Why You Get Anxious Before Interviews, Dates, and Presentations (It's Not What You Think)
Authentic Confidence with Dr. Aziz
Dr. Aziz Gazipura, Psychologist and Author
4.8 • 666 Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2026
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What do job interviews, first dates, presentations, and social gatherings all have in common? They're all situations where someone could disapprove of you — and your nervous system knows it.
In this episode, Dr. Aziz breaks down the single pattern running underneath all social anxiety and performance anxiety: the fear of disapproval. He explains why your brain fills uncertainty with doom predictions, why those predictions feel so convincing, and why the solution isn't about becoming more impressive — it's about building your capacity to be in the unknown.
This episode is part of a series of new discoveries Dr. Aziz has been making about how our relationship with approval shapes everything — our confidence, our conversations, our careers, and our relationships. More on that in the coming episodes.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Why do we get anxious before a job interview, before a date, before a presentation, |
| 0:09.9 | maybe before going to a situation where there's a lot of new people, a conference, |
| 0:14.6 | even a social situation where you don't know people there? |
| 0:18.3 | What do all those situations have in common? |
| 0:20.2 | And why do we feel uneasy or anxious or even |
| 0:26.0 | maybe self-critical before those situations? That's what we're going to cover in this episode. |
| 0:33.0 | I'm Dr. Aziz. Welcome to shrink for the shy guy. I'm excited to share why we experience anxiety before all those situations. |
| 0:42.3 | There's one unifying factor that runs through all of them. |
| 0:46.3 | And this is going to be an extremely illuminating episode for you. |
| 0:52.3 | And it's part of a series of discoveries that I've been making just in the |
| 0:57.7 | last six, 12 months that have really been rocking my world, even after doing this work for |
| 1:02.4 | almost 20 years, specifically focused in this area. I'm discovering more new things every week |
| 1:09.6 | that is really coming together and something that I'm |
| 1:12.8 | excited to share with you in the next few episodes. |
| 1:17.2 | That's part of a larger transition expansion of the work that I'm doing. |
| 1:23.3 | And actually will affect some of what I cover on this show. |
| 1:27.0 | We're going to be building it out and explaining it in new ways. |
| 1:29.2 | I think will be very, just make everything so much more clear. |
| 1:32.7 | It's like my frameworks and understanding of this is getting more and more crystal clear |
| 1:36.2 | and my ability to help people is getting even better and better with this. |
| 1:39.0 | So I'm excited to share all of that. |
| 1:41.3 | That'll be coming up in the next few episodes. |
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