does it, do I seem awkward? And is anyone going to talk to me an hour from now? You're always living kind of in the future, in the future.

Yeah. And I think it's so interesting because when I work with people like this, we get to a point where we can literally track back to which part of your brain is active. Is your amygdala active? Are you in the place? Are you doing exactly what you crave? But your mind is not there. It's somewhere else. And the more that we can sort of shift away from that and really just like be in that moment, which I know is so generic and I hate saying it, but there's a reason why it's so generic. Yeah. And it's really tapping into your sort of sensory input and your dopamine, like in that moment, just really enjoying that moment. Then, then it, and these two parts of the brain are kind

of like contrary, so they'll like fight with each other. Yeah. There's so much there that I want to, I want a plus one there. One is the way I think you and I just described it of why we go to these social situations, I think reveals the introversion, extroversion different. You said, you know, I kind of make this promise to myself. Yeah. And like when I'm when I'm looking back at my day, when I'm looking back in my week, at my month, I'm going to be happier that I went than I didn't go. I don't really do that.

I don't really do that at all. You look forward to actually going. Yeah. And I'll say like, man, that was such a great experience. I met these cool people. Like the vibe was great. The music was good. It was like a cool environment, right?

I love how to do the lights and all this sort of stuff That's where my head goes I had this fantastic experience It reminds me of my roommate in college He would say things like His name was Frankie Love the guy, we're still good friends But he would

I'd say like hey Frankie you want to like watch a movie tonight He's like I can't I promise myself I'd get a good night to sleep tonight And I was like well if you just promise yourself Like break that promise like who cares right But he was able to do that and access this like internal working that is not there for me. But if I had made a promise to another person, that is the most important thing for me, Dr. Kay.

That is, you know, when I teach classes, I get so stressed about it, about making sure I'm prepared, making sure I'm on time, making sure I'm there and present, because I do not want to let any of these people down. It's not about me. It's about them. I think this is so interesting because I don't get, so even though I'm an introvert, I don't get stressed about classes at all. So like if I'm giving like a keynote speech in front of hundreds of people, like my stress level, it's so interesting. Like, because I just, I show up for myself, right? I actually don't care about what. I never show up for myself.

It's so weird, right? So I'll like show up and I think to myself like, okay, I'm on this planet to try to like help these people and like I can't actually, I don't know what's going to work for them. There's like hundreds of them. There's no way that. So it's so interesting. I'm appreciating how different. So you don't like do you, I'm so curious what your internal experience of life is like. Well, here's, you know what I was thinking about when you just said this?

I'm going to share this thing. And I know you're going to, you might immediately want to challenge it. Yeah, sure. And I want you to suspend. I love how you're. Here. This is what my social... 5D chess, dude.

Right, right, right. This is like a therapist's rap battle. I'm going to say something you're going to want to challenge it. Restrain yourself. Okay. So this is why I think you are better on YouTube than I am. Okay. This is where I want you to suspend your...

Don't worry. Yeah, let's proceed with curiosity. I'm narcissistic enough to... We get, we both, that's something we both share. So here is, we were both on Dr. Mike's podcast a while back. I think within a few months of each other, right? So Dr. Mike is great. Yeah, I'm very supportive of the content he makes.

And he was very supportive and welcoming of me. But he was, he was trying to get some hot takes. I have on TikTok, social media, like hot takes on mental health. He wanted to see like, what are your spicy opinions, right? I mean, he said,

he was very transparent. It's not like he was like trying to get things out of me, right? I had such a hard time going there. I had such a difficult time going there. And it's not that I was evading hot takes. It's that it is very hard for me to muster up, be aware of, and then communicate hot takes. Because the dominant experience for me

as an extroverted, socially anxious person is being very cautious of social disharmony, of upsetting people, of making people feel uncomfortable. And inherently, in what's inherent in having a hot take and an opinion is you're probably going to be a little polarizing. Some people, are going to really agree with you. Some people are not. And it's not about trying to create drama, but it's about like, what's your honest opinion about this? What's your honest reaction? The journey for me doing this kind of work on media, YouTube, all of that, is trying to find what my honest opinion is. Because so many times I don't have access to that. I'm not aware of it because my social anxiety is already pushing it down. And the most haunting comment for me on that video,

I still remember it. Someone said, this guy seems like an intellectual lightweight compared to Dr. Mike. And that spoke to my fear of not being able to dig down deep and pull out what people need to be able to really help them. So that's so interesting because I think I do challenge that, but maybe not in the ways that. So first of all, I do think there has to be a difference from our performance on YouTube, right? That's a fact. So I think there's a differential diagnosis there. I think there's a part of, I agree with your assessment in a sense, but I think there's

more to it than that. So that would be my primary challenge to that, which is that, I mean, I think I have a support structure that very few creators have. And I think that's honest, like just the number of man, the number of humans putting in man hours into our channel versus your channel, I think is like probably like 10x to 100x. Oh, I mean, I have one to two people, which is me and maybe an editor. Just on our content team, we have like eight to nine people. Right. So I think that that as much as we want to talk about how our internal psychological structure is responsible, I think like the numbers don't lie there.

At the same time, I agree with what you're saying. So I think that what the internet responds to, and I think maybe a potential weakness of people, so I think the worst thing to give the internet is what you think it wants. Sure. Right. So I can see how if you're very careful about being perceived in a certain way, so I just put out a video that I thought was terrible in some ways,

and I realized that what made the video terrible is for like the first 10 minutes, I'm trying to justify my viewpoint. Instead of saying the hot take, what I did is like, tried to, I knew it was a hot take. and then I was afraid of people's reactions and then I preemptively tried to like justify my viewpoint

which is not just about YouTube by the way I think like when you're someone who's concerned about the way that people are going to respond one of the worst I think you should just say it and let them get upset what will piss people off way more is if you try to disarm or undercut their ability to dislike

what you're going to say right so that feels like a little bit like manipulative, like, I don't know if people have been in this situation where someone's going to say something to you that is going to piss you off. Yeah. And then what they start doing is, like, setting up all these, like, excuses and, like, things like that. So they try to, like, make you feel guilty for, like, having this response of, like, getting, you know, if you don't like what they're going to say, you're entitled to not like what they're going to say. No offense, but, I mean, that's, like, a slim down version of it. Exactly. Beautiful.

Yeah. I think the other thing that I'm really curious about is you're saying, so I do think the social anxiety gets in the way. But this is why I'm so fascinated by your internal environment, because I wonder if another big thing is you say, I don't know what I want to say. And I wonder if that's more about introversion and extroversion than it is about social anxiety or not social anxiety. Well, I'll share with you how it works. The most, and here I want to say it's, it can feel, it's so easy for this to sound like, oh, I'm just trying to generate hot takes to get views. That's not what I mean. What I mean is really about this idea of more of like a spiky point of view.

Like what is something that you fundamentally believe that is true to your experience and your knowledge that other people might disagree with? And I think there's a lot of these in our profession and everyone's profession and in our taste of music and food and TV and all the stuff. They're all these things that we believe that other people disagree with. For me, my journey has been trying to become more aware of that because my gut takes me to a place of agreeableness. And the person who's helped me most with this is my wife because she's an introvert and she's always honest. She's incapable of not being honest and transparent about what she's thinking and what she's feeling. That's so fascinating because once again I'm mirroring in my relationship because I'm the introvert. Yeah.

So I think one of the challenges that I face is that I will just be honest with my wife. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, so now I've gotten to this thing where literally I have and hopefully she never watches this, but she'll ask me like what I think about her dress. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then she'll use all these words that don't mean anything to do. And so now what I've tried to do, I've like literally like in my head ahead of time,

I've prepared a bank of responses to how this looks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what I try to do is find words that feel like they make sense, but don't know what they mean. Like, does this make me look fat? And I'll be like, it makes you look, I'm trying to think about what's an example. So like, I'll say like, oh, yeah, it doesn't make you look fat.

It makes you look distinguished or something like that. I'll just come up with some, and I'm blanking now, but I have gotten pretty good at it when she shows up. Let me just think for a second. What I say? I'll say things like, I like the way that it shapes your body. Ah. Yeah.

So then I'll say something like that. It's good. And so it's not clear, because she'll ask me for like an objective assessment. Like how does this look? I don't know how to say that. Yeah. I've developed the opposite, which is my wife will ask me, how does this look? And my extradite.

introverted, socially anxious, and also emotionally intelligent, which I want to get to, which is some of the strengths here. That part of me wants to say, you look beautiful. But what she's looking for as an introvert is like, give me the honest truth. That's what she wants for me. Like, do I look good? Do, you know, like what looks good? She wants details. She wants honest details.

and I've had to work really hard to just give her my hot takes about stuff like that. So you mentioned emotional intelligence what do you mean? So I think one of the gifts that more extroverted, social anxious people are, is they are very sensitive to social interaction. They see a lot in social situations that I think is harder for more introverted people to see and understand. For me, when I was in grad school and learning how to become a psychologist, the sitting and mirroring and reflecting and connecting, the relationship building skills were so incredibly easy. I didn't have to work at those at all. And I think a lot of people

who are extroverted and socially anxious are also more socially attuned. That stuff comes easier for them. One of my favorite socially anxious, extroverted people that I ever worked with was this guy, this young man who was so much of what you would think of as the life of a party, so positive and upbeat, and when you spent time around him, you felt more comfortable in your own skin. I think a lot of celebrities are like this. If you ever spend time around, around, celebrities, sometimes you walk away from that situation going, yeah, I see why they're paid a million dollars. Like, they're beautiful, and they also can make you feel beautiful?

Interesting. Yeah, I think some of the best celebrities are like that. Now, some people are assholes, and we don't have to go into, like, names here. But overall, the experiences I've had meeting people who do a lot of that type of work and are good at it, they make you feel pretty good too. So I had this patient like this. He was attractive, life of a party, gregarious, super confident. And he came to me and, you know, I said, what brings you in?

And he's like, well, I'm having a really hard time in social situations. I have all this social anxiety. And in my head, I'm thinking, like, what are you talking about? Right. But this is anxiety. It's an invisible process that no one else. is aware of. Something you said, and the last time we were talking,

is anxiety exists in this negative space. It's what's not seen, which I have used so many times. So thank you for that. I've stolen that from you. I don't even remember. It was a good one. It was a good one. You did some, like, drawing as a Dr. K thing.

Then I think you didn't show us what you were drawing. Oh, okay. But you definitely wrote some stuff down there. That's how socially oblivious I am. So he comes in and he tells me all of this and the place that social anxiety is showing up for him is in work meetings. He doesn't often say the thing that he really wants to say, his real concern or he doesn't really push back against other people on the team. And when he's at parties in social situations, small talk is easy for him. that deeper stuff is hard.

But he was someone that it was very clear to me that he's very emotionally intelligent. He's very aware of the feelings and experiences of other people. He's very good at modulating his own emotional experience to either make people feel more comfortable, to express concern, to be able to pivot into acting more male around male peers than friends. and being more emotionally expressive around women. Like he was able to do. Like a chameleon? Like a like a chameleon.

Yeah. Interesting. And not in a, you know, some ways that can sound negative. Yeah. Right? Like you don't know who you really are. But the people who are, a lot of people who are very emotionally intelligent, very socially intelligent have this ability to really be what the situation calls for.

And that's something where people who are very introverted. who do hate going to those parties and networking things, I can tell immediately. I'm like, oh, this guy does not want to be here. And there's sometimes a difference between someone who's like, who's seeing someone who like really doesn't want to be there. It's like, you know, how long until I, until my commitment I've made to myself is over and I can leave this place.

Counting the minutes. Right, counting the minutes down. What's the number of people that I need to connect with and so I can satisfactory leave versus people who are uncomfortable but want to be there? Yeah, I can kind of, I can see the difference. That's such a huge, because I think that describes me perfectly. Yeah, I tend to count the minutes when I'm in social situations. We, you know, in my native language, which is Gujarati, we have a phrase called Hajri-purau.

I don't even know what it means. But, I mean, I know practically what it means. I don't know what the literal translation is, but it's basically like go and, like, make your presence known or, like, put in your time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, you're just like, like, like, sometimes if we have social events, we'll be like, okay, I'm just going to like, are you going to the social event to go to the social event? Right. No, I'm going there to like pay my dues. Yes.

It's kind of the feeling that that we get. Yeah. I mean, my dad has described that a lot with like weddings. Yeah. Like, I'm not going to all five days. Right. But I need to go to like. Decent amount, right?

Yes. I need to show the respect. Yeah. Like not be absent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think just to kind of a wrap up, like so do you think there are a particular. So let's start with this. Like, in a nutshell, at the end of our conversation, how would you understand,

how would you, how would someone know if they're extroverted and socially anxious? High stimuli environments make you feel good. When there's a pressure to socially perform, you probably get uncomfortable. And perhaps you want to avoid those situations. And the common thing with social anxiety is people who have social anxiety, they experience facial expressions as more negative than other people. They see more threat, more judgment, more rejection in neutral faces. They also are more likely to remember the negative facial expression from other people.

So people with social anxiety, they experience more awkwardness. They see more awkwardness. They remember more awkwardness. So we're sensitive to awkward social experiences. And when you have that fear of being awkward, that makes you want to avoid. Even though that is probably the exact experience, if you can overcome that awkwardness, this big environment probably feels really good to you. It invigorates you and you're really happy you went

versus an introvert who's probably doesn't want to be there, doesn't enjoy being in that environment. But they're learning how do I get through the situation without it feeling so overwhelmingly terrible because I know I have to. I love that. So I think that what I'm sort of hearing is, is this something you crave?

Or is this something you have to get through? Yeah. That's kind of like the first division. And then if you do crave it, it's still really hard because you're concerned about judgment, you're hypersensitive to facial expressions, you're hypersensitive to like negative signals. Yeah. So you've talked a lot about overcoming this wall, right? Getting past the, do you crave something and still dread it?

Yeah. And if you can get over the wall, then you can start to enjoy things. You can start to be in the moment. do you have a good game plan for like getting over that hump? Yeah. So one of the most important things is to completely change your relationship here. Okay. With anxiety.

We can call it a mindset shift. We can call it cognitive reframing. We can call it acceptance, whatever term you want to use. Most people experience that anxiety and immediately want to crush it. They want to suppress it. And that is the wrong thing to do. Why? It doesn't get you anywhere.

and it makes anxiety worse. But if I crush the anxiety, doesn't the anxiety go away? I wish. I wish it was that simple. I wouldn't have a job if it was that simple, right? What emotional expression, there's been some fascinating studies on this with panic. So by changing the oxygen, CO2 balance, and an environment, we can trigger panic attacks in people. And when you put someone in a room where it's very likely that they're going to experience a panic attack,

what happens if you tell that person fight your feelings versus you tell that person just experience whatever is going to come the people who are told to fight their feelings do worse they want to leave and they experience more panic than the people who are told just experience whatever naturally comes don't fight it it's just it's just a natural part of being in this environment right so that's the experimental situation, but what happens with emotional suppression is you can't just suppress one emotion or one thought.

You're pushing everything down. And it turns your attention back in. You get overly focused here. It's impossible to push all those things down, which makes you try even harder, which pushes you further away

from the social situation. I mean, Dr. Kay, I was, remember, I, as a middle schooler, I thought no girl's ever going to want to touch me, right? So what did I do when I'm in social environments, particularly around girls I like, I didn't look. I had no eye contact. I didn't, like, I was like this. I was literally like this when I was meeting new people. Because I was trying to suppress it all. I was trying to, and if I looked, it was like too much anxiety. Ah, no, anxiety is bad. Like, look away, suppress a void. But the more I

did that, not only was it impossible to keep these things down, but in my attempts to suppress, I was making myself less socially connected, which is exactly what I wanted. Yeah, so that's so interesting because when I think about the neuroscience there, it's like, okay, so when we feel anxious and I feel like avoiding, right? So you're an extrovert, which means your brain requires a higher level of stimulation for activating your dopaminergic circuitry to to help you enjoy things. And the second that your dopamine activates, your anxiety kind of goes down.

And what I'm sort of hearing is that when you try to suppress, when you try to avoid, you're actually fighting a war internally, right? You're grappling with yourself. Yeah. So the moment that you start grappling with yourself, your connection to the outside environment disappears. Disappears.

And so the moment that you sever your connection to the outside world, your dopaminergic circuitry is no longer able to be activated. Yeah. Right? So the very thing that you're kind of internalizing more, when especially if you're an extrovert, what you need to be doing is don't grapple with your anxiety on the inside, try to tune into the environment on the outside.

That'll activate your dopamine, and then the anxiety will get better on its own. Yeah. You've said it better than I. And what happens in that situation, what my experience was and what I try to help everyone with this problem to achieve is. attentional training, right? So what are you paying attention to? We so get absorbed by our internal universe and trying to suppress that, and that does not lead to anywhere good. For introverts or extroverts, right? The pushing down is going to make the anxiety worse. And the experience

that I had is as I shifted my attention towards the actual situation, towards other people, at first they do have a very neutral expression and I know I have to work through that that most people just don't care most people just don't care about you most people are very neutral about you and I've now learned that from experience that neutral doesn't mean bad

I used to think neutral does mean that they're judging me and now I think most people are just bored most people are worried about their own stuff most people are like when am I going to go home like I'm so tired you know most people are like daydreaming about whatever fantasy they have right most people when they're neutral

that's what's going on in their head I know that now but I also know that if I turn my attention towards the other person the moment I mean you're doing this right now you have a slight smile and that lights me up inside as an extrovert it lights me up

and I know for me the whole journey is to to focus my attention on the other person and get to that point when I have a little spark of joy. And when I do, that fuels me. Now I'm going like 100 miles an hour. Yeah. So it's interesting, right? Because when you, I love how maybe it's as simple, like it's so fascinating.

But like it's as simple as like looking up, right? So training yourself to simply just, and it's such a, it feels to me like metaphorically powerful too. right, so you're like, like, there's something about facing the world. I don't really know what. But like literally like you're not like looking away and avoiding and simply like shifting, forcing yourself to make eye contact. Yeah. And then you start to get all these signals.

Yeah. And then it seems like it's really important to really spend some time thinking about neutrality. Yeah. And the automatic, if you're, if you're amygdala as active, like you kind of said, you know, you'll, you'll see neutrality. You'll take someone who's completely neutral. and you'll assume that's negative. Yes.

So some amount of attentional shifting, some amount of literally like changing what you look at and giving your eyes, giving your thalamus and your occipital cortex, like some kind of input which your extrovert brain craves. Yeah. And the only way you get that is from experience, right? So to put this together,

anxiety is not your enemy. It's your like overly anxious friend. It's like that friend that comes over and they like starts saying all these things that they're worried about in life, you know, you don't kick that friend out of your house. You don't try to get rid of them. You don't try to suppress them. You hear them out. And then at some point, you might call them out and be like, dude, this is what you always say in these situations. Like, you're just really worried

about it. It's okay, right? Let's work through it. So think of anxiety as your overly dramatic friend that is always there in certain situations. They always pop up. And that's just what they're going to do. And so you take anxiety with you. You can, this is why I call my, my anxiety content braver with anxiety. You are braver with your anxiety than you are without it. If you bring your anxiety with you on the journey, you can go more, you can do more, you can be in more situations, find that connection. You're braver with your anxiety than you are without it. And most of us try to get rid of it. You can never get rid of it. It's there. It is the most universal emotional experience on this planet, we need it,

it helps us to say this is something that's important to us. This is also a distinction for introverts and extroverts. Of course, an extrovert can be anxious about social situations because social situations are so important to them. They're so important to the way they interact with the world. And of course, this fear of being rejected would feel, feel so much more terrible to an extroverted person. Can you imagine being rejected, excluded from all the situations that give you life? Yeah. At least an introvert. You can go inside. The best I can do

is imagine. Right. Right. If people don't like me, fuck them. Yeah. Yeah. If people don't like me, I'm fucked. Yeah. That's the difference. There we go. I think we just answered it, right? So you have to change your relationship with anxiety and think of it as a friend you're bringing with you on the journey. And then it's about gaining these experiences. I can tell you, Dr. Kay, all I want, that most people are very neutral and they just don't care. They just don't care about you.

And you can tolerate that. It doesn't mean anything until you experience it. So you have to gain experiences that are optimized for learning. So what this means is you can do low, medium, or hard. You know, like, I play video games on low settings. You know, I play, whatever I play, I will start easy. But I got friends that they go hard. So you figure out where you are in your journey and what you want to do.

But if you want to do some easier stuff, it might be about intentionally making a small social mistake. It might be about intentionally saying the wrong thing. It might be about having that typo in your text or in your email and still sending it. and seeing what happens. You're doing it as an experiment, right? It might be about sharing one small little hot take. Maybe you and your friends are talking about, I don't know, what do friends talk about the baseball game?

Or maybe you're, you know, and maybe you got, maybe your home team, I'm not a sports guy. Why am I giving a sports analogy? Let me go with something I know. Maybe you're talking about Star Wars movies. and maybe you say, you know, there's some stuff I like about The Last Jedi. And people are like, oh, no, that movie sucks, you know. Ryan Johnson destroyed Star Wars, blah, blah, blah.

And maybe you say, like, there's some pretty cool sequences. Like, did you know in that whole movie two lightsabers never actually touch? Like, they have some amazing lightsaber battles, but two lightsabers never actually touch. That's pretty cool. Now, maybe that's more of a medium difficulty with Star Wars fans. That gets intense. but intentionally making a little mistake, intentionally sharing a little thing, intentionally putting yourself in a situation where you otherwise might avoid.

And then there's the medium stuff that is pushing things a little bit further, where you're intentionally creating a little bit of an awkward experience. You go to a coffee shop, you order a tea, and you say, oh, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Actually, I'm in coffee. Not a tea, right? You're intentionally creating a little bit of awkwardness. maybe you are calling someone and instead of saying hi Dr. K, I say,

oh, hi, Dr. Ali, and you're like, oh, no, gosh, oh no, sorry, you know, you intentionally do that. And then there's a hard stuff where you're creating much more of an awkward experience. You go to a store, you buy something, and then you immediately return it. And you say, whoops, this is not what I meant. This is not what I wanted to get. or you call a restaurant and then you place an order and then you call to immediately cancel it. I mean, there's a wide variety of things that you can do.

But we have to seek out these awkward experiences, make a prediction about what we think is going to happen, and then find out what actually happens. And what most people find out is that most people just don't give a fuck. Most people are pretty normal. And then the other thing they learn is I can tolerate that. I can live with that because sometimes you will be rejected. sometimes it will be awkward. And you know what?

You can live with that. Awesome. What a great way to wrap up. Thank you so much, Dr. Matu. Thank you, Dr. Kay. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life.

If you enjoy the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.