Welcome to this episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy.

I'm your host, Dr. Aziz.

And today I'm excited to share something with you that has been coming up a lot,

literally this week with clients and in my own life too.

And I'm absolutely certain that you will resonate with this

because it's a very human thing, but it's especially challenging in people like me and my clients where we have a history of being nice,

and maybe some confidence or self-esteem challenges, you might say,

that have reared their ugly head at times in your life.

And this illuminates something that is the core pattern underneath and it can

show up as anxiety before conversations before meetings before presentations a pressure to perform

just unease uncomfortable maybe ruminating replay. It all comes out of this. And also,

not just moment to moment stuff throughout the day, but larger stuff. Like, oh, I'm behind in my

life. Oh, look at that comparison, right? Like, look at that person over there. Oh, you know.

And if you can't hear that in my voice.

I'm lamenting how that other person is better than I am case that didn't come across from my groans.

But so this is what's underneath all of it.

And it's not going to be some grand reveal because it's in the title of this episode, but it is conditional worth.

A conditional sense of self-worth. And I talk about this in my book on my own side. I call them value equivalence,

but basically this is where we, all of us can do this, we hook our worth onto something.

And the metaphor I was using with a client earlier this week was it's like,

you know those grappling hooks?

I don't know if I've actually ever seen a real grappling hook or touched the real grappling hook,

...