HealthyGamerGG - The Real Reason You Feel Intimidated

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

🎙️ In this podcast, Dr. K addresses the common issue of feeling intimidated and how it can lead to insecurity and a smaller life. Intimidation is often caused by identifying with someone who appears better in some way, but it can be overcome by externalizing attention, engaging with the person, and expressing appreciation for their positive qualities. 🔑 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we're going to talk about how to overcome feeling intimidated. And this is a pretty big problem. It's not something that people talk about a lot, right? Because it's not like depression or bipolar disorder or suicidality. But unfortunately, it's like a really common experience for a lot of people. You're kind of going throughout your day. And then you run across someone who just feels really intimidating. This is someone that is kind of like maybe if they're at work or at they're at school or maybe even in a social setting where you meet someone who's just like better.

than you in some way. And the way that they're talking or the way that they're acting or maybe they're giving a presentation, they sort of evoke all of these feelings of like kind of inferiority. And then what happens is you kind of feel like you don't belong there. You look around and you start to see other people who are like better than you at stuff. Hey, y'all, I want to take a moment to talk about the sponsor of today's video, Babel. Babel is one of the top language learning apps in the world. What I really love about Babel is that instead of just wasting time on my phone, I'm actually learning another language. It uses sounds. It uses different. sorts of images and things like that, and it almost gamifies the language learning process.

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Which is like really fantastic, so it's really easy to learn. So if y'all are interested, check out the link in the description for 60% off of your subscription. And thank you to Babel for sponsoring today's video. And what does it cause you to do? It causes you to kind of like retreat, right? And then you have these kinds of thoughts like, oh my god, like I don't belong here, or these people are so much smarter than me, better than me, more capable than me, like, I don't know how I ended up there.

Sometimes, like, you even feel some degree of imposter syndrome. I remember this happened to me when I was interviewing for medical school, and you're, like, sitting in the waiting room waiting for your interview with all these other medical school applicants. And you make small talk, right? And they're telling you, like, oh, yeah, like, hi, my name is so-and-so. Like, what's your name? Oh, okay, like, what are you interested? And I say, I'm interested in this.

And they say, I'm interested in this. And I did research in these labs. And then I worked for the United Nations. And I, like, did free surgeries for people in Africa. and they start talking to you about like how amazing they are. And then I start to feel like terrible. It's like, I didn't do any of that stuff. And then I start to feel insecure.

And then I can't really retreat from it. So sometimes I'm in my own head. So now when I go into the interview, I'm not even thinking about myself and how awesome I am. All I'm thinking about is how this other person is better than me. But in other situations like social situations, right? You meet someone and they feel intimidating. And what do you do?

You kind of like retreat. And so the real tragedy about feeling intimidated is we have all of these thoughts. and then we tend to retreat from those situations. And every time we retreat, life gets narrower, right? Because now I'm not able to go to that party. Now I feel like I don't belong at that place. I can't go hang out with these people because there's this person there who's better than me at something else.

And so what happens is our life becomes narrower and narrower and narrower. In the worst cases, we start spending more and more time in front of screens. We're spending more time at home. And we're spending, we feel safe with people who don't really inspire us. right? So what I sort of noticed in my own life is I started hanging out with people who never intimidated me. And the real challenge is that a lot of the people that didn't intimidate me were not the people I needed to be spending my time with. And so the real tragedy of sort of letting intimidation control you is that it cuts you off from opportunities that you should be engaging in. Because those are the people that you actually want as your peers, right? Those are the people that you want to sort of be spending time with that inspire you towards positive action. But the problem is that they don't inspire. you. They just intimidate you. And as an aside, we're not talking about people who are trying to intimidate you. That's a whole different thing, right? We're not talking about someone who's like walking up and getting in your face and trying to like tell you to get the hell out of there and

trying to make you feel unwelcome. What I'm talking about is I think the far more common experience of feeling intimidated with a group of people. So let's start by understanding a little bit about what does that actually look like. So sometimes people don't even realize that they're feeling intimidated. And what that manifests as in the mind is you'll have all of these thoughts. Like you'll notice that, okay, this person is so amazing. I'm not as good as they are. I'm not as smart as they are. I'm not as articulate as they are.

I'm not as charismatic. I'm not as good looking. So you'll kind of look at someone else and within yourself, you will notice thoughts of deficiencies. The other way to sort of recognize intimidation is you will start to think about what the other person thinks. So you'll think, what will this person think when they see me? This person is so put together and so articulate and so professional.

what are they going to see when they look at me? They're going to see someone who's a slob. They're going to see someone who's unprofessional. And so you spend a lot of time thinking about how other people will perceive you in a negative light. But at its root, this is a feeling of intimidation, right? Because they're up there and you're down here. So if you have those kinds of thoughts around people, hopefully we'll be able to help you with that. The second thing to understand is what is intimidation? So intimidation is something that actually has a very specific set of requirements to trigger in your mind. We actually don't get intimidated by everyone. There's a lot of people out there who are capable of doing things that we're not capable of or not very good at, right?

There are people out there who are good at cooking or good at playing video games, but it's not like every person you encounter who is better than eat you at something intimidates you. There are particular things that we're sensitive to that make us feel intimidated. And this is what's really wild is what makes us feel intimidated is actually identification with the person. When we see ourselves in another human being, but that person does a better job of being us than we do, that's when we feel intimidated. When we look at someone else and we say, I could do this if I were different. If I was smarter, I would be like this person. If I was more disciplined, I would be like this person. They're just a version of me that's like better than me, right? They're more

articulate. They're a little bit better looking. Or this person made the right choice. when I made the wrong choices. So if I had stayed in school or if I had chosen to become, you know, not switch into pre-med and stayed in computer science or whatever, if I decided not to go to college and play pro League of Legends or Valerent or whatever.

So what we see, what actually triggers the sense of intimidations is really important to understand is not that this person is different from you. It's that for the most part, they're similar, except for one thing. And that is the quality

which you feel is intimidating. Right? So really think about that for a second, that what gets evoked as intimidation is actually the way that you relate to the person and that you can see yourself in that person, except you're lacking in a couple of different ways. So intimidation is not about that person being different. It's actually about that person being the same. And so the real problem with this is when we see ourselves in someone else and we think to ourselves, wow, I could be that if I dot, dot, dot. Our natural reaction is to beat ourselves up, right? Because then you start you start to like look at your life and you start to regret, you're like, oh, I should have done this differently. Or if I had woken up every day, or if I had studied harder, or if I had, you know, spent some time like working on my appearance or going to the gym, then I could look like that person. So as we beat ourselves up and we point out our shortcomings, what does that do psychologically? That makes us feel more insecure. It reinforces the insecurity. And the more that we reinforce the insecurity, the more ammo there is for us to be intimidated. And because what is it that's

actually fueling that feeling of intimidation, it's actually our own insecurities. And this is why intimidation is so hard to overcome, right? And there may be some people out there that give you answers, like, oh, you just got to do it. You got to like put yourself out there, right? And as you listen to these people who say, just put yourself out there, you're like, bro or girl, I don't think you understand what it's like when I put myself out there. You can put yourself out there because you're different from me. That doesn't work for me. And why is that? It's because when you put yourself out there, you feel really bad, you start to regret even more, you start to beat yourself up, and then it feeds the insecurity, and now you put yourself out there once, and now you're more insecure. So what

happens the next time you put yourself out there? It's easier to feel intimidated. And then you you beat yourself up again, and then you're like, wow, all these other people can put themselves out there, but I can't even put myself out there. That feeds the insecurity even more, and then you try again, because everyone's telling you, just put yourself out there, bro. You try a third time, and each time you go through the cycle, it gets worse. And now, like, now it makes sense why you can't put yourself out there and why you think it's a bad idea and why it doesn't work for you, because it literally doesn't work for you.

So let's understand a couple of things. First thing to really acknowledge, if you can, but this may actually come at the end, is that if you're there, you deserve to be there. If you get invited to a party and you feel intimidated by other people, you still got invited to the party. So unless you're, like, literally trespassing, right? Or, like, somewhere where you really don't belong. I'm not saying like what your mind thinks you don't belong.

Unless you're trespassing or breaking the law, you actually belong there. And that's something that I experienced a ton when I started residency at Harvard Medical School. I was like, look at all these amazing people out there. Turns out I'm pretty amazing too. And so are you. And the second thing that we're going to tell you to do, maybe a little bit scary, but it's really, really effective, okay? So if we think a little bit about intimidation, we recognize a quality in that person

that we think is good, right? Otherwise, you wouldn't be intimidated by it. They're so articulate. The other problem with intimidation is that we're in our own heads. And you may notice that the more you are in your own head, the worse the situation becomes. Oh my God, what is this person going to think? What should I say? I don't belong here.

I should go home. I should run away. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You're all up in here. So you're not able to enjoy the experience at all. You're not actually able to participate. So what we need to do is externalize your attention.

And the way that we're going to do that is be absolutely terrifying, but it works really well. Okay? So what we actually want to do is express appreciation for the thing that we think is pretty cool. So recognize that when you feel intimidation, the flips side of that coin is actually appreciation because you're seeing something in someone else that is like a positive quality. That's why you feel intimidated because you don't have it. So one thing that you can actually do, which is really wild, is walk up to that person and say, hey, I really appreciate dot, dot, dot.

So if someone gives a good presentation in class and you feel like that person's presentation is way better than yours. After class, walk up to him and say, hey, I really, I thought your presentation was fantastic. I particularly like the way that you did A, B, and C. Now, this may sound absolutely terrifying, and we're going to help you all with that. But let's understand why it works. So I recently saw a really interesting study that if you look at people who are depressed, people who have mood disorders and active depressive episodes, the idea is that normally, like, they need help, right? So what we should really do is try to help them a lot because they're depressed and they need help. But there's a study that actually found that when people

who are depressed help other people, it actually improves their symptoms. So sometimes what we need to do is take that feeling of intimidation and recognize that you can't be intimidated unless you appreciate or respect something about someone. That's the only way that it can happen, unless they're trying to intimidate you, obviously. And so then what we actually want to do is instead of giving into the negative manifestation of this emotion, what we actually want to do is kind of flip it around and express some appreciation. And you all may have heard about things like expressing gratitude and like changing your mindset and all this kind of of crap. This is literally how you do it. You walk up to that person and say, hey, I really

appreciate the way that you presented that. That was a really cool presentation. And now suddenly what you've done is you've externalized it a little bit. We're going to help you all if you're thinking, oh my God, but then what? I can't say that. We're going to help you. Don't worry. Wait, wait with me. Bear with me, okay? So the first thing we've done is externalized. We've also engaged with that person. So instead of retreating from it, which causes narrowing of your life and closing of doors and opportunities, we're actually like not being intimidated by it, right? feel intimidation, but you can go and you can express appreciation because that's authentic. That's what's really cool.

It's not actually being fake. It's actually channeling something that you feel towards this person. Okay, but then what? And that's where you can sort of follow it up with an open-ended question. So you can walk up to someone, you can say, hey, I really appreciate insert quality that I am intimidated by. Can you tell me a little bit about why you chose that as a topic or, you know, let's say you're intimidated by someone's appearance.

I know this sounds kind of weird, but this is something that I've done that works really well. you can walk up to someone at a party and say, hey, you're really rocking that jacket. Like, that looks lit, right? And just think about that. How would someone feel if you walked up to them and you said that? Now, if you sort of play it too far, I'm saying, say one thing. Don't keep on, oh, and your hair is beautiful, and I love your skin, and I love your shoes, and I love everything about you.

You're just so magnificent. Don't do that. That's terrifying, okay? So just say the one thing, don't be like verbal diary on them of appreciation. So just say one thing. Hey, I really appreciate this thing. And then follow it up with some kind of question. Like, that's a rock and jacket.

How did you decide to wear that today? Right? Or if someone's giving a presentation, you can say, hey, I really loved the way that you sort of put together that table or that meme at the end was brilliant. You know, can you tell me a little bit about why you chose this topic? So ask an open-ended question. It shouldn't be a yes or no question. That's really important.

And then just ask that. And then it doesn't have to be a long interaction. So here's the other thing because what people are oftentimes terrified is like, what do they say then? right? And that's where it's like sometimes if you even go up to someone and compliment them, who's embarrassed now? Biocch? Right? Because when you walk up to someone, you say, hey, this is a really fantastic presentation. I love that meme at the end. You just say it with a smile and then they're like, oh my God. Right? And suddenly they're feeling

embarrassed and you've made them feel good, right? Which is pretty cool. And so if you're worried about how to extract yourself from the conversation, you can even just say, hey, so like they say, oh, this is how I chose to put together this presentation. So you ask your question. And then they're going to come back to you and maybe it'll turn into a conversation, but you're terrified. How do I make it into a conversation? You can't make it into a conversation. You don't need to make it into a conversation. You went there to say your peace. If they engage with you, engage back. So we're going to hit the tennis ball across the court. We're going to wait for it to come back. If it doesn't come back, you can say, well, I just wanted to share that with you.

Awesome presentation. Right. And then you can just walk away. Just extract yourself from the it's okay. You just walk up and say, hey, I thought you did a fantastic job. Pleasure to meet you. My name is so-and-so. I was curious about. this, thank you so much, and then you just walk out. And so what does this do? This is really important because it does a couple of really key things. The first is it allows us to not retreat, right? This is what's really important. And then we'll develop some degree of tolerance. We're not giving in to the intimidation. The second is that it takes that authentic gap between you and the other person and sort of like that thing that you appreciate about them and you're

actually vocalizing it and you're owning it and like, that's okay. You're actually engaging with this person. You're also externalizing your attention. And it's And if you need a little bit of help extracting yourself from the conversation, that's totally fine. Some of y'all may be thinking to yourselves, I could never do that. You'd be surprised. Have a little bit of faith in yourself. I've got faith in you. But the other thing that you can do if you're terrified of actually engaging with that person

or if the sense of intimidation is too strong. Okay? I'm not going to tell you to just do it. I acknowledge that. There's an internal process that you can also do in the safety of your own home, okay, with no one watching. Which is, I want you to think about, okay, what do I see in this person? because what you see in that person, honestly, if you really pay attention, you see a version of yourself and really tunnel down into that and ask yourself, what is really different between this

person and me? And while your mind may generate a thousand different answers, I want you to kind of pick the one that feels the most important to you. Even if your mind comes up with five answers, you can write them all down and you can like say, okay, which one is the biggest one? Because one of them is going to be driving it. And then notice that quality and then just ask yourself, right? Because you see the possibility of yourself in that person. That's why you feel intimidated. And so pick that one thing and then ask yourself a second question, which is what is one thing that I can do to move towards that goal? How can I move one step closer to being what this person has? And this is what's really important is oftentimes when we get intimidated by someone, we want to be them. So we don't think about

one thing. We think about the thousand different things that I need to do before I. become what that person is. And that's why you've got to be a little bit careful. Don't worry about the thousand things. Your mind may tell you, oh, there's no way you can ever get there because there's so many things that are different. Instead, pick one thing and ask yourself, okay, so this person was articulate. What can I do to be more articulate? Maybe I should practice my presentations for 15 minutes before I give them, okay? So you really try to tunnel it down into one thing and implement that one thing. The really cool thing is when you do that, not only do you become more articulate because you're practicing and you're intentional, but the other really cool thing is instead of just

being like weighed down by this intimidation or treating from it, you're actually improving in some small way. And as you start to improve in some small way, we're going to start to see the reverse cycle where now instead of like feeding your insecurity and feeling more intimidated, you'll start to develop a tiny bit of confidence. As you start to develop a tiny bit of confidence, as you re-engage with people, you'll be more comfortable being there. As you're more comfortable being there, you start to enjoy it a little bit more because you're comfortable and that's why we don't like it because we're uncomfortable. And then as you're able to be there a little bit more, you'll see the reverse of the vicious cycle, where now you're more comfortable and you're hanging out with them, you start to form relationships. Now, the next time you think about going, it isn't as scary to go the second time and the third time.

And each time you kind of do this process, you will get a little bit better. So it's really unfortunate that oftentimes we feel really intimidated by people who aren't even trying. We're walking around, going about our business, and we enter into situations where we see people who are smarter than us, more articulate than us. us, more attractive than us, more physically in shape than us, more knowledgeable than us. We walk around the world and our mind sees all kinds of things. And when we feel that intimidation, it manifestses all these thoughts, like, oh my God, like this person is so much better than me or whatever. Or you start to think about what they will see when they look at me. Oh my God, what is this person going to think? I am so pathetic. I'm so not put together. They're so put together.

And if you notice, there's a comparison. And the reason that you feel intimidated is actually because you see a version of yourself in that person. This person has accomplished what you could have done if you had made different choices or were a slightly different human being. If you were more disciplined and lived up to your potential, then you could be that person. And so when you see that person, you see your own regret. And that's what your mind actually tries to retreat from. Because if you think about why does the mind retreat when we feel intimidated, it's to try to protect us from feeling that regret that we see when we encounter that other person. And if we move away from the other person, then there's no regret. The challenge is that

as we move away from that person, we start to narrow the scope of our life. Doors start to close because now I can't go to that entrepreneurship conference. Now I can't go to this extracurricular activity. I can't go to this party. I can't apply for this job interview. And so our life becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. And then it becomes more and more insecure, right? Because we have fewer things to be proud of in the whole cycle repeats itself.

So instead, recognize that actually the reason that you feel intimidated is because you are capable of what the other person is. you just need to make some changes. And in the short term, one thing that you can really do to avoid that retreat and avoid getting trapped in your own head is just express appreciation towards that person. Even if it's a little bit uncomfortable for you, certainly makes their day, right? So like, that's pretty cool. And acknowledge that, hey, I really appreciate this thing. That's why I feel intimidated.

You don't have to share that, right? So you just walk up and say, hey, I really appreciate this. Followed up with a question. And if they choose not to engage with you because maybe they're embarrassed by the positive feedback and they don't know what to say, then you can say, hey, I just wanted to share that. thank you so much. It was a great presentation. It was nice to meet you. And then you walk away. And even if that is scary, you can go through this introspective process of recognizing, okay, what do I see in this other person? And how can I take one step towards that? Don't try to become the other person, but what can I do? Just one step forward that'll help me

move towards this goal because I know I'm capable. If you didn't know you were capable, you wouldn't be intimidated by it in the first place.